Dear Friends,

After an extended hiatus from Newsletter-Land I’m settling in to the brave, new world of e-newsletters.  Those of you have previously received my periodic missives in you trusty old analog mailboxes had best get used to this new medium as well.  It is no longer financially or environmentally responsible to manage and maintain a 40,000-plus mailing list.  I guess “Mail Myself to You” is now taking on a decidedly 21st-Century transformation.  What this means, on the positive side, is that updates and news can be delivered more regularly.  Hope it suits you all.

A quick re-cap of the past year…

After twenty years in Charlottesville, VA and over thirty years in Virginia I reluctantly bade of fond farewell to the Commonwealth.  As one old friend opined, with the election of my old friend, Tim Kaine, as the state’s new governor and the defeat of George Allen, I guess my work there was done.  The truth is that newly single and with both sons firmly ensconced in the hubbub of New York City I found myself without immediate family ties to good, old C’ville.  New love beckoned in a most surprising place, Atlanta.  Surprising because it was the city that “stole” my beloved Milwaukee Braves exactly forty years earlier.  But deciding that long-distance romance is not my cup of tea and that forty years is long enough to nurse a teenage grudge, the city has since stole my heart.  Having never lived in a big metropolis, I’ve jumped into the swirl of the city’s activities. 

After never living in a town with even a minor league ball team I became a Braves season ticket holder and attended an embarrassing number of games this year.  I fell in love with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and, likewise, became a subscriber.  The music scene, while not nearly the folk music Mecca that Charlottesville is, is wildly diverse, fraternal and inclusive.  Co-writing invitations immediately came in from country, hip-hop and gospel composers in the area.  The local Friends Meeting house is mere minutes from my door and the most venerable acoustic music venue in Atlanta, Eddie’s Attic, is five minutes away.  Lots of my itinerant comrades play Eddie’s intimate stage and wake up in my guest room the following morning.  And, not incidentally, after 35 years of connecting flights the Atlanta airport, for all its size and bustle, provides me with direct flights everywhere…a luxury beyond belief to this world-weary traveler.  Great old house with a pond and a writing studio, wonderful neighbors, top-notch pizza down the street and a mind-blowing international farmers market a quick bike ride away.  Nope, Atlanta has surprised and delighted me at every turn.  Now if it would just rain…

September 06:

After settling into my little bungalow in Georgia I quickly hit the road for even more southern climes.  Made an appearance at the Southern Independent Booksellers conference in Orlando in support of Christmas in the Trenches.  An entire gathering of independent booksellers!  Southern, to boot.  Whatever Sr. Mary Rambo tried to convince heaven was like all those years ago never prepared me for the bliss of two days with this dedicate, quixotic crew.  Had a great meal and visit with my old pal, Lee Smith and signed books till my arm went numb.  Left there to do a Waging Peace workshop at the Jewish Community Center in Sarasota attended by scores of local teachers, clergy, activists and families.  Evening concert that night and then off to my now annual visit to Tallahassee in support of the Grassroots Free School.  From there is was off to Winfield once again where the largest gathering of accordions in Kansas history joined me on stage Saturday night.  After the annual Local 1000 Fall Board Retreat I was ready to head to the White House and the National Book Festival.

Laura Bush founded the National Book Festival back in 2001.  She’s a former librarian (I’ve often wondered how she met her husband…) and a great advocate of books and reading.  Hosted by Dr. James Billington, the Librarian of Congress, the affair gathers 70 authors each September for readings and book signing on the National Mall.  Because of Christmas in the Trenches I was invited to be one of the featured authors.  The weekend kicked off with a black-tie gala at the Library of Congress where lots of authors, more often seen in either faded jeans or rumpled cardigans, stuffed themselves into tuxes and evening dresses for a swanky meal and cocktail party.  I felt far out of my league in both the wardrobe and literary department and scanned the invited guest list to find my name, remarkably, legitimately there.

Breakfast the following morning was at the White House, sans W.  It was a less formal affair and a chance to actually have some extended visiting time with the other authors.  Escorting my sister, Lou Ann, I had some great visits with Kahled Hosseini (The Kite Runner, A Thousand Splendid Suns),

Pictured at right: Kahled Hosseini and John at the White House.

