Hope everyone had a great 4th of July.  We had a great day and spent the late afternoon and early evening at Goshen Pass in Rockbridge County, VA swimming in the Maury River.  It's a beautiful spot about a half hour from our house - and the perfect place to relax and be with old friends.  Here's a URL that will give you a hint of what it's like: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maury_River. Goshen Pass is just one of the many reasons we love living where we do.

Now we're making our plans for the upcoming A Prairie Home Companion cruise.  It was good to hear from some of you who, upon reading our last email alerting those interested of some open cabins, took advantage and booked passage.  We'll look forward to seeing you. We'll soon fly to Copenhagen to cruise the fiords of Denmark and Norway.  We're sure it will be an exciting trip and, when we return, towns like Kristiansand, Oslo, Bergen and Trondheim will mean more to us than just names on a map.  It'll be a working cruise for us but it doesn't get any better than working with the cast and crew of A Prairie Home Companion.  You can see what we'll be up to by going to: http://prairiehome.publicradio.org/features/cruise/2007/.

Tickets for the 5th annual Fortune Williams Music Festival will go on sale this upcoming Monday, July 9th.  For one week, July 9th - July 16th, the tickets will be on sale only to those of you on our email list and to those on Jimmy Fortune's web list, thus giving you the first chance at the tickets.  In order to take advantage of the early ticket sales you'll need to use the code, FWMF07.  The phone number to use is (540) 332-7850 which is the Frontier Cultural Museum, the venue for the festival.  On July 16, tickets will go on sale to the general public.  It's going to be a tremendous festival.  Go to www.fortunewilliamsmusicfestival.org for information.  There is only one person selling the tickets, so please be patient if she asks for your phone number.  She assures us she'll return the calls in the order they are received.

And now, another instrument update.  Last newsletter it was Linda's new Deering Banjo and Robin's Gibson Mandolin.  Now let us mention the good folks at Huss and Dalton Guitars.  Linda bought Robin his first Huss and Dalton for our 25th wedding anniversary.  Two years later Robin bought his second H & D and has been alternating between the two at every gig since.  The folks at Huss and Dalton recently humbled us by making a guitar for Linda and giving it to her.  It's a beautiful sunburst OM model and, to quote Ben Critzer, who works in the shop, "a lot of love was put into that guitar."  We had a private ceremonial opening of the guitar in our music room at home and we both were stunned by the craftmanship and the sound of the instrument.  Linda used it for the first time at the Kate Wolf Festival this past weekend.  Backstage, after one of our sets, she got to sit in front of the guitar and hear it for the first time and listen to Jorma Kaukonen play it.  Jeff Huss, Mark Dalton and their wives are valued friends of ours and we can't say enough good things about them and their guitars. Check out their web site at http://www.hussanddalton.com/.  We'll try and have a picture of it on our web site soon.

We also should mention that Huss and Dalton Guitars has made a guitar for the Fortune Williams Music Festival to raffle.  Some lucky person is going to have an amazing instrument.

A list of upcoming gigs follows.  We're especially looking forward to the Richmond and Lexington shows the end of this month.  We'll have "The SUPER Fine Group" with us then, Tony Williamson on mandolin and Chris Brashear on fiddle as well as our longtime buddy, Jim Watson on bass.  We'll also be debuting some new tunes.

Enough, enough already.  We don't mean to take up up all your time. There's just so much going on.  Support live music.  We hope to see you at one of our stops along the way.

Your pals,
Robin and Linda