Elizabeth Mitchell | All Ages Folk Music | October « 2012

Dear friends,

First I want to send my love and prayers to everyone affected by the storm this week- our hearts and minds have been constantly with you and our loved ones at home on the east coast.

We are having quite an adventure out on the road and are so grateful for all the kindness we have been shown. Our time in Chicago was fantastic- The Old Town School of Folk Music is truly an outstanding venue, perhaps our all time favorite one to play! Storey joined us onstage at our Ida concert there later that night, to sing three part harmony with us on the Peter Rowan/Bill Monroe song “Walls of Time.” I was one proud mama.

halloween_1

Our weekend in the Bay Area was also wonderful- the Lagunitas School Harvest Fair was so lovely, we had a hard time remembering the words to our songs while looking out on all the natural beauty! The activities and snacks were thoughtful, inspiring and delicious! Storey made very good friends with a snake named Gandalf- we had just finished reading “The Hobbit” two days earlier, so this was very exciting, especially since the field where we were playing looks exactly like middle earth!

halloween_2

Our afternoon at the San Francisco Public Library was equally magical- we were able to project images from Remy Charlip’s book “Arm in Arm” behind us onstage as we played which was truly an honor. Our dear friend Frances England joined us for our first ever performance of the song “Arm in Arm” – thank you, Frances!

We are so looking forward to our time in the pacific northwest this weekend! And…to our first ever visit to the ATLANTA area next weekend!!! If you have friends in that area please, please, please let them know we are coming- we have never played there, and we want to have people to sing with come showtime!

I wanted to tell you about the amazing sponsor (our first time!) we are working with on this tour- The Mother Company! We recorded a song for them called “The Happy Song” that is included in their DVD- “Ruby’s Studio: The Feelings Show.” We are longtime fans of The Mother Company and feel very lucky to be working with them on our tour- we will be singing “The Happy Song” at our upcoming shows and asking, what makes you happy? Come on out and let us know!

Please click here to see the video!

The Mother Company has a special limited offer below- check it out!

Finally, for those of you able to celebrate today- Happy Halloween! Our family is going to be a rainbow- I am purple, Storey is blue, Daniel is orange, my sister Caroline is yellow, my brother-in-law is red, my niece Athena is green and my youngest niece Gloria is the pot of gold! I will post a photo on facebook if we get a good one! I would LOVE to see YOUR costumes, so post them to our facebook page so we can see how beautiful you are!

Please click here to visit our Facebook page!

xoxo
peace
elizabeth mitchell and you are my flower

Dear Friends,

It is with great excitement that we announce the release of our new album this month, Blue Clouds. This record has been a long journey of magic and joy and we are so grateful to be able to share it with you now. So many beautiful hands and voices came together to make this album, including the late Remy Charlip, whose art cradles the music. Our dear friend Brian Selznick, author of “The Invention of Hugo Cabret” wrote the liner notes and so many musicians lent their talents- including Amy Helm, Jay Ungar and Molly Mason, Ruthy Ungar and Mike Merenda and our own family band You Are My Flower, featuring aunt Anna, uncle Miggy, cousin Penny and fairy godmother Jean Cook. We interpreted songs by David Bowie, Jimi Hendrix, Bill Withers, Ella Jenkins, Van Morrison, The Allman Brothers and The Good Ms Padgett. Please give this album a listen- we promise you will find joy there too!

Dear Friends,
We are getting ready for our fall tour, and I just want to say thank you to all of the people who write in here and at Facebook asking if we would come and play in your town- be it Phoenix Arizona or Sydney Australia- please know that nothing would make us happier than to tour constantly and sing with ALL of you! Truly, once we are on the road I never want to come home, I just want to keep going. Unfortunately, things like school, other time commitments and the cost of travel limit our ability to go everywhere we would like to go. But we are so grateful for your expressions of enthusiasm- keep them coming and with a little luck we will make it to your town! This fall we will be playing in Georgia for the first time- three shows in the Atlanta area! Please come on out – take a little family road trip and join us- our family is taking one too! We always have a special bonus prize at the merch table if you have crossed a state line to come and sing with us!

Since our little family is setting out on the road next month we need all the help we can get in spreading the word. We need to make sure that families know we are coming to town so that we have someone to sing along with – we don’t want to be lonely!

So – we would like to invite you to become part of the You Are My Flower street team!

We are looking for folks who would be willing to go out into their communities- to a local preschool, day care center, bookstore, cafe etc- and hang a poster or leave some flyers and just generally spread the word- tell your friend who has a blog about the show, and maybe we can arrange a CD giveaway or some kind of promotional excitement!

In return for this extremely generous act, we have many ways to say thank you!

My Mom in her Little Bird shirt!

We will have street team “goody bags” that we will hand out at the merch table at our concerts for your children. We also have adult sized “i am your little bird” street team t-shirts that we would love to share with you through the mail!

The tour is rapidly approaching so let us know ASAP if you would like to join the party! Just reply to this email that you would like to be part of the street team, and we will do cartwheels and let you know the details. The imminent dates are below! If you can lend a hand in any of these towns, wow would we be grateful – we especially need help in the Atlanta area, we’ve never been there before!!!

We will be touring in support of our new album, Blue Clouds, which will be released on October 23 on Smithsonian Folkways Recordings. We are so excited to share this music with you! Making this album has been a long journey of creating and discovering the land of blue clouds, and it has turned out to be a place magic for us. We hope you feel the same. The artwork was made by artist, author and dancer Remy Charlip and liner notes by author of “The Invention of Hugo Cabret” Brian Selznick.

Shows

Remy passed away last month at the age of 83. It is hard to find words that do justice to describe his reach as an artist, so I am going to quote the New York Times obituary.

“Remy Charlip, a dancer, choreographer and founding member of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company…dazzled avant-garde audiences for decades before finding an even larger audience writing and illustrating children’s books… Mr. Charlip began his artistic career as a painter but became interested early on in narrative art forms, he said in a 1997 interview for a catalog of his work assembled by the Library of Congress. The two forms he settled on, dance and children’s books, shared some essential elements. Both speak in a visual language for the most part, and both move through a series of scenes.”

“I love sequence, how one thing follows another,” he said in the interview. “When you’re reading to a child, he can’t wait to get to the next page. ‘Turn the page, turn the page!’ That’s because each new page is a door to another, different world.”

Mr. Charlip worked in both forms simultaneously, branching off into children’s theater while he was at it. He danced in Cunningham’s postmodern dance troupe, with scores by John Cage; at the same time, he was helping to found the Paper Bag Players, a children’s theater group that specializes in improvisations…”

This short video also gives you a beautiful sense of Remy’s inspiring spirit –

We are amazed at our good fortune to have been able to bring Remy’s artwork together with our music. It will remain one of the greatest honor’s of our time as musicians!

Okay, I’ve written a small novel tonight. Time to get back to practicing Kooks on the guitar – so many chords for me!

Xoxo
Peace
Elizabeth Mitchell and You Are My Flower

You Are My Little Bird	Sunny Day	Little Seed

$4.99 MP3	$4.99 MP3	$4.99 MP3