Doris Kearns Goodwin (Wait Til Next Year), Taylor Branch (the amazing Martin Luther King trilogy),

Pictured below: John with Taylor Branch and his wife, Christina Macy.

Alice McDermott (Charming Billy) and the great Virginia fiction writer, Sheryn McCrumb.  I even met and made peace with Elmo (and his voice, Kevin Clash), the little Red Menace that beat out twice for a Grammy. 

Pictured at right: John makes peace with Elmo (and keeper, Kevin Clash).

One of my goals at the Festival was to see the great Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko read.  I managed to catch most of his set and it was one of the most surreal and amazing things I’ve ever witnessed.

October 06:

Most weekends this fall not doing concerts in various US cities were taken up with book-signing and reading appearances.  This brought me to some wonderful bookstores slugging it out in the world of Big Boxes.  Of particular note was a signing sponsored by Janke’s Bookstore in my hometown of Wausau, WI.  Janke’s is the oldest surviving local business on Wausau’s main street and the place where I faithfully fed my literary urges growing up.  Their reading quickly outgrew the confines of their store and it was moved to…of all places!...the gymnasium of my old elementary school a block away.  It was a flight of nostalgia to find myself back in the place for the first time since 1966.  Amazingly, it still looked and smelled the same.  Jane Janke had fitted both the store’s window and the stage that night with WWI-era uniformed mannequins (courtesy of the local Historical Society), a tree, a squeezebox and violin…and a crowd of hometown folks curious as to how “that McCutcheon boy” actually wrote a book.  Notable in the crowd that night was the old librarian from the Marathon County Public Library who, in large part, got the whole thing started.

The same weekend I visited the delightful Red Balloon Bookstore in St. Paul and ended up signing at my old college’s bookstore and even caught the better part of a Johnnie’s football game before heading back for the McDonough, GA Fall Festival.

October ended up with an wild reunion with my old and dear friend, Malcolm Dalglish in a kick-off concert for Berea (KY) College’s Celebration of Traditional Music.

November 06:

November had me once again reuniting with old friends.  Carrie Newcomer and I teamed up for a show in Rockford, IL following a show supporting St. Louis’ Community Shares program.

I did my first show in Atlanta as a resident, performing a Veteran’s Day Concert at the historic Oakhurst Baptist Church.  Old friend Elise Witt joined me on stage to sing my song “No Mas, No More,” which she, likewise, helped led at the School of the America’s Watch annual demonstrations the following weekend down at Fort Benning, GA.

I headed over to Birmingham, AL where the amazing local library system hosted a week of readings and concerts in local branches.  I took time out a busy schedule there to visit the 16th St. Baptist Church, site of the “Birmingham Sunday” bombings of the Civil Rights era.  It was a powerful and vivid reminder of how close history still seems.

The week ended up with concerts in North Carolina and a pair of featured concerts as part of the East Brunswick, NJ Library’s Storytelling Festival.

December 06:

The year wound down with a pair of quick New England weekends: a concretizing three-day stint through MA, CT and NH and a book-signing visit two weeks later to see my friends at Northshire Bookstore in Manchester, VT and Toadstool Books in NH.

Christmas in the Trenches was nominated for a Grammy in the “Children’s Spoken Word” category, my sixth nod.

Christmas was calm and bright.

January 07:

My annual Left Coast Tour began, believe it or not, in Calgary, AB where I ran headlong into an adventure in local larceny.  (Many of you have heard the amazing story I tell in concert of the theft and recovery of my computer and various things from a backstage dressing room) where the 2-day high was 14-below.

From there it was on to the warmer world of CA for a typically harried visit to old friends and venues.  Among the highlights were visits with old pal Utah Phillips in Nevada City, sharing the stage with the remarkable Julie Wolf at the Freight and Salvage and welcoming up Bob Franke (writer of “The Great Storm Is Over”) later in the same show.

February 07:

The Pigeon Forge Storytelling Festival joined me with dear friends Donald Davis and Barbara Freemen before sending me up to Knoxville for a show on what turned out to be Super Bowl Sunday where a shocking number of People Who Don’t Give a Damn about Football showed up for folk music instead.

