When: Friday, May 11 at 7:30pm
Where: Dreamland Arts, 677 Hamline Avenue North, Saint Paul
Tickets: $15, available at http://www.dreamlandarts.com/shows/detail.php?eventId=199
Info: Click here for directions and contact info

Come on down to Dreamland Arts in Saint Paul to celebrate the release of In the Quiet Night: Fiddle Tunes from the Upper Midwest.

After many years spent listening hard to the likes of Bill Monroe, Kenny Baker and Benny Martin, I decided to focus on the fiddling that’s here in the Upper Midwest, right under my nose. This album, which was funded by a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, is a collection of tunes that I gathered from Upper Midwestern fiddlers like Chirps Smith, Sara Pajunen, Les Raber, Selmer Ramsey, Leizime Brusoe and others, plus a few of my own tunes and a vocal number written by a fellow named Bob Dylan (yes, he counts, too, though we might have known him as Zimmerman).

In addition to playing tunes gathered from some of my favorite northern fiddlers, I got to record with some of my favorite Minnesota musicians, including Anthony Ihrig (banjo), Dean Magraw (guitar), Marty Marrone (guitar) and Dana Thompson, all of whom will be joining me at the CD release show.

Hope to see you there! Dreamland Arts is a very small theater, so advance tickets are recommended. You can order them on the Dreamland Arts website by clicking here.

The High 48s will be teaching a bluegrass band workshop for kids at the Minnesota Bluegrass and Old-Time Music Association’s Winter Weekend Festival.  The High 48s will be joined by Catie Jo Pidel, Chuck Millar and Ryan Kimm, and Peter Ostroushko will be giving a fiddle workshop for intermediate-advanced students.

We’ve taught at Grass Seeds for quite a few years now, and honestly, this is one of the best workshops we’ve ever been part of — MBOTMA should be proud!

More info at http://minnesotabluegrass.org/index.php?contentID=643

A few months ago, we posted about Anthony Ihrig’s fantastic solo CD Missing Ghosts. Now we have another High 48s-related CD release to talk about. Eric Christopher’s countrypolitan collaboration with the amazing Dana Thompson, The Minor Planets, has just released a new CD called Shadow in the Water and will be celebrating its release at the Aster Cafe this Saturday (January 21st) at 9pm.

Check out the CD and download a free track here.

The Minor Planets (aka Dana Thompson and Eric Christopher) also made an appearance on MPR’s Radio Heartland this week and talked to Mike Pengra and Chris Roberts about the CD…and of course played a few numbers live in beautiful-sounding Studio M. The show will air again Friday (January 20) at noon, or you can listen online anytime by following this link:

http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2012/01/19/minor_planets/?refid=RH

Also, expect a new CD from the 48s (our first with Marty Marrone) within the next couple months — stay tuned!

Isn’t that Noam Pikelny?

Jamming in the Pines!

Wow, just got back from an amazing weekend at Art Stevenson & Highwater’s Bluegrass in the Pines festival. This was our second year playing this event and, as much as we’d love to keep it a secret, we just have to let the world know that this is one of the best festivals we have ever played (or attended)! It is just a magical combination of location (literally located in an aromatic, shady pine forest), music (Bluegrass Patriots,  Sloppy Joe, Briar Pickers, Hand-Picked Bluegrass etc.) and people (the nicest, most appreciative community of music lovers you could ask for – great dancers too!).

Make sure to clear your calendars for the last weekend of August 2012 and check out the Bluegrass in the Pines Facebook Page and Art Stevenson and Highwater’s website for details on next year’s festival!

Dancing in the Pines

Marty and the Boys

Backstage after the show

Eric Sittin' in with Highwater

We often get asked about our band name. It happens often enough that we devoted an entire page of our website to the question: http://thehigh48s.com/about/whats-a-high-48/.

But the short answer is that we’re named after a boxcar called a 48, or a 40/8, which was named for its carrying capacity: 40 men or 8 horses. These cars were used during World War I to transport troops and materiel to the front lines. After the war, as a gesture of gratitude and good will, France made a gift of these boxcars to the US, one for each state.

Our friend Jim Johnson, who promotes the outstanding Bluegrass Tuesdays concert series down in Indianola, IA (which I’m happy to announce, we’ll be playing again in 2012!), just sent some great pictures of a 48 car from a recent trip down to Daytona Beach, FL. We’ll be posting some of these on our “What’s a High 48?” page soon, but in the meantime, I thought I’d share a few of them with you here on our blog page:

Thanks, Jim!

Photo: Jim Johnson

Photo: Jim Johnson

Photo: Jim Johnson

Photo: Jim Johnson

]]> http://thehigh48s.com/762/feed/ 0 http://thehigh48s.com/738/#utm_source=feed&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=feed http://thehigh48s.com/738/#comments Thu, 21 Jul 2011 23:58:42 +0000 high48s http://thehigh48s.com/?p=738

A few words on the passing of another bluegrass legend, from Eric’s website:

Kenny Baker with his fiddle, Blackie. Photo: Jim Moss

If the triple digit temperatures weren’t a dead giveaway, the 48s’ schedule this week clinches it: festival season has arrived.

This Thursday and Friday, Eric will be teaching a bluegrass fiddle workshop up at the International Music Camp in Peace Gardens, on the North Dakota/Manitoba border. For more info, visit http://www.internationalmusiccamp.com/.

On Saturday, we’ll be playing our first outdoor bluegrass festival of the year: the Northwoods Bluegrass Festival. We’ll be joined by our good friends Art Stevenson and Highwater and the Wildwood Valley Boys, among many other great bands. Set times: 2pm and 7pm. Can’t wait!

Okay, gotta run!

The High 48s would like to wish you a very happy new year and to extend a big, heartfelt thanks to everyone who came out to our shows in 2010, bought our CDs, went to our workshops, picked with us or came by to shake and howdy at the old record table after the show. It’s looking like the new year is going to be another busy one — hope to see you down the road!

And now for the announcement…

The High 48s are excited (thrilled, in fact) to welcome Marty Marrone to the band. Marty is coming to the 48s with some mighty impressive bluegrass credentials in hand. In addition to co-founding and fronting Tangled Roots, one of the Midwest’s finest bluegrass outfits, Marty spent seven years on the road with Grammy nominees Special Consensus…and it shows. Chops? He’s got ‘em. With his unstoppable rhythm guitar, smokin’ flatpicking and soulful singing, Marty kicks the 48s into overdrive — we can’t wait for you to hear him!

And this Sunday, you’ll get your first chance. Our show at Crossings at Carnegie (details our calendar page) will be Marty’s debut with the 48s. So come on down, pull up a seat, and grab hold of something solid! Hope to see you there.

It’s coming up, The High 48s’ double CD release concert at the Ritz Theater in good ol’ Northeast Minneapolis — back where it all began back in 2006 and where we still rehearse, right around the corner from the Ritz.  Advance tickets are on sale (look to the right of this posting for a link to the Ticketworks website).

It’s going to be a great night! We’re really looking forward to it and hope to see you there!