For the last several years (maybe 8-10) my church has celebrated Old Christmas. It is a time for us to gather one last time to fellowship with good food, good friends, music and games. Click Old Christmas for a complete description.

I have had the honor of playing, Teddy and I have played and this year our entire group provided some Christmas tunes for the event. Here we are playing and enjoying our time at the Southwest VA 4-H Center as we celebrate Old Christmas.

We were so honored to be asked back for another taping of Song of the Mountains for PBS.  We first taped a performance with them in 2005.  This Christmas special taping took place on Dec. 20 and will be aired for Christmas 2009.  Along with us other performers included: Daniel Boner, The Dixie Beeliners, and Jessee McReynolds.  Here we are pictured backstage with our dear friend and host of the program Tim White.

Hello all you fine folks! Hope everyone is enjoying the first few days of Spring. It has been a long time since our last post. Much has happened over the past many months with Fire in the Kitchen. As many of you know we had the privilege of playing at Dollywood in 2007. That was a great experience… even after 30 performances. As the months continued to pass we were blessed to continue to share our music in new places and to meet new people. The Breaks Interstate Park, Cumberland Gap National Park, Plum Alley Days were some venues that were new. And then we were fortunate to play again in Winston-Salem at the Wake Forest Celtic Festival, at Bristol’s wonderful Rhythm ‘N Roots Festival, The Appalachian Heritage Days in Blountville as well as in Rogersville, TN at their heritage days festival to mention a few.

Also, doing that last few months of 2007, the internet company that served as the host for our website sold out to someone who, let’s just say, doesn’t make nice websites. This wouldn’t have been any problem except for the fact that I also had our domain name registered with this company. Now mind you that 6 years ago this was a very reputable company….they just sold out to someone in the latter part of ‘07 “not so nice.” This meant that they had control of the domain name of our website. In the meantime, I was finishing up my Master’s degree with VA Tech (GO HOKIES) and didn’t have much time to dedicate toward solving this problem. Once I graduated in December, I then was hot on the trail to solve our domain problem. Luckily for me, I had saved all of my email correspondence with our host company. Once I contacted a company that fought to get our domain name back and provided them with the evidence that I indeed was the owner of the domain, we were able to get the www.fire-in-the-kitchen.com domain name back in our ownership. So, if you had tried to access our site and found it was down that is why. In the meantime Debbie had created a MySpace account, which we still have and is wonderful as well, that kept us in contact with the cyberspace world. So….a good rule of thumb, which I learned the hard way, is to register your domain name with a separate company than the host company for your site. Also save the emails that pertain to any important item you have…even the ones that aren’t sentimental to you. Whew! Glad that problem was worked out.
With all of this in mind…our main website is now back up and running. Yeah! You can check it out at: www.fire-in-the-kitchen.com. There are some minor changes to the site. I am currently working on converting our scrapbook of FITK pictures to slideshows. I have posted only one slideshow on the site at this time. You can actually view it from this newsletter by clicking on the slideshow below. That is if you want to see what we looked like between the years of 2000 and 2002. Are you brave enough???

Before we close, I want to invite you to come out to the Harvest Table Restaurant in beautiful downtown Meadowview, VA this Wednesday night, April 2 at 8:00. We will be providing some music for folks to dine by so come on down and support this wonderful new establishment that we have in our community. We are proud that they have asked us to play. It will only be 3 out of the 4 of us as Linda has taken off to Williamsburg for a brief vacation. Hey, that gets me to thinking….she didn’t ask us to go!

We’ll close for now. Click here to see our schedule for 2008 thus far!

Hope to see you out and about sometime!

Your friends from Fire in the Kitchen

It is hard to believe how much time has passed since our last post. We had such a WONDERFUL time during the Festival of Nations at Dollywood. We performed at the Valley Theater in the park for 5 weekends for a total of 30 performances. The first two weekends were VERY COLD!!! Let’s just say the temps were around 34-36 degrees in the outdoor theater and that very tall and much welcomed heaters were placed on the stage for those of us performing there. Each group had a host that was responsible for them and I must say that the folks who took care of us were just great and treated us as if we had been friends for years. We met and made friends with craftsmen and musicians from all over Ireland as well as other Celtic groups, from here in the U.S. and that alone was worth the trip to Dollywood. A great big shout out to Brian, Michael and Paul from Ireland. We hope you all enjoyed the experience at Dollywood as much as we did. It really is a small world when you have music as a common thread.

