Lindalou and Michael Ryge

Dear friends,
We’re playing tomorrow morning at the Windsor Farmer’s Market from 10am to 1pm. We hope to see some familiar faces there!

Change of plans….On October 25th    2:00 to 5:00
Unfortunately our Adobe Pumpkin Farm gig in Petaluma has just been canceled. They said due to the rain they’ve been too muddy to open to the public for several days the past 2 weeks. As a result they just can’t afford to hire a band this coming weekend. They said they hope to have us back next year.

On October 31st       9:00am to noon
The last Calistoga Farmer’s Market of the year
We’re practicing up some of our scariest songs for this Halloween morning gig…

We just got back from a quick but amazing 2 week trip, mostly in Denmark, visiting family. We hadn’t seen most of them in 12 years since we were last there with our kids in 1997. Since then kids have grown up, new babies have been born and some of the older relatives have passed on. Life goes on for the rest of us though and we were happy to reconnect and meet the newer members of the Ryge family. We had a great time! We especially enjoyed playing a little music with Michael’s cousins.

We took a quick trip to Germany where we finally met our wonderful new friends Sylvia and Daniel, who we had only communicated with through email before we went to stay with them. We had discovered each other’s music on Jamendo, a great music sharing site our son Leif had encouraged us to post our music on. He said if we give our songs away we’ll eventually get gigs in far away places. Well it worked and we were invited by Sylvia and Daniel to come play in Germany and Belgium. They set up 3 concerts for us. We played in Butgenbach, Belgium on Friday October 2nd opening for Sylvia and Daniel’s great band Syl’n'Dan. Had a good turnout and a great time. We even got to play a little with their band when they called us back up for their encore.  They have a virtuoso 6 string electric bass player, Werner, and an amazing drummer, Andreas, whose talents and drum kit include tablas, congas, cajon, and bongos, as well as western trap drums.
On Saturday we played in a little town called Nideggen in Germany and had a blast. We were so surprised and delighted to meet a sweet couple, Anja and Thomas who traveled 6 hours, all the way from Berlin just to hear us play! We were amazed and honored.

On Sunday we played at a house concert near Simmerath. Again we had an enthusiastic audience and really enjoyed playing for them. We met so many nice people and they encouraged us to come back soon and play again. We’d love to! What a wonderful experience.

We hope you’re all well and enjoying life too!

Love, Lindalou and Michael

We had a wonderful time at the Strawberry Music Festival. Four days of camping with friends, sharing meals, dancing, riding bikes, and best of all jamming and singing harmonies all night with old and new friends and the most amazing musicians. We’d love to stay there at least another week or more… but we’ve got a full plate at home before we leave the country in less than 2 weeks! Here’s where we’re playing next:

Tonight, Thursday, September 10th 6:00pm to 8:00pm
Pioneer Park on Cedar Street in Calistoga
The Calistoga Chamber of Commerce has been putting on free concerts for the community every Thursday evening. They’ve asked us to play with our band. Most folks bring a picnic dinner, maybe a bottle of wine and something to sit on. There’s also barbeque, beer and wine for sale there. We’ll be playing with the 3 D’s.

Saturday, September 12th 1:30pm to 3:30pm
Calistoga’s annual Relay for Life
At the Calistoga High School track on Lake Street
With the 3 D’s.

Sunday, September 13th
A private lunch for a Soroptimist Fundraiser in Calistoga

Saturday September 19th 9:00am to noon
Calistoga Farmer’s Market on Washington Street
with the 3 D’s again.

We’ve had to cancel a couple of farmers markets due to a sudden change of plans. We’re very excited to be leaving for a quick trip to visit family in Denmark on September 21st! We’ve also been invited to play some concerts in Germany and Belgium the first weekend of October! Thanks to our sons convincing us to give our music away online… we were delighted to be asked awhile back if we could come play in Germany, where, apparently people are enjoying our CD. You can read some reviews we’ve gotten from far away places here: http://tinyurl.com/mokz6p
We’ve gotten some good laughs from some of the computer translations!

When we were invited to come play in Germany we told them we couldn’t afford to get over there this year. Out of the blue Michael’s brothers and their wives have very generously offered to treat us to a trip to Denmark! They wanted all of us to be over there together and reunite with our Danish relatives who we haven’t seen since 1997.

Since Denmark is so close to Germany, we contacted the folks who had invited us to come play there.We’ve made friends with Daniel and Sylvia on line through our shared love of music and look forward to meeting them in person soon. They are also musicians who happen to play some of the same instruments we play. Check out their beautiful music here: http://www.syl-n-dan.de/index.php?id=43

They’re in the process of arranging 2 or 3 concerts for us to play in Belgium and Germany on October  2nd,  3rd and 4th. Needless to say we’re very excited about this! So if any of you happen to be in Belgium or Germany, please let us know and we’ll send you the details… we’d love to see you there.

We hope you’re all well and having a bountiful fall~
Love,
Lindalou and Michael