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Sooj

Summer Queendom Part the Fourth: Books!

Green Man Review is still featuring me as their Summer Queen this month (Queen!) and they asked me about BOOKS this week! Gloriousss!

Here’s an excerpt from this, their third of several interviews with me:

What was the first book that you remember reading?

My middle name is Jane. My mother gave it to me in honor of my great aunt Jane, whom I remember from my childhood as the beautiful redheaded relative from Louisiana who always brought me new books. I still have a gorgeous, hardback illustrated collection of Greek myths that Jane brought to me when I was six or eight years old, called The Golden Fleece. That anthology was my first exposure to the Greek and Roman myths, and I still have it in my collection. In fact, that book was probably what kicked off my lifelong love of mythology and folklore. I was always encouraged to read by my family — you should see the teeming bookshelves my father built into the wall of our living room in the house where I grew up. We’re all quite bookish.

Read the full interview here!   It’s short and sweet.

I’m feeling like a Summer Queen, thanks to the Mythmusica Music & Faerie Festival, where Betsy and I will be performing tomorrow.  We got to visit the site this afternoon, and it’s a very beautiful place.  I took a nap next to the creek, which was just exactly the kind of zen I needed today.  Thanks so much to Country Creek Winery for hosting us!

 

Dirtfaery Signal Boost!

One of my dearest friends is a dirtfaery.  Arguably, she is the dirtfaery.

That’s not an insult.

SoojnStevie

Sooj & Stevie (as Tink) at Faerieworlds. Photo by Emily Siskin.

 

She’s brilliant, and she brings her wild troll-and-faery tribe of performers together to enhance the experience of the Faerieworlds festival in Oregon, as often as expenses will allow.  The dirtfaeries are offering incentives and original art to all those who help them raise funds for their journey to the festival this year- and believe you me, the art and goodies offered are as vibrant as the performers are.

Please take a look at their fundraiser, perhaps get yourself some lovely art, and throw in a dollar or two!

Your contribution will help bring the dirtfaeries home to the Realm from as far away as Texas and southern California.  Even if it all turns out to be faerie gold, they’ll find a way to make use of it!

steviebyTuky

Dirtfaery in Action. Photo by Tuky Lupher.

 

#SultrySummerTour update: What’s Coming

Happy, Lammas, everyone!  Wherever you are this week, I hope you’re well and fulfilled and at the top of the heap.

Some of us are having a very dry summer.  Some terrifying things are happening out west, where I’m based this week.  Part of the Olympic Rainforest in Washington state is on fire, and more of Alaska than I can even imagine is burning as well- something like a million acres or more.  Predictions are dire.  Drought and melting permafrost are making life very interesting, and will continue to ripple out and have an effect on the coming months and harvests.  I have lots of friends who farm, on both large and small scales.  The changes in crops and water availability and weather may be more apparent to them than to anyone else, but really, we can’t fail to notice.  Our world is shifting.  We can’t deny it.

But I know that, whatever changes may or may not come in our lifetime, folks like us will continue to take care of each other.  We’ll all do our best to see that good things happen throughout autumn and winter, and beyond.  This I believe, because I’ve seen it happen time and again.

I am thinking of you, and I am glad you’re in this world with me, even when times and weather patterns get strange.

 

On to more lighthearted stuff. 🙂

I’m in Redmond, Washington today, catching up with my Tricky Pixie bandmates.  We have a LOT of upcoming shows together, across the next three months, and it feels so good! Everything starts this Thursday, in Woodinville, Washington, with a free show!

Thursday, August 6th, Woodinville, WA: FREE CONCERT!

Tricky Pixie at UBCCC’s Music in the Park Series

7:00pm-8:30pm

Cottage Lake Park (near the pool)

18801 Northeast Woodinville Duvall Rd

Thanks so much to Raven and the UBCCC for bringing us in!

 

This Saturday and Sunday, we’re headlining the first annual 2nd Star Festival, in Florence, Oregon, by the sea!  Watch for selkies, merfolk, pirates, and more!  Our event location for 2nd Star is the Florence Events Center.  This is a kid-friendly festival, and it includes both daytime activities on Saturday and Sunday, and evening activities (like our concert) on Saturday.  The fest is put on by some of our dearest Lost Boy buddies, and we’re so glad to be part of it!  Bangarang!

Click here for 2nd Star Festival tickets and info

“The underlying theme of our festival is Find Your Creative Spark! There are endless ways to be creative.

“Our daytime activities include Acoustic Musicians, Awesome Local and Regional Art, Kids’ Activities, Talks From The Flight Deck (allowing people to share their inspirations of their own Creative Path), and Much More, all within walking distance to the Old Town section of Florence and the Pacific Coast! Festivities begin at 10am on Saturday and go until 6pm. We then break for an hour and a half for patrons to fill their bellies with yummy food from the area’s awesome restaurants in Old Town.  Then, make sure to get your Concert Ticket to ensure a spot at the theater for the 7:30pm performance of Faerabella, Tricky Pixie, and Toby Froud!”

