WDKN Radio - Dickson, TN Sat. Sept. 12th.

I had the pleasure of spending the hour with Diane Davis of WDKN Radio, on her Studio 1260 show last Saturday (9/12). It's a great station, newly re-opened, with a cool new music friendly owner(Michelle Reddon- Forte!)

Dickson,TN is a short 45 minutes down the road from Cub Creek Central. Saturday was a nice day to make my way out Hwy 70, through rural White Bluff, past Montgomery Bell Park and on into the historic downtown College street in Dickson, TN.
You can't miss the station. It has a big colorful hometown mural painted on nearly the entire side of the building.

I got in just in time to set-up and catch the last part of Diane's show called "Swap & Shop" and pretty cool, open line sell and trade forum for folks in the community. There were horses, old Jeeps, Nintendo’s, washing machines and a few things that were a mystery to me; being called in from all over the community - pretty fun to listen to.


Diane and I sat down for an entire hour, talked music, played a bunch of music from "Good Life" and earlier CD's as well as talking about our shared old haunts in the DC area! Diane and I didn’t know each other back in Washington, but as it turns out, we were in the footsteps of one another through adjacent high schools, piano bars, jazz rooms and the great Birchmere Music Club. It was fun to talk about the old days - for me it has been twenty years gone now!

The hour was a creative reminder of the power of radio for independent artists; especially radio so well rooted in their community.

A big thank you to Diane, Michelle and everyone at WDKN for having me on and continuing to play my music. If you'd like to hear the interview, go to the station's On-Demand listening page and follow the link to Studio 1260 for September 12th!

I plan to have the FolklahomaAppalachi-Groovetrain on the show coming up later in the fall – should be a scene with the 5 of us in there!!

Culley & Elliott at the Red Tree - 8/21

The duo played our favorite local coffeehouse called Red Tree Coffee. It's in old historic downtown Kingston Springs and is at the center of a live music resurgence in KS. We played the 8:30 slot, after Anchorage singer-songwriter Elenore Fye.

We had a great turn-out tonight (especially all the "Mud Chicks" from the local Mud Puddle Pottery Studio)
We did a 12 song set tonght, including my new one called "Searchin'" - got the crowd singing along, so it was good first outing for the song. We did our version of Bye Bye Baby Jane. My friend Cole was there tonight. His band Calico Trail cut the song for their upcoming project. They have some exciting things in the works, so I'm proud of that cut. You can check it out on their my space site.

Our buddy Chip Chipoletti joined us on percussion tonight - always appreciate his playing - helps round us two folkies out!

FolklahomaAppalachiGroovetrain Plays the Tomato Arts-Fest

The Groovetrain played this year's Tomato Arts-Fest held in the Five Corners district of East Nashville. Last year the festival attracted some 12,000 attendees over the weekend and this year appeared poised to do the same. The vibe was a great New Orleans style street fest, with a brass band parade, funk bands, jambalaya stands, pottery and anything tomato!

We played an early set at 10:30am. (for us, early is anything before 2pm.) It turned out to be a great slot, a lot of folks were out, trying to beat the heat that was due to hit later in the day. We've been doing a lot of club dates, so an outdoor fest was a fun change of pace for us. The crowd was great! They were up dancing, very receptive - which amazed me for 10:30 in the am! The Groovetrain got a little Kayaking in later in the day - all in all a good days work - living in a folk band!

FolklahomaAppalachi-Groovetrain Recording Session 1

The FolklahomaAppalachi-Groovetrain has been in the studio most of June and July. Here is a rough cut video-slideshow of the tune - Dulcimer Jelly!
http://www.myspace.com/folklahomaappalachigroovetrain

Culley and Elliott - Amelia Island, Florida Sun. 7/5/09

I just got back in from a great trip down to Florida with the duo show. We played a great venue run by our good friends Donna Paz and Mark Kauffman called " A Night of Story and Song". The whole Culley family made the trip. We all loaded up in Gary's Tundra truck, Gary and Alison, with the boys (Tommy and Billy) and headed out toward Savannah, GA and then down to the Amelia Island, just above Jacksonville! I don't know when in my life 11 hours became a quick trip, but somewhere in the log of miles it lays easy. It seemed we got there in no time. We grabbed our hotel rooms, met up with Gary's parents there and then met Donna and Mark a couple of blocks away at a great beach bar named Sliders. The beach, the sunset, the margaritas and the bar tender (not necessarily in that order) were all beautiful.