The following weekend I traveled out to LA for the Grammys where my father and step-mother, my brother and sister-in-law and my sweetheart all joined my in one more futile attempt to bring home the hardware.  Met my buddy, Tommy Emmanuel, there who, likewise, failed to deliver an acceptance speech.  But, damn, we looked good!  One consolation was that my category was actually won by my old friend, Bill Harley, who’s a great storyteller/musician.  It was the first time that someone who actually works fulltime as a spoken word artist with children won the Grammy.

Unfortunately my concert with the Loudoun Symphony was snowed out, but I made up for it working double time at the annual North American Folk Music and Dance Alliance conference in the Memphis the following weekend pressing the union flesh for Local 1000.

March 07:

March began with a family wedding; Katie Deedy married William Robison at the historic Decatur Courthouse in a beautiful ceremony capped by emotional toasts and a great Latin band.  Cuba and Texas met head-on and the result was, predictably, wonderful, loud and food-driven.  The couple disappeared to Bali and then reappeared weeks later in Brooklyn.

The month ended with a trip to Chile, in support of Educación Popular en Salúd (EPES), a women’s health initiative in Santiago and Conceptión, Chile.  (See the Community Page for a link to their www site for more info).  I spent a whirlwind week being taken to shantytown health centers, childcare facilities and the grassroots community service organizations that have sprung up during and since the Pinochet dictatorship.  Fabiola Letellier, the leading human rights lawyer in Chile (and sister of assassinated Chilean diplomat Orlando Letellier) took me on a human rights tour of Santiago and hosted me at Isla Negra, the seaside home of Pablo Neruda.  Karen Anderson, the indefatigable founder and champion of EPES introduced me to numerous Chilean musical figures, arranging concerts at clubs and community centers throughout the Santiago area.  Particularly moving was a visit to Villa Grimaldi, the former estate-turned-torture camp that is now being converted into a Park for Peace. 

My connections to Chile go back to the early 1980’s when I met and befriended the amazing group Inti Illimani.  After rendezvous with them throughout the world (many times in the US and in Italy, where they lived in exile during the dictatorship) it was moving, indeed, to finally meet up with my dear compatriot, Jorge Coloun in his native country. 

There will be an entire essay posted to the site shortly detailing impressions of my trip along with photos and an mp3 of a song composed there.

April 07:

My book publisher, Peachtree, sponsored a contest among local independent booksellers offering to award the most creative and affective peace-oriented community initiative with a free concert (by me) in their town.  April began with a visit to Leavenworth, KS and the Book Barn, the winner of that concert.  They through a free show for the town in their community center and we had an amazing time.  In my early years my father always predicted my music would end me up in Leavenworth and I was pleased to phone him that evening to confirm that his forecast had finally come true.

The same weekend took me to Tulsa and Lawrence, KS with a visit to Lincoln, NE sandwiched in between to celebrate the 25th birthday of the Lincoln Area Friends of Traditional Arts (LAFTA).  I was their very first concert and I was honored to be asked to do this anniversary concert for them.  It was free to the community and 700+ folks came out to pay tribute to this great local organization.  I promised them I’d come back and do the 50th for free.

April also sent me to the Northwest again (Corvallis, Portland and Seattle) and also had me sharing the stage with the amazing SCORE musical education kids in Warrenton, VA. 

May 07:

I was back in Charlottesville teaming up with my trusty pal, John Jennings, to record This Fire: Politics, Love & Other Small Miracles.  It was, as all things with JJ are, a blast.  From there my annual jaunt to the Barns of Wolf Trap (where I’ve performed more often than any other single venue), to Buffalo for a concert reuniting me with my hammer dulcimer mentor, Paul Van Arsdale, and finally to the International Reading Association convention in Toronto for some workshop-leading and book-signing.

The month concluded with the first of hopefully many concerts for the lovely Evening Star Concert Series in breathtakingly beautiful Sautee, GA, a concert in Philadelphia celebrating the 25 years of work for the Peace Tax Fund and a songwriting-intensive weekend near Cleveland with Peggy Seeger.