 

After 2nd Star, Betsy and I fly briefly east to perform at the Muthmusica Festival in Telford, PA!

August 15, 2015, all day

Sooj & Betsy at Mythmusica Music & Faerie Festival

Country Creek Winery

133 Cressman Road

Telford, PA 18969

Click here for tickets & more festival info.

We’re sharing the festival lineup with Brian Henke, Ashagal, and many other talented folks!

 

After Mythmusica, Betsy and Alec will be performing at Sasquan/WorldCon in Spokane the week of August 17-22.  I’ve got a little solo concert in Ethel, Washington, courtesy of Lady Elwin and her sunkissed sanctuary!

Ethel, WA: Sultry Summer Solo Show presented by Sacred Spiral Sanctuary!

August 22, 2015, 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm

Sacred Spiral Sanctuary in Ethel, WA

COST: $25

Potluck dinner starts at 5pm, music at 7pm. Please bring blankets or chairs. All are welcome at this beautiful sanctuary! We will be outdoors, so pack your bug spray as needed. Proceeds to benefit The Cat’s Meow cat rescue, a local humane effort.

Contact our hostess for RSVP and location info:

seekersofstones@yahoo.com

360-562-1900

Elwin hosted a show for Betsy and me last August for the first time, and it was truly lovely.  I’m looking forward to singing on her land again, for everyone who joins us there!

 

After Sasquan wraps up, the band will reconvene for THREE MORE WASHINGTON STATE CONCERTS:  we’re playing Port Angeles with Rogue’s End on August 25, we’re playing in Silverdale on August 28, and we’re giving our BIG DAMN CONCERT in Kenmore on August 29!  Whichever you choose, we’ll bring the magic!

1.  Tricky Pixie and Rogues’ End

August 25, 2015 @ 7:00 pm – 9:30 pm

Studio Bob, the Allé Stage

118 East Front Street

Port Angeles, WA 98362

COST: $10 or more, your choice

Click here for tickets to this concert.

Rogues’ End and Tricky Pixie are two PNW-beloved bands that feature pipes, drums, fiddles, cello, guitars, voices, and a fierce commitment to Fun!  Come and join the magic!  This’ll be Tricky Pixie’s first-ever Port Angeles concert!

All ages welcome, $10 advance.

Music starts at 7pm on the magical Allé Stage, upstairs.

Special thanks to Merryn, Robert, and Studio Bob!

 

2. Silverdale: Tricky Pixie

August 28, 2015, 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm

Silverdale Grange Hall

12535 Clear Creek Road Northwest

Silverdale, WA 98383

COST: $10, $15 or $20, your choice.

Click here for tickets to this concert.

Join Alec, Sooj and Betsy for a night of wicked and whimsical music and stories, wrapped up with the usual good humor, and served with tasty cello, guitar, fiddle, and drums!

Special thanks to Constantina.

3. Kenmore, WA: Tricky Pixie’s Summer Seattle-area Show

August 29, 2015, 8:00 pm – 10:00 pm

Kenmore Community Club

7304 Northeast 175th Street

Kenmore, WA 98028

COST: $10, $15, or $20, or more- your choice.

Click here for tickets to this concert.

Come and join us for a special evening, open to each and every one of our fans!  This will be Tricky Pixie’s final concert in the Northwest for 2015.  Doors open at 7:30pm, and the magic starts at 8:00pm!  Make sure to grab your tickets in advance- we frequently sell every seat for our Kenmore club concerts!

 

Alec flies away home after that, but Betsy and I have a couple more concerts together in the PNW before I start my autumn travels toward home:

Pt. Townsend, WA: Sooj and Betsy Show

September 2, 2015 @ 7:30 pm – 9:30 pm

Pt. T. House Concert

Port Townsend, WA

COST: $10, $15 or $20, your choice.

Click here for tickets to this concert.

Come on over for an evening of whimsy and wit, cello and guitar, siren song and magic! S. J. and Betsy‘s skill, presence and desire for connection with their audience consistently shine from every stage they cross.  Original songs are the focus, here, flavored with everything from classical pieces to rowdy jazz or Celtic tunes.  In short, there’s something for everyone, and there’s a place for you in amongst the sweetly falling notes these powerful womyn create.

Doors open at 7:00pm and music begins at 7:30.  Ages 8 and up, please.  Special thanks to Ellen and crew for hosting!

Note: address and parking info will be sent to you with your ticket purchase.  We’ve got just 40 seats available, so don’t wait until the last minute!

