Once more, with feeling

Hey there, Mouseketeers!  Well, it's happening again: Matt Douglass and I will be once again performing, together and individually, at the Roots Cafe Singer-Songwriter Series, run by Geoffrey Himes.  In case you're not on the Roots Cafe's mailing list, I thought you'd like to know, and even if you are I figured it couldn't hurt to say it again.  It's coming up soon, on Sunday October 9th at 5:00 PM.  I really hope you can come.

The Roots Cafe series has moved to a great new location at An Die Musik, down on Charles Street just below the monument.  There's about 80 comfy chairs, beer and wine and soft drinks are available, it's a great space.  Tickets are $7 in advance and $9 at the door.  Here's the link for directions, tickets, etc.: http://www.andiemusiklive.com/

And to wet your whistle I thought I'd share with you a couple of recordings from the practices Matt and I have been doing, along with another one I'll get to in a second.  As you may know, it's not often that I've performed solo (in fact, last summer's Roots Cafe event was my first in about 30 years, and this will be the first since then). In honor of the event, like last time, I've written a new song, "Mabelline" (no relation to my new puppy Mabel nor Chuck Berry's girl). And Matt and I have been reworking one of his gems from about 10 years ago, "Marie", so links to both of these are below.

So while I've got you, I thought I'd also let you hear what my old band mates from the Charm City Reactors (Eli Sokal, Alex Queral and Bill Beachler) and I have been doing in the meantime.  We still get together every few weeks, really just for our own entertainment (we've played out only slightly more often than my solo shots -- 3 times in the last 6 years).  Lately we've been messing with Bob Dylan's "Lay, Lady, Lay", and we managed to get a very nice recording the other day (there seems to be a distinct focus on women in the songs mentioned in this email.  Hmm...).  So that link's below as well Angling here for the Reactors to be the house band at the next Night of 1000 Dylans.  Geoff, you listening?

(For those of you who may be gear geeks, I thought you might like to know that all of these recordings were done with a hand-held recorder not much larger than your cell phone -- the Zoom H4n.  A truly remarkable piece of equipment.  I still marvel at the quality of the sound that it somehow manages to capture and reproduce, every time I use it.)

Anyway, here are the links.  There's the direct MP3 download for each song, which could take a while to get, depending on your internet connection, but you can instead just go to the Recordings tab above and there's a neat little Streaming Audio doohickey you can click, and you won't have to wait.  (The MP3 links are there, too.)  Hope you like them, and hope to see you soon.
Sam

MP3 DOWNLOADS:
Mabelline
Marie
Lay, Lady, Lay