Well hey my merry troubadors. Only me your long lost Irish idiot with
a couple pf updates on a couple of things close to my heart.
It has been a while and as many of you know this is because I spend
most of my life on I-75 and I-24 driving from Atlanta to Nashville. At
this stage I think I have driven more than 8000 miles which is
probably a bit like me driving from Atlanta home to Buncrana and back.
Anyway the great news is that we are even closer to our goal of
getting the Hands Across The Water CD (which features Jerry Douglas)
to the general public where you wonderful people are going to make it
a huge hit and help children rebuild thier lives in the face of losing
homes and families and so much more.
The artwork is done. After going through hundreds of ideas we decided
to commission a Nashville artist called Natalie Cox Mead to paint an
image for our cover. I could not have dreamed of a more beautiful
image either. The booklet is also almost complete. We are scanning it
now in case we left anyone out. With hundreds of people helping out on
this project if we miss anyone we wont be able to show our faces in
public again. So it now looks like August 16th in the stores but on
i-Tunes before that. I should have snippets of the songs on our
website this week at http://www.handsacrossthewater.com

As if that wasn't enough to be doing, today saw the release in America
of Ciaran Tourish's debut solo CD Down The Line (wich also features
Alison and Jerry )which I have been
involved with heavily as well. Despite my obvious bias it is obviously
a wonderful CD with some great guests on board including Alison
Krauss, Jerry Douglas, Maura O Connell, Tim O Brien and Darrell Scott.
So planety of music for Celtic and Americana and bluegrass fans aline.
Ciaran is best known as the fiery fiddler from Altan and is way up
there with the greats of Donegal fiddling. You can find out more
about Mr Tourish at http://www.ciarantourish.com and you can even
order the CD there.

Also my little buddy Ryan Holladay an amazing 12 year old banjo player
from Tennessee just got his album released on Skaggs Family Records
and I am proud to say I was responsible for all the cover pictures.

So that is my latest news. I hope I find you all safe and well and
fairly sober :)

More soon

John Cutliffe