And speaking of common threads and the threads that helped make her “Coat of Many Colors”….Ms. Dolly Parton. We, as well as all performers at Dollywood, were honored to be asked to have our picture made with Dolly. She was just as nice in person as she portrays when interviewed. It was quite the sight to see all of the performers from all of the represented nations circle the interior of the Celebrity Theater as each awaited their turn to be photographed with Ms. Parton. The closer we got to the stage for the picture the greater our excitement became.

It was hard to believe that we had been given the wonderful opportunity to share our music at Dollywood. Each and every opportunity that we are given to share is seen as a blessing. It doesn’t matter how small or how large the venue they are all blessings!!! Thank you Dave Anderson for remembering us from a past VA Highlands Festival and for inviting us to play at Dollywood. You all are the best!

And lastly but definitely not least…a great big THANK YOU to all of our family, friends and FITK groupies who drove to Dollywood to support us and watch us perform. The award for “greatest distance traveled” goes to Grace Hannah and Bernard Watkins for driving about 7 1/2 hours from Louisa, VA. We appreciate everyone’s effort, support and enthusiasm for our music and most of all your warm friendship.

Since our days at Dollywood, we have also performed at Plum Alley Days in Abingdon, at a Crooked Road concert event at the Breaks Interstate Park, at the Mountain Cultural Festival – a Jamestown commemorative concert at Grayson Highlands Park as well as several weddings…including that of Heather Shrewsbury, the daughter of Debbie our fantastic whistle/flute player. Speaking of Debbie….she was involved in a serious car accident just about 4 days before her daughter’s wedding. The talus bone in her ankle was broken in many places and let’s just say we are very fortunate to continue to have Debbie as it was a bad accident. Please remember her as she continues to heal. She’s a maniac in that wheelchair…you might want to remember the rest of us as well.

On a lighter note…if you see us out somewhere and get a chance, be sure to ask Teddy about our return trip from the Breaks. Let’s just say as we returned home and traveled thru the newly remodeled Grundy, we didn’t expect to end up in WEST VIRGINIA. Does that give you a hint???

BTW…we also have a MySpace musician’s account to compliment our main website. Be sure to check out both:

Main Fire in the Kitchen website

Fire in the Kitchen at MySpace

That’s all for now! Hope to see you out and about!!

Upcoming performances:

Saturday July 21 @ 1:30 pm: Hungry Mother Arts and Craft Festival — Marion, VA

Saturday night July 21 @ 8:00 pm: Redeemer Lutheran Church — Bristol, VA

August 4 — Cumberland Gap Historic National Park — Middlesboro, KY
Time: TBA

In our last post we mentioned that we had been offered a special invite. Well, as the title to this post says, Fire in the Kitchen has been invited to perform at Dollywood. We will be performing for 10 days during the Festival of Nations. The date for the Festival of Nations is from March 31 – May 7th. This year’s theme is Celebrate Ireland. The director of special events, Dave Anderson, emailed and asked us if we would be interested in performing at Dollywood. Interested??? Well, we think so! Along with the major Irish groups that will be performing Dollywood likes to invite regional bands to perform as well. This year they were particulary looking for groups that play Celtic music that also show how that style has influenced our Appalachian music. That is part of what Fire in the Kitchen does. We are so honored to have been asked to participate and we hope that we will do our music and those who enjoy it proud.

Also if you live in VA and can pick up WVTF.FM, you may be able to hear a track or tracks from our new CD, “The Journey Continues “. This wonderful public radio station has a local program called: Back to the Blue Ridge and our CD, as I was told, will be one of the features on the program on Sunday, Feb. 25th. Back to the Blue Ridge airs at 2:00 PM on the following stations:

Frequencies (FM):

89.1 – Roanoke & Lynchburg

88.5 – Charlottesville

89.3 – Charlottesville, Waynesboro & Staunton

95.5 – Orange

101.9 – Lexington

91.9 – Marion, Wytheville & Galax

90.1 – Abingdon, Bristol & Big Stone Gap

90.3 – Clintwood

90.9 – St. Paul

90.5 Wise & Coeburn

91.7 – Norton

91.3 – Pound

Tune in if you can. The show always has a great line up.

