December "Doings"Dear Friends,We have a few December "doings" and thoughts on our minds. First is the annual Hank Williams Tribute Show. For 24 years we've been gathering with an ever-evolving troupe of characters for a night or two of Hank Williams songs. Usually, they've been held at The Birchmere in Alexandria, VA, but this year's show, on December 27th, will be an online/virtual presentation in conjunction with Creative Alliance in Baltimore as well as The Birchmere. We'll join Cathy Fink and Marcy Marxer (https://www.cathymarcy.com), Tim O'Brien and Jan Fabricius (https://timobrien.net), Bill Kirchen (https://www.billkirchen.com), and Ruthy Ungar (http://www.mikeandruthy.com) and her mother, Lyn Hardy (http://lynhardy.com). Here's the link for tickets: https://www.creativealliance.org/events/2020/virtual-front-row-hank-williams-tribute. We hope you'll join us in what is always a fun show. Every lover of music needs a night of Hank Williams songs at least once a year. So, get yourself a ticket. And one or two for a friend or a family member would be a perfect gift, don't you think? Our Holiday songs mean a lot to us and we always look forward to bringing them front and center this time every year. Since we won't able to do our Christmas shows this season, we've put "The Old Familiar House On Christmas Day (https://youtu.be/ij0WbgtmZ8s) and "Urge For Going" (https://youtu.be/-6gl7V5_shk) on our YouTube channel and will continue to put at least a couple of songs a week up between now and the 25th. And, to our surprise, Garrison Keillor just put this up on his Facebook page, (https://www.facebook.com/PrairieHomeCompanion/posts/820242872123895?notif_id=1607195122552342¬if_t=page_tag&ref=notif). If we ever did know "Shotgun Shells On A Christmas Tree" was floating around in cyberspace, we'd certainly forgotten about it. But we DO remember going by Red House Records one December morning with our Fine Group and singing a few songs. So, that make us feel a little better about ourselves and our memories. And as we write this in the final month of 2020, there's outstanding news that a vaccine for the Coronavirus is being distributed around the globe. We're looking forward to the day when we can get a stomach ache, or sneeze, or want to take a nap, and not think, "Oh God, I hope I don't have 'the COVID'." And to not have to constantly worry where our thermometers are will be a blessing. It's time for us to be thankful for and appreciative of the scientists and technicians in the various labs around the world who have developed this vaccine. They have provided us all with a wonderful Christmas gift. Looking at our glass as half-full and speaking of gifts, we think of this pandemic as having given us the gift of time at home, something we're not used to. We're enjoying phone calls and emails with friends and we've enjoyed being able to work on music every day. We got the piano tuned and Linda has taken to playing it daily. Robin got his mandolin out and is trying to remember what he learned on it ten years ago. And lately we've been dealing long distance with mixing and mastering a new CD, a time-consuming task considering our lack of technical skills. But we can see the light at the end of the tunnel and feel confident that a new Robin and Linda CD is on the way in 2021. We'll keep you posted on that. Bumper Sticker Of The Month: A 2020 planner: The dumbest thing I ever bought. Finally, we plan on staying cautious for a few more months and hope that things will open up sooner than later. As tired as we are of having to gird ourselves with masks, latex gloves and disinfectant wipes every time we leave the house, we are not about to let our guard down now. We've taken this virus seriously the whole year and believe our precautions are the reason we have stayed healthy. We're doing well and feeling grateful for a great many things, chief among them is having stayed hospital free the whole year, something we weren't successful at doing the three years prior. Not being stupid and staying safe is the least we can do to help take the heat off our heroic front-line health care providers. To you who've stayed with us to the end of this letter, we send our thanks. We wish you all a peaceful Holiday season.
Your pals,
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