June 07:

The summer is always a quieter season for me.  Dating back to the days when Will and Peter were small, it gave me lots of time at home with them and let me satisfy my gardening habit in a more attentive way.  My first Georgia garden was handicapped by the need to seriously compost the clay I found in my backyard and discover the differences of a warmer gardening zone.  I spent a good bit of the spring and summer building the raised beds in the formerly barren yard.  I got good sun, though and I installed a beehive to insure pollination wasn’t going to be an issue.  That’s when the drought decided to hang around indefinitely.  Despite all this I had tomatoes and peppers into December (unheard of in VA!) and look forward to a more educated season in 08.

The last half of the month was busier than usual.  The Clinch Mountain Music Festival was a total blast: an opportunity to focus on traditional music in my old Southwest VA home surrounded by lush mountains and old friends and neighbors.  The following night my longtime partners-in-crime Rich Kirby and Tommy Bledsoe and I staged a Wry Straw reunion at the late, great Janette Carter’s Carter Family Fold.  Wry Straw was an old time string band the three of us played in back in the 1970’s.  We recorded one album for June Appal Records that was purchased by dozens of people and shortly-thereafter disbanded.  We’ve done a handful of songs together at festivals a few times throughout the years but this was the first real concert we were doing in almost 30 years.  The Fold was an absolute madhouse that night and, after attempting to showcase our touted genre-spanning repertoire, it was clear that the majority in attendance wanted to hear fiddle tunes and little else.  So it was a dance party the rest of the evening.  All three of us had a great time and have vowed to stage a reunion concert at least once every thirty years from here on out.               Pictured at above, right: Wry Straw

I flew out to Lost Wages, NV for the biennial AFM Convention as a delegate for Local 1000 again.  I flew back in time to spend a couple of days at Paul Reisler’s Songcamp with the most talented collection of songwriters I’ve ever encountered at such a camp.  It was only fitting that I went from there directly to the Ark in Ann Arbor, MI (where I’ll be filming a concert DVD this coming year!) and then paid a second visit to the Chapel Hill United Methodist Church where the congregation and community gathered for a concert and, this time, a part of the worship service.

I returned to Ann Arbor where I could have definitely used some divine intervention in my much-neglected golf game in support of the Ark’s annual fundraising tournament.

July 07:

My annual Peace is Patriotic concert in support of the Richmond (VA) Peace Education Center was the most fun ever so it was a perfect lead-in to both the new outdoor series David Broida is hosting in Bryn Mawr, PA and the great Festival of the Eno in Durham, NC.

I joined my old friend, Chuck Brodsky, for an all-baseball concert at Maryland’s beautiful Strathmore Hall and then flew immediately out for a long weekend of concerts in CA.

The month concluded with a return visit to one of my favorite little festivals, the Flint (MI) Folk Festival.

August 07:

August was a typically sleepy month, allowing for vacation time and prepping for the busier fall season coming on.  No August would be complete, however, without my annual visit to Hampton, VA’s gorgeous American Theater and my old friend, Michael Curry, the director there.  The weekend was a rainy reunion with the Bluemont Concert Series, capped by a guest concert-crash by John Jennings who played for the very first time in his hometown of Luray, VA.  In front of his mother, no less. 

I’ve been increasingly invited by faith communities around the country to do concerts in their churches and St. Joseph’s Church in New Hope, MN decided to include me as part of their 150th anniversary celebrations.  I love doing these performances and, considering that most folksingers never get out of Unitarian Churches, I felt like I really “made it” when these good Catholics came calling.

I went from there directly to Garden City, KS for my third visit to the Tumbleweed Festival that Willis Pracht so deftly coordinates.  From there I went to visit my father, recovering from back surgery (the very first health issue of his long life) but my visit was cut short, sadly, by the news of the death of Nancy Balderose, the wife of my longtime friend and agent, George Balderose, after a long and inspiring battle with cancer. 

September 07:

Armed with the new album, This Fire: Politics, Love & Other Small Miracles, I launched into the new touring season heading back to Tallahassee and the Grassroots Free School annual fundraiser (already booked for September 08!).  I preceded the show there, though, with an inaugural visit to the St. Augustine Library (already booked for September 08, too!).  Old Wry Straw colleague Tommy Bledsoe lives there so we had a fiddle/guitar encore followed by a late night jam session at a local Irish pub.

