Hey it’s that time of year again! No, not time for blizzards even when the weathermen say we aren’t going to get any (outside right now we have 3 inches and counting!) No…it’s time for the Washington Area Music Association Awards, the WAMMIES! Once again, Tinsmith has done quite well in nominations, with Tinsmith nominated for group/duo, Avril for instrumentalist and Brooke for vocalist in the Traditional Folk category. This gives us a total of 19 WAMMIE nominations, and one award, since 2000! The awards are this coming Monday, so stay tuned. You can check out other nominees or look tuesday for the winners at http://www.wamadc.com

So, you thought you had heard it all, right? Well, now you can come see Tinsmith NAKED!!!! No, not us, YOU. I fully intend to wear all appropriate clothing, but what YOU wear at the Avalon Nude Folk Festival is up to you. This is a really great place – beautiful setting and great facilities, and they get really great music there. So why not come out and see us in August. After all, it’s usually so miserable at that time of year that we’ll probably all be happy to take our clothes off! Check our schedule for the Avalon webpage – as of this date they haven’t updated it for this year, but you can see who was there last year: John Gorka, Groovelily and Mad Agnes just to name three. Hey, at the very least we can all get a REALLY good tan and probably eat out for a year on the stories!

Yes, that’s right! Finally, a new recording. Really. Promise. In fact, you can get it at our upcoming gig at the Blackrock Center for the Performing Arts where we will unleash it upon an unsuspecting world. [insert mad-scientist-laughter here] This is just a taste of the new CD to come, but if you buy the EP at Blackrock, you will get: a free t-shirt a free Tinsmith sticker a reduced price a smooch from your favorite member of the band—- HANG ON! Scratch that last thing BE THERE!!

……ok, that’s a cheap beginning, but we do have exciting news for the coming year. Things in the Tinsmith world have been quite productive. We spent the summer working on a new demo, recording in the studio of our wonderful & kind bass player, Henry Cross. That went very well, in fact the demo got us a slot at the North Texas Irish Festival – a very exciting and prestigious music event! So if you feel the need to take a road trip in March you can join us in Dallas as we wow a bunch of Texans…see our schedule for more details!

We are really thrilled to welcome super guitar-mandolin-dobro player Avril Smith to the Tinsmith lineup. Avril may be known to some of you as a founding member of the all-woman funk band Zeala, or as part of the Avril-and-Aura duo. Well now she is adding us to her roster, and she is a great kick to our sound. Check out our calendar for upcoming dates and hear our new sound!

Dear Friends and Fans of Tinsmith, Nearly seven years ago, Tinsmith formed and created a unique look at Celtic music. The shape and sound of our music together has changed much in that time. But now a more fundamental change has come. John McLoughlin, founding member of Tinsmith will be leaving the band. But he won’t be going without saying goodbye… On December 5th, 2003 at the New Deal Cafe in Greenbelt, Tinsmith will have it’s last show in it’s original, genre busting form. We will also be joined by “The Lord of the Lower Frequencies”, bassist and auxillery member of the band, Henry Cross. We plan on pulling out all the stops on this one, kids and campers, so we’d be honored if you would come and help us blow the roof off this joint! Tinsmith

Over cocktails last night after a show at The New Deal Cafe, Rowan Corbett (guitarist and sometime-vocalist to the band Tinsmith) said to a friend (one Jason Slanga), “You should right me a Haiku in Latin!” Here are the results of that off-hand comment: haiku rowanis quid jasone scriptum est in extremis est (badly done pronunciation guide) hI-koo ro-wa-nis quid ya-so-ne (that’s neigh like the sound a horse makes) scrip-tum est in ex-tre-mees est (translation) Rowan’s haiku which was written by Jason is at an end (and, tactfule addition of two syllables, gives us another haiku in english) This, Rowan’s haiku, which was written by Jason, is now at an end

So, for those of you who have problems decyphering Rowan’s old fake accent, we’ve added a lyrics page that you can get at throught the Discography page… or this little link. Ain’t technology grand?

Oh yeah… That was cool. We had the official CD release concert for “Jigsaw” last night. It was pretty dang cool if we may say so ourselves. We had Tom Espinola back again, as well as Jaqui MacMillan and Ira Gitlin (a newbie to the Tinsmith fold). We started off the night with ilyAIMY kicking it New-School. But most importantly we had a whole lot of fun. We’d like to thank all our friends and fans came to show their support and helped to make the night success. And great big thanks to the Institute of Musical Traditions for having us again.