FITK continues to enjoy playing the music that makes up happy and hopefully you as well. Come out and support your local musicians and the music they share…no matter who they are!

We have been and continue to be so blessed. Thanks for listening.

Upcoming performances for March:

March 4th @ Russelville Baptist Church — 6 PM
Russelville, TN

March 16th @ The Renaissance Theater — 7:30 PM
St. Patrick’s Concert
Kingsport, TN

March 17th @ Wake Forest University — 11 AM-3 PM
Wake Forest Celtic Festival
Winston-Salem, NC

For Dollywood dates and more of our schedule go to:
Fire in the Kitchen 2007 Schedule

Greetings for the New Year from Fire in the Kitchen. Just a quick note to let you good folks know that we have finally released our second CD. It has been a long time coming, but it is finally here! We actually started this CD almost two years ago. But… when you have a heart attack, open heart surgery, knee surgery and shoulder surgery to contend with, things slow down just a bit. In case you are wondering what this new release is called…well we searched high and we searched low to come up with a title. Then finally we put all of our brain power together (look out)and came up with the ever so clever title of “The Journey Continues” to follow up our first CD of “An Appalachain Celtic Journey”. Aren’t we clever??? Ha! So if you are looking for a good set of coasters or just want to send something to your friends to drive them crazy, you can find both of these CDs on www.amazon.com or from one of your friendly Fire in the Kitchen members.

As the new year continues to tick away, we are planning to go back into the studio amd work on a Christmas CD and have events that are starting to come in where we will be playing. We have had an exciting invite, but we will share that later if it comes to pass.

On our CDs we always acknowledge you, our friends, who come out and support our music and spread the word that we are willing to play for anyone who will listen. We hope that we will get to see many of you as the year passes and hope to make new friends of FITK. Thanks for listening, reading, and being just plain good folks. Until next time… keep enjoying music of all kinds.

Upcoming performances:

January 26th — Robert Burns Supper
Southwest VA Community College
SwVCC King Community Center — 6:30 pm (Reservations required)
Richlands, VA

January 27th — Carter Family Fold
Hiltons, VA — 7:30 pm

Autumn is my favorite season with the beauty of the changing leaves and all the activities that take place. College football games, fall festivals and the crisp, October air always have my full attention. So it is always a great joy for me and for our whole group when we are asked to play during this time of the year.

Saturday, Oct. 14 we played for the first time at the Rogersville, TN Heritage Days Celebration. As we all arose from our homes, we awoke to a “balmy” 28 degrees. Guess what? The festival is all held outside and we were on tap to play at 10 am. When we arrived the main street of Rogersville was beautifully dressed in hues of burnt orange, browns and yellows. These decorations, with the backdrop of old historic buildings, made for a very eye-pleasing site. Vendors adorned the streets as music wafted above the crowd. Our friends Ted Olson and Katie Doman were on the line up and it was great to see them again. Our very smart fiddle player took on the role as “mama” for the group and had us well equipped with finger-snipped gloves and packs of heat to put in our shoes and pants pockets. I kept singing from the commercial..”hot pockets” to the rest of our group. Those items sure did come in handy! Thanks Linda and thanks to Shirley Price for inviting us and asking us back for next year’s festival.

Last week we played for local college, Virginia Intermont, for an alumni event. The audience seemed to appreciate our music and I am sure we gained at least one new fan. He was quite the handsome male. He cared not what others thought and danced without abandon to our music. My guess was he was at least 2-3 years old. During our break we were served dinner by the wonderful chef of the college. The food was great and the folks so kind and accommodating.