Extra special thanks to our hostess, Ellen Bonjorno, and her household!

 

Then it’s on down to Faerieworlds, which is on a later weekend this year than usual:

Sooj & friends live at Faerieworlds 2015!

September 4, 2015 – September 6, 2015, all day

new location – Horning’s Hideout

21277 Northwest Brunswick Canyon Road

North Plains, OR 97133

Sooj is thrilled to be back home in the Realm, at a new time and place this year, but with just as much magic!  Watch for her main stage concert on FRIDAY, where she’ll be joined by Betsy Tinney, Sharon Knight and Winter, and other special guests. Also keep your eyes open for a Sooj cameo during Sharon’s concert, and check out her workshop on improvising with music on Saturday afternoon!

(Fun fact: this year’s Faerieworlds location was also the venue for the very first Faerieworlds festival that I ever attended, back in 2004.  I met Betsy that weekend, as well as many other of my dearest partners-in-creativity.  I think it’s pretty auspicious that the festival will be there again this year.)

 

Tadaa! That gets us all the way into early September.  I’ve got lots of good stuff planned for the fall months as well, including MORE TRICKY PIXIE CONCERTS, in or around Cape Girardeau and St. Louis MO, Dallas TX, and Memphis TN!  Click here for all the autumn tour dates and details.

OTHER NEWS, INCLUDING NEW MUSIC FOR YOOOOU!

—New Videos!  I’ve been slowly uploading Stolen Season release concert videos to YouTube!  Visit my channel to see and hear them all whenever you like! So far, they’ve all been filmed in my studio at home, The Pixie House.  Before the month is out, I just might be able to film a couple more in Betsy’s studio, which will be lovely.

Click here to subscribe and stay tuned!

—Where’d this crown come from? Witchy review and critique site Green Man Review has crowned me their Summer Queen for 2015! What!? This means they’ve been interviewing me on all sorts of topics, they’ve published a previously unreleased essay of mine, and they’ve been posting some really great reviews of my albums and books!  I am incredibly honored by all of their kind attention.  Some of the interviews were two years in the making, and I’m so happy to see them posted now! Check out excerpts and links to all the Green Man Review posts here on the blog by clicking here.

–NEW SONG, NEW SONG, NEW SONG!  Would you like to hear my first songwriting collaboration with the delicious Bekah Kelso?  I thought you would!  Click here.

–MORE new songs SOON! I’m still participating in my song-a-week group, and I’m still loving the whole experience after twenty-seven weeks!  If it’s at all possible for you to get to one of my concerts in the coming weeks, you’ll hear a fair few of these new song-babies.  I can’t resist sharing them.  This means I’ll have plenty of recording work cut out for me over the winter!  NO excuses, NO boredom!  It’s gonna be soooo good.

–INSTAGRAM GOODNESS: I’ve been posting tour photos daily on my Instagram.  There’s something very satisfying to me about finding one thing that made me smile on my travels, at least once a day, and sharing a photo of it.  Click here to see what I see, and feel free to follow my account there.

 

I hope you’re all keeping safe and relaxed out there.  Keep an eye on the causes that move you this month, and the situations that need more positive change.  I’ll be right there with you, and so will my songwriter’s brain, and all of my understanding and compassion.

Here’s to us, and to our world.

Summer Queendom, part the third

The Green Man Review crew are putting my through my paces as their Summer Queen this year by posting all the interviews and reviews they’ve done with and for me and my work!  The newest post is up now, and it’s a nice, long interview conducted in early 2013, about music and community, about my various band mates and collaborators, about ravens and alligators and all my favorite things.  Here’s an excerpt:

I much prefer leaving room for brilliant, creative people to be brilliant and creative, instead of just telling them what to do.  There are times when I have a specific part in mind for someone to sing or play, but even then, I leave it open to that person’s interpretation.  When we all work together, the person who wrote the song is understood by the rest of us to be in charge.  We all love and respect each other and each other’s work; we all want to help each other shine.  I think I gain more by being open to suggestions than I would by being rigid and unbending.  Sometimes it’s a lot more fun when you don’t know precisely what you want for a song, and you can ask your friends to help you find it.

Read the full interview here!

New Song released today: Welcome Home! (the Sidhehaven Song)

May you all hear the joyful noise of home and tribe and community in this track.  If you haven’t found that heart-home for yourself yet, may you find it swiftly.  We love you.  Sherry and Bekah and I are so happy to share this little theme song with you at last!

And Sherry, thank you for asking us for this.  Thank you for being the catalyst to get Bekah and me to finally write (not just produce) a new song together.  I hope we get to do more of that!

Summer Queendom, part the second

The Green Man Review crew served up some tasty interview questions for me a few days ago, all about what my perfect summer feast would be!   Here’s an excerpt:

What makes for the perfect chocolate experience?