The following weekend was, once again, the Walnut Valley Festival in Winfield, KS followed by an Arts & Politics Series performance at Virginia’s Mary Baldwin College and the annual Local 1000 Fall Board Retreat.

Pictured at left: Leader of a Draft McCutcheon Campaign at Winfield.

The city of Gettysburg, PA has had a sister city relationship with Leon, Nicaragua for 25 years and invited me to come up and do a concert in celebration of that long history

Another long history is mine with the For the Love of the Lake folks in Dallas, TX.  I performed their very first fundraising concert in 1995 and have returned frequently to witness and support the amazing work this local group has done increasing the public investment in White Rock Lake.  Today there is improved erosion and silt control, hiking and biking trails, regular public clean-up campaigns and, most importantly, an appreciation for what a community can collectively do to increase their common wealth.

October 07:

I was the featured guest at 1st Presbyterian Church’s annual Peace Conference in Marshfield, WI.  A Saturday evening concert was followed by participation in the Sunday morning worship service and, yes, I even delivered the homily.  After the service I lead a discussion on the issues of forgiveness and reconciliation.  With my father and step-mom in attendance I wondered, when he and my mother bundled me off to seminary so many years ago, if he had somehow seen this day coming for 40 years. 

The Michigan Story Festival in Mount Pleasant, MI and yet another storytelling event in Kent, OH the same weekend convinced me that someone I was no longer the occasional interloper in to the storytelling world.

November 07:

I was the first show produced in the newly-rescued/renovate Turnage Theater down in Washington, NC.  I’ve had the very good fortune over the years to play in many of the revived old theaters across the world.  The story is much the same:  they begin as grand opera or theater houses, the fading of the golden age morphs them into vaudeville houses, then burlesque, finally as local movie houses and then as vacant eyesores.  Most are abandoned and demolished.  But every once in a while a community rises up and resurrects the old girl.  It takes years and more meetings and more money than most people can stand.  And when the doors are finally opened and the curtain is raised there is a combined sense of pride, awe and relief.  Such was the spirit of the evening as the Turnage.  I heard plenty of backstage tales of missed deadlines and architectural miscalculations and valiant efforts to rescue opening nights and friendships.  But there are few things that are more wondrous than to be the first person to tread the boards of a town’s freshest jewel.  I realize that my show is immaterial; the real star is the theater itself.  So here’s to the many groups and individuals around the world that dedicate themselves and years of their lives and too many of their resources to save what is worthy in our communities and open the doors of possibility to new generations of people who have only to go down to Main Street to find out what the world has to offer.

The balance of the weekend was spent in Southport, NC and then on to the magnificent McGlohon Theater in Charlotte’s Spirit Square.  The theater is a renovated downtown church (with the stained-glass windows still in place!) that has one of the best crews and the best sound of anywhere I play.  They’ve threatened to make the gig and annual affair.

I returned to Charlottesville for a “farewell concert” in my dear, old burg.  Lots of community-based groups that I worked with over the two decades that I lived there showed up and had tables in the Martin Luther King Performing Arts Center lobby.  So it had the feel of a community affair.  The beneficiary of the concert, the Charlottesville Center for Peace and Justice, hosted a swell reception afterward with incredible food and even more incredible company.  John Jennings joined me for a handful of songs.  It was a heart-warming evening.

I stayed on several days to finish up work on my forthcoming album, Sermon on the Mound, a collection of baseball songs, poems and stories.  More about that elsewhere on the site.  Release date is March 31st, Opening Day, natch.

I’m finishing up the year with weekends in New England, Minnesota and North Carolina (where Christmas in the Trenches is being staged as a puppet show by the Old Salem Museum….really!) and finally home in Atlanta for a holiday program sponsored by the Southern Order of Storytellers.

2008

I’m back to work in January with my annual Left Coast Tour revisiting familiar haunts.  See the Concerts page for details.  Carrie Newcomer and I are joining forces again at Indiana’s Goshen College and then I’m off to Kansas City and to Newton, KS for Bethel College’s Peace Conference.

The spring and summer will be posted as things become final.  Rumor has it that I’ll be intoning more than a few National Anthems at our nation’s ballparks in the wake of the release of Sermon on the Mound.  Take off your caps and let’s stay in touch….