Dan & Faith

Hello!

Last Saturday, we hit 74 degrees out, a delightful day. This past Monday morning, we woke up to an overnight low of 27 degrees, and our first frost of the season. Snow flurries greeted us on Wednesday morning! We were still harvesting zucchini from the garden last week, along with broccoli, peppers and tomatoes. We have a dozen acorn squash cleaned up and in a cool storage spot. They grew from the winter squash plants that we thought were butternut squash — oops! But acorn squash is tasty, too. Our kale is insanely huge, and will still be good for a couple of months if we leave up the portable electric fence; the deer love it, and only the fence prevents them from eating it all. Speaking of deer, in our neighborhood we have a buck, a doe, and two fawns (one yearling, one from this year) at a minimum (maybe more!), and they do a nightly trek back and forth along the edge of our yard on the hayfield side. We call it the nightly deer parade!

It’s a quiet month for us, gig-wise, but we have some videos available for your viewing pleasure.

Back in September, we recorded an interview with Rik Palieri on his Songwriter’s Notebook series up in Burlington, VT. Rik and Dan share a history of hanging around with Pete Seeger back in the day, and we’ve been friends with Rik for many years. He joined us on banjo for a few songs, plus we did a few with just us. A fun show! You can watch it here.

One of Dan’s songs from the February Album Writing Month project this year tells the story of an event that took place just north of us, across the river in Ascutney, Vermont. Romaine Tenney was a local farmer who was born on his family’s farm and took on the farm after his father died, leaving for only a 2 year stint in the army. He milked his cows by hand, and only had electric power in the barn because he needed it for the milk handling equipment; there was no electricity in his house. In 1964, the state took his farm by eminent domain when they were building a new interstate highway, I-91. They had picked up all of his farm equipment, and were going to be coming the next day to remove his cattle and move him out. That night, he let the cows out of the barn, tied his dog to a tree, and torched the barn. What he did next made headlines across the country. You can hear Dan’s telling of the story here.

This Friday, November 3rd, is Bandcamp Friday. On Bandcamp Friday, Bandcamp waives their revenue share to help support the musical artists who offer their music on Bandcamp. The holidays are getting closer, and music makes a great gift! You can order a physical CD, or download in any format you choose. And if you end up buying on a different day, that’s OK, too! Bandcamp is a wonderfully supportive organization that we’ve sold our CDs through for several years now.

Our albums Then and Now, Seeking, and Simple Grace are available from us at shows and on our website, through Bandcamp, or you can find them at iTunes and most other online music stores. Our music is also available streaming on Spotify and Apple Music.

As always, you can find additional schedule information on our website. For additional content and stories from the road, follow us on Patreon. For more frequent news updates and information, check out our Facebook fan page and follow us on Twitter (@danandfaith).

We’re starting to flesh out our schedule for 2024. Does your local library host concerts? If so, let us know! We’d love to play in your neighborhood.  Or better yet, we could play in your back yard or living room!  Learn more about hosting a house concert here.

Dan & Faith

Recently, we played a concert at Two Way Street Coffeehouse in Downers Grove, Illinois. This wonderful series has been running since 1970. The list of those who’ve played the room is a who’s who in the folk/acoustic world. We were thrilled to add our names to that roster.

These days, the shows are live streamed, so while we had a great audience in the room, many more folks were able to watch it live. The show is archived on YouTube, so if you didn’t get a chance to tune in, you still can! Here’s the link.

The audio on the first song isn’t great at the start, but improves. It’s better later on, though not stellar. Still, you can hear a bunch of our new songs in this performance.