Great ceremony, and a lack of the need to rush. A night at home, with spiced cocoa. A beastly hot day and a chilly frozen pudding, frozen custard, frozen drink, or frozen yogurt. Even home-made avocado chocolate pudding, served late at night by the lady of the house, whose Hobbit powers are unparalleled in the kitchen! One should never limit one’s chocolate options, if chocolate is to be an option at all.

You can read the rest of the yummy results here!

That was such a fun set of questions and answers.  Thanks, gang!  Now I need a snack though…

 

#SultrySummerTour goodness, part three

I’m safe in the PNW once again, and boy, does it feel good!  Much love to everyone who helped make Sunday’s performance at Madrona and Curtis’ wedding ceremony such a sweet inaugural area gig for Betsy and me!  The trend of getting rained on everywhere we go has continued, but I know that Washington state badly needs every drop of rain.  And it turned out that rain during the ceremony made for a truly epic rainbow at the party!  It was HUGE.

Rain at the wedding, phat rainbow at the party. 🙂 #PNW

A photo posted by S. J. Tucker Music (@sjtuckermusic) on

I’ve got a bunch of Washington state and Oregon shows coming up in the next few days, with some really fabulous people!  I’m playing in Redmond on August 1st (this Saturday), Woodinville on August 6th, and the Second Star Festival in Florence, OR on August 8! All the info is on my tour schedule page – go here!

#SultrySummerTour goodness, part two

It’s been six lovely weeks since I hit the road for the summer.  The intensity and the down-time have been decently balanced.  I’m so grateful to my bandmates, and to everyone involved with New York Faerie Fest, as well as everyone involved with the self-produced shows I had in Chicago and Missoula, MT.

I’ve been posting a ton of tour photos over on my Instagram, so if you want to see them, find me there!  Here are a couple from New York Faerie Fest at the end of last month.

 

Come, sit down. Kettle’s on. #fae #nature #tree #allweather #SultrySummerTour #NewYorkFaerieFest #NYFF A photo posted by S. J. Tucker Music (@sjtuckermusic) on

The trend of getting rained on at every single concert continued at this festival, but thanks to how well taken care of the staff and volunteers made sure we were, it didn’t dampen our spirits too badly. It’s hard to dampen MY spirit when I get to play a Tricky Pixie concert, anyhow!

We had a grand time listening to Kiva‘s concerts, and we got to make some mischief with our song-sister Wendy Rule during her shows! Definitely check out their music when you have time.  I was also overjoyed to get some playtime in with my flow-sister, Soolah of Soolah Hoops!  If you get your hoop on, you want this woman in your world.  She’s a dynamo, and a sweet one.

 

Sweet sister @soolahhoops in the rain at #NewYorkFaerieFest #hoophoop #nosunnoproblem #flow #flowOn #hoopity #joy

A photo posted by S. J. Tucker Music (@sjtuckermusic) on

Another New #StolenSeason concert video

Here’s Sultry Summer Night, live from my little studio at home!

 

Summer Queendom, Part the First

Witchy review repository Green Man Review has been kind to me since the very earliest days of my touring life.  This month, they’re featuring me as their Summer Queen, doing all sorts of posts on behalf of my work!  I’m super flattered and grateful.  Their first post is a roundup of all the great reviews they’ve done of my stuff over the years, as well as some new and very kind words.  Check it out here.

Their second post is an essay they asked me to write back in 2013, now published at last, of my own thoughts on the magic of summertime.  I went deep into my roots to get this one out.  Here’s an excerpt:

I grew up in the Mississippi River Delta in southeast Arkansas, where the state lines blur near the tops of Louisiana and Mississippi, and life still moves at a very calm pace for most folks.  I spent half my summers as a child outside playing softball, swimming, or riding my bicycle through my small hometown.  I spent the other half indoors, hiding in the freezing embrace of central air conditioning, as far away as four walls could get me from ravenous mosquitoes and the thick air of Southern Summer Humidity.

Where I come from, Summer is not a nice girl.  She is not gentle.  She is fierce.  She is not there to entertain you.  Rather, she’ll eat you alive.

She turns the air to soup and the water to paradise, but you can’t enjoy the latter for long at the wrong time of day, lest the insects carry you off.  She scorches the fields, drains the rivers, and chars the skin.  She is the divine feminine in her Destroyer aspect, unapologetic and terrible.

But you can bet your ass I was glad to see her when school let out for the year.  Every time.

And to tell the truth, she could be generous to those of us who learned how to work with her, to celebrate as one until our buckets of sweat ceased to matter, to appreciate the play of her brutally colorful sunsets through the dry dust of a field at harvest.

Read the full essay here.  I hope you enjoy it!

Coming soon: an interview about what my perfect summer feast would look like, and more!

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