The next day we hit the waves at an old history filled stretch of sand called American Beach. It was founded by Abraham Lincoln Lewis (the first black millionaire). He started an insurance company and bought up enough of the beach properties to allow for a black community on the beach at a time when blacks had little to no access to public beaches. This beach has a famous Sand Dune, revered - called the great "Nana"! We began the day by getting the 2- wheel drive Tundra stuck in the sand. After getting pulled out we hit the waves on boogie boards and I commenced to frying my white Scottish ass in the sun! So much for sunscreen that is supposed to be water proof! There were a couple of guys on the beach with backpack props tethered to kite glider wings. I tried my best to weasel into a chance at flying one (didn't happen). Spent much of the day watching them, watch each other try and get airborne - which they finally did.
Pretty cool contraptions. We made a short appearance at a neighborhood picnic of the concert promoters. It was complete a kids bike parade, a dog parade, firetrucks and beer - Americana all the way! We sang a few songs and tried to drum up a few last minute ticket sales for the show. Later that night we cruised the downtown port district of Fernandina Beach with the whole Culley Clan and Donna and Mark. We watched the fireworks from the docks - pretty sweet. Sunday morning consisted of more boogie boarding and white Scottish ass frying (on my part. This time we were further up the beach at Sadler Beach - next to my favorite beach bar with my favorite beach bar tender! Gary and I had a blast throwing the kids into the waves and swimming out to where the Dolphins were diving in and out of the blue. Later, Alison took over beach duty while Gary and I headed to the venue for an early sound check at 1:30 pm. We were thrilled to have around 125 enthusiastic people at our show Sunday night. We played two -one hour sets, made new friends and sold a lot of music - a good night for indie troubadours! We can't thank Mark and Donna enough for all their support and great efforts to make this concert series such a success - they are a real Oasis in an ever expanding desert! Here's a few more pics from the trip!

June 2009 FolklahomaAppalachiGroovetrain in the studio

The Groovetrain has been in my studio, Cub Creek Sound for most of June working on initial recordings for a new press kit and the beginnings of a CD project. Our first tracking day had the whole band in starting about noon, getting Will McJ's drum parts down and basic rhythm instruments down to 4 songs, including two Dulcimer instrumentals, Kim's song North Carolina and Mark's new song "Tell You Goodbye" (done accapela with an upright bass)! We also worked on our version of "Bye Bye Baby Jane" and a co-write of mine and Kim's song, "Foothills."

. We had a blast together in the studio and we celebrated by getting a fire going in the pit in the backyard.


We cooked fajitas in a giant iron pot and finished up with smores on into the late night hours.


We're recording our projects old school, where vibe is everything and feel is more important than perfection. It feels like real music when we run the playbacks - that's a good sign! More to come!

The FolklahomaAppalachi-Groovetrain
Mark Elliott -Vocals & Guitars

Kim McLean - Vocals, Guitars & Dulcimer

Devon O'Day - Vocals & Percussion

Will McJ - Drums & Percussion

Chris Herin - Electric & Upright Bass


Peace,

Mark

Thursday June 18th. - Norm's River Roadhouse -Nashville

Tonight we had a duo of duos down at Norm's River Roadhouse in Nashville. My old duo partner Gary Culley came in for the night as well as Tim and Myles Thompson. We billed the night as Kerrville meets Winfield! Gary and I won the New Folk Award at the Kerrville Folk Festival some years back and Tim Thompson was crowned finger-picking champ last year at the Walnut Valley Festival in Winfield, Kansas. Tim brought out his 15 year old son Myles tonight. They have been touring as a duo in the last year or two. Myles not only has prodigious talent on the fiddle, but is a mature player in terms of his jamming abilities to boot!



We had a great crowd tonight. Nashville (especially on week nights) can be oh so challenging to get crowds out. We had about 30-35 out tonight. Family, friend (old and new) as well as some new fans and a some nice strangers, hung out and enthusiastically supported the music. That makes such a difference in how we perform!

It was fun mix between their virtuosic instrumentals and our old harmony sound and songs of the road. It was a lot of fun to jump in on each other music and make it feel like a big ole kitchen table jam!