What's New
UPCOMING APPEARANCES(See Calendar Page for specifics)
Neal and Coleen's New Album
Neal and Coleen's new album is all about “old friends” on several levels. We are celebrating our 52nd wedding anniversary and are definitely old friends by now. We’ve been making music together for all that time with the last 20 or so years spent traveling the highways and byways either as a duo or with John and Heidi as part of Doofus. We’ve met a lot of great people along the way and many of them have seen us so often that they can definitely be counted as old friends as well. Special thanks to all the folks who have hosted us along the way.
Old friends can also come in other forms. Songs certainly qualify. The ones we’ve included here resonated instantly and, even though it may have been years before we learned them, they were always in the back of our minds. We owe a real debt to Heidi for her transcription skills that kept the songs easily learnable despite the passing years. They are all favorites that we’ve collected from people we’ve known or heard in our travels. A couple of them date back to the very first songs we learned to sing and play and several are more recent but we consider them all to be old friends. To quote Bryan Bowers and Bill Danoff, “when you learn a song, you’ve got a friend for life”.
We’d also like to take this opportunity to thank the friends who made the many instruments we call friends! The autoharps were made by Tom Fladmark, George Orthey and Ron Wall, the mountain dulcimers by Janita Baker, David McKinney and Jerry Rockwell, the banjo by Jere Canote, and the guitar by Gallagher. The vintage Kay bass belonged to our dear friend, Keith Young, and “Crossing the Bar” is partly for him.
And, speaking of “Stuff That Works”, other things can be special friends too. The photos are of our perpetual creche that friends have added to over the years. What started as a simple one, nestled in some pine boughs on top of a small trunk, has grown to a fill the top of an old children’s library table. Memories of good times, far away places, and wonderful friends abound in this eclectic collection that celebrates the true meaning of Christmas ... unbounded love.
And, while we know these are mostly all slow, contemplative songs, that’s the way we like them ... we just can’t help ourselves! We do hope you’ll find some “new, old friends” amongst the collection.
One Taco Short of a Combination Plate!
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