If only Chevy Chase was part of it, oh well. Foghorn just wrapped up our last tour of the year, a little shot through the Midwest from St. Louis to Minneapolis. It was a fine time, and thanks to all our fans throughout the area that came out to see us play and support live music! It’s hard to believe, but Foghorn won’t reconvene for a tour until February. We’ll be headed for the Northeast at that time, through New York, Massachusetts, and Vermont, so keep an eye out for us there! It seems like a long time from now, but it will be a real pleasure to settle in to some good home living! There’s no place like it. We have sure been on the road non-stop this year, and are all looking forward to some much needed rest & relaxation. We’ll be hot and ready to ride when February rolls around!

 

Our Midwest tour started in St Louis, where we played the KDHX Stage, a beautiful venue inside the radio station. The crowd was lively, and it was a great kickoff to the tour. We taught workshops the next day at the St. Louis Folk School. We played a private wedding in St. Louis Halloween evening, some guests were in costume! We headed north to Chicago to play a matinee concert at the City Winery, and played a square dance in Evanston the next evening, just north of Chicago. The dance was held at a Legion Hall, and the floor was full of dancers. It is always rejuvenating to play a dance. Our music is dance music after all, and it feels good at some level to play the music as it was intended every so often.

 

We headed up to Cedar Rapids Iowa and played at the Legion Arts Hall, a historic building built in 1891. It started out as a Czech Presbyterian Community Center, and now it is a center for the arts. In the mean time, it had a few lives, and survived the great flood of 2008, and as a result was fully restored into the beautiful place it is today.

 

Then we commenced the coffee roastery portion of our tour! We drank some awful good coffee… starting in Depere, WI, near Green Bay, at the Luna Cafe, a small and cozy little room where they close up after coffee shop hours, and clear out all the tables and invite people back for the evening show. The owner of Luna Cafe also brought us to perform the next morning at the school where his son attends. The kids loved the music, dancing up a storm in front of the stage. We carried on to Milwaukee after the school show, and performed that night at the Anodyne Cafe, another roastery that aside from making great coffee, also serves up some great wood fired pizza up the road at their second location. Milwaukee brought out a heck of a crowd that night, and the audience showed the love, which made the performance part extra fun. We got to see some old pals that night too. We stayed along the lake in a nice little hotel, and somehow it sorta felt like being in the countryside, right there in the middle of the city. Mark of the Luna Cafe, and Matt of Anodyne Coffee are both wonderful hosts, and took great care of us.

 

Leo and Leona’s. You almost know what it is like just by the name. At the intersection of two county highways in rural central Wisconsin is Leo and Leona’s, an old-school bar and dance hall. It’s in the Driftless area where high rolling farmlands mingle with deep forested hollers. Walking into Leo & Leona’s, it is easy to feel right at home. There is a sweet jukebox in the corner, and plenty of wonderfully tawdry wall hangings from when Leo and Leona owned the bar. Now it is owned by three brothers, who seem to have kept it beautifully much the way it was. Signs hang on the wall written by Leo and Leona that say things like, “Closed today. Just plain pooped.” or “closed today, come ‘round to the backyard.” Foghorn ate dinner at their first Friday fish fry as a band that night. And our old pals, Tim Foss, and Josh Rabie joined us for the show, both with an opening set, and as guests during our set.

 

Minneapolis brought a close to the tour. We played a sold-out show at the Turf Club with the Cactus Blossoms and Jack Klatt, followed by a fine time afterwards as we all packed onto a tiny stage in the basement bar for the after party, and took turns singing country songs. If the bar hadn’t had to close up, I’m sure we’d have been there ’til the wee hours! To finish off the tour we played a concert Sunday afternoon at St. James Lutheran Church in Burnsville, just south of the city. Sammy’s family joined us on stage with his brother Eric playing banjo, dad Mark doubling Caleb on mandolin, and sister in law, Teresa clogging to the music. It was a family affair, and Sammy’s mother and aunt baked a whole lot of amazingly tasty cookies for the intermission. I probably ate a few too many, but really couldn’t help myself. It was nice to end the tour with family in Sammy’s homeland. It is fun to see him go down memory lane a little more each time we are there. We all had early morning flights the next morning to go our separate ways. The fall weather all through this tour was truly amazing, warm and sunny with fall colors really showing!

 

Coming up, Foghorn will divide and conquer: Sammy and Nadine will be doing a Home Routes tour as a duo. Home Routes offers circuits of house concerts in different regions of Canada, and this one will be a 10-day run through Alberta. Then they will return to Whitehorse, Yukon and enjoy some home time in their new cabin, and will be teaching some workshops there.

 

Caleb and Reeb set off with the Caleb Klauder Band for a 10-day tour starting in DC, and going through Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, West Virginia, Maryland, and Virginia, bringing some dancehall country music around to the people there. They will also be playing a few shows around the region as a duo back in Oregon just prior to Christmas, as well as playing a New Year’s Eve show at the Spare Room with Caleb Klauder Band. And they will perform again as a duo at the Portland Old Time Gathering in January.

 

Prior to our recent Midwest tour we had some great times touring with our pals, Joel Savoy and Jesse Lege in mid-October. We did a five day run with them through DC at the Hill Center, a house concert in Baltimore, MD, then Shepherdstown, WV at the beautiful Opera House, and ended with Home Craft Days in Big Stone Gap,VA, and Pennington Gap, VA. We always have a great time collaborating with Jesse and Joel, and it is exciting to see what music comes out of us when we band together. Most nights we did an old time set with Foghorn, and a cajun set with Cajun Country Revival, which combined Jesse and Joel with Sammy and Nadine or all of us. Home Craft Days was the culmination of the tour. It is a festival that has a great lineup of local old time music, as well as many local artisans showing and selling their wares, everything from broom-making to basket weaving. It was so refreshing to be, not an anomaly musically, but to be part of a live active community of traditional musicians. I could have sat there all day and watched the whole lineup. There was also quite a crowd of flat footers waiting in the wings and flooding the dance floor whenever a dance tune was played. It was fun to see the dancing as a regular part of life for young and old alike.

 

After the CCR tour, Sammy and Nadine drove back to Louisiana with Jesse and Joel to spend the week visiting there, and teaching harmony singing at Black Pot Camp. Caleb and Reeb went to Elkins, WV to teach mandolin and guitar at Augusta Old Time Week. Caleb also hosted his second annual Great Big Fais Do Do back in Portland at the legendary Spare Room Lounge in early October, a three day festival dedicated to country and cajun music and dance. And the Caleb Klauder band did a tour from AMA in Nashville to Chicago. So, you can see, we’ve all been keeping very busy! We hope you are too, but not too busy! And that you enjoy your holidays more than ever! May the holidays be restful and cozy, and with lots of good eatin’!