The night before, on October 6th, we played for the Appalachian College Association at the Higher Educational Center in Abingdon, VA. Representatives for 35 colleges in the association were present. Dinner was provided by the Troutdale and we had the honor of sitting with Martin Ramsey and his charming wife Charlie. After dinner we took the stage to present out music. If any of you are SNL fans (that would be Saturday Night Live for those who are not avid watchers) you will appreciate what happened during our set. One of the songs that we performed is called The Cowbell. The audience really seemed to enjoy that one with members clapping in time with our music. At the end of the song, way back in the corner, someone yelled out, “More cowbell”. I laughed and immediately said into the mic, “I gotta have more cowbell, baby”. This, of course, is what the record producer “Bruce Dickenson” said to the Blue Oyster Cult in the SNL skit when Will Farrell’s character was getting out of hand and on everyone’s nerves with his cowbell playing. And…needless to say, the guy who yelled “more cowbell” and myself must have been the only two people in that crowd who had watched and remembered that skit from the show. It provided a great chuckle for me none the less. One more very neat thing was that two of the colleges that were represented at the Summit were Davis and Elkins College from Elkins, WVA and Warren Wilson College from Swanannoa, NC. Both of these colleges have had a direct affect on Fire in the Kitchen as 3 of the four of us have attended the workshops that they offer on their campuses. So, we gave a big shout out to them. We had a very enjoyable time that night thanks to Martin and his wife and the response that we received from the audience.

Rhythm ‘N Roots… What an awesome festival! This was the 4th year our group has been honored to play at such a prestigious festival. If you are local and you have never attended be sure to put it on your festival to-do list for next year. There is music of all kinds that represent the roots of our area. Vendors for crafts and food line the streets and every corner of space both inside and out provide an opportunity for musical groups to showcase their talents. Java J’s is our home at the festival. We have always played our first set there. The folks there are great and treat us as family. This year our second set was took place at K.P. Duty. Both provide a great atmosphere and great food to go along with the music.

At the end of August we played at a local Contra dance over in Damascus,VA. The dance is held once a month at the old rock school in the town of Damascus. Even though that building is no longer in use for educational purposes, it provides a wonderful atmosphere for contra dancing. The caller for the dance, Martha, came all the way from Asheville, NC to provide the directions for the dance. Many folks turned out and seemed to enjoy the music and the good times that the dance created.

Today we are headed off for a new festival in the area. Blountville, TN has decided to begin a harvest festival and we are playing in the afternoon for the lineup. Until our next post…keep enjoying music, no matter what kind!

Fire in the Kitchen had the honor again to play in our community at the all-time favorite VA Highlands Festival. This concert was on August 6 and was about the second or third time our group has shared our music at this venue. We had a great crowd and many seemed very interested in our group as they came up to talk and/or purchase our CD. All of this hoorah was a part of the Celtic Weekend portion of the festival. A grand time was had by all but was it ever HOT. All I could think of was when Lucy Ricardo was doing the vita-meata-vegamin commercial where all she could say was…IT’S HOT UP HERE! For those of you who are old enough to remember, Lucy was drinking a “little too much” of the medicine. All we had was water (which was WONDERFUL), but it still was hot. At least this time Debbie didn’t play with her back to the crowd!

Well, the weekend is over and it is back to work! Fire in the Kitchen had the honor of performing at the Hungry Mother Arts and Crafts Festival on July 22 and at the first ever Rural Retreat Heritage Days Festival this past Saturday. Our good friend Jim Lloyd was on hand to make us feel welcome. And believe it or not, it was a bit cold as we stood outside to play. It was a bit windy as well and that made things interesting for our esteemed whistle player. You see, wind can cause problems for whistles. The wind can actually “cut off” the wind
of the whistle player. So….Debbie decided to stand with her back to the crowd in order to compensate and so that she could acutally play during our set. It is sort of important for the audience to hear what we are playing…good or bad! Anyhow, we explained the situation to the audience and I told them that we just wanted Debbie to show her best side. ; ) Anyhow, a fine time was had by all!!!

And for those of you who are interested….we have completed our work in the studio on our second CD and hope to have it released very soon. We need to decide on a title for the CD and I will then get to work on designing the cover. We will keep you informed of the release date.

Thanks for your support of our group. YOU are the spark behind our Fire!!!

Upcoming play dates:

Virginia Highlands Festival — Abingdon, VA Sunday, August 6 1:30-2:30 pm

Contra Dance
Old Rock School House — Damascus, VA Saturday, August 26 7:30 pm

Rhythm ‘N Roots Festival — Bristol, VA/TN Fri.-Sat., September 15-16