The lovely and talented Katy Bowser is the source of our next bootleg MP3. As many of you know, Katy recently married Kenny Hutson and has migrated her jazzy tones more to a bluegrassy/Americana/roots sound. Her 2006 EP, All of My Friends, is a favorite of mine, even at just six songs. This song isn’t one of the ones on that album, but it’s still quite good:

If you like this track, you can get the whole 19 Sep 2006 Square Peg show. Also, please be sure to buy Katy’s All of My Friends and support great art.

Lot of news today, so I’ll just get to it.

1. KatyBowser.com is now oh-fish-ul-lee up and running. Sorry for the false start there yesterday, dear.
2. Katy’s announced that the Americana-on-Tuesday-nights-at-the-Radio-Cafe begin again January 9th and run through the end of February. I’ll attend as many as I can [because I love me some Americana and know that Katy will expose me to some great new folks], although I can tell you that my workload at the office promises to increase come the new year, so my available time and energy to make weekly four-hour round-trip sojourns to the land of good tunes and PBR tallboys may be limited.
3. Most of you probably read Toesenga’s blog anyway, but in case you’ve missed it, Andrew and Alison have welcomed their second daughter, Sadie Caroline, into the world. Look for Andrew’s next album to be named The Midnight and include tracks such as “Even Earlier in the Morning”, “I Can’t Get No … Sleeping Action”, and “I’m Never Talking to Geof Again for Poking Fun the Day After My Daughter’s Birth”. Our congratulations, love, and prayers go out to you, Nine-Toed Wonder of the World.
   

Admittedly, I’m way behind the times on this one, but … Katy has settled into her new digs. You’ll want to start at KatyBowser.com and browse about from there.

Update: Katy wrote in to let me know that this is sort of a soft launch; they’re still ironing out bugs, contemplating a move to another server, etc. So bugginess may happen, but … Life is full of imperfections.

We [well, at least I] have been kinda swamped this month, but we do have some news for you: the Halloween Square Pegs show originally scheduled for tomorrow has had to be cancelled. In its stead, Katy wrangled up a bunch of her bluegrass friends, and they’re going to have a good ol’ time at the Radio: Katy, Kenny Hutson, Kenny Meeks, Jake Bradley, Brent Clifton, David Long, and [possibly] Julie Lee … just good friends getting together to have a good time playing good music, just like we expect at the Radio.

[As much as I'd love to be there myself, it's not going to happen. :(]

Hey kids:

You can still help Katy out, as voting runs through the 24th. Wanna make it easy? Check out the Vote-a-Matic.

This is short so you don’t have any excuses that we made you read something so long that you forgot to go and do so afterwards. So … go vote already!

Katy sent this along, and it’s way funnier than anything I’d write, so I’ll just quote this verbatim.

YOU WON’T BELIEVE THIS. Another (important) thing to vote for- and incentive to do so, other than feeling good and furthering our careers by a leap and bound.

I’m asking a lot of you, friends, but never before have you been able to singlehandedly boost what we’re doing like this- this is for the diehard supporters. Vote early and often. Like Florida, said my brother.

WHAT’S HAPPENING THAT YOU’RE SO EXCITED ABOUT, KATY?

Read: “You’re wearing out my inbox- this better be good.”

Our song “All Of My Friends” is in the finals for American Songwriter’s “The Craft of Music” compilation to be released in the Nov/Dec edition, on the heels of a great review with them, and in the company of great songwriter! The CD will make it into the hands of something like 20,000 music lovers- and that’s good. Additionally, there’s a really nice prize package, including free CD manufacturing, additional coverage- it would be very helpful.

YOUR PART

Vote at http://www.americansongwriter.com from today through August 25– the voting ad is on the right side. You do have to sign in with your email so that they know who’s voting, and answer a couple of questions (like, are you a songwriter?) and then you can vote TEN TIMES A DAY. (Who comes up with this stuff?) You only have to go through the rigamarole once.

WANT A PRIZE?

I’m sitting with my friend Beth at our favorite coffeeshop, and she said “You should give them something the next time your email them.” If you do in fact vote for us ten times a day for the next eight days, and tell me so, I will take you at it and send you a copy of All Of My Friends for $2- the cost of shipping. And a sticker. And a smile.

The “want a prize?” quote is from Buddy Miller, who asked me & Julie Miller that once when I was sitting with them as they finished lunch- “you girls want a prize?” Apparently a prize is dessert, if you finish your meal. I really think Buddy is Santa Claus in cowboy boots.

So, that’s it. I’m gonna give you good people a rest now.

Blessings, and thanks for your hard work and all your love. You’re too good to us.

Love,
Katy & Kenny

Ps. And of course, the voting continues at http://www.americanahighway.com

Buddy Miller as Santa Claus in cowboy boots. I will never, ever look at Buddy the same way again.

So get on over there and vote, people!

If you’ve got the time, head on over to AmericanaHighway.com [warning: annoying auto-playing audio on the site in multiple locations on the page, so you'll need to kill your speakers if you're at work] and peruse their list of nominees for their Hemi Awards. You’ll spot our own Katy Bowser! I imagine that you’ll know what to do from there.

Update: 10 Aug:

You (and your 20 closest friends) are legally allowed to vote once every 24 hours until September 15- in the poll on the website and by emailing jack@americanahighway.com.

If elected, Katy promises to never wear leather pants, sing the good stuff, and never get plastic surgery.

Yeah, as I joked … here’s the Green Room transcript as well. Katy dared me to post it, so … I will!

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Yeah, I’ve been lax in getting this posted. My apologies: I was going to try to reformat it, but … no point at this point. Let’s just get it out there. I’m also posting the Green Room Transcript, which will make some of this make a bit more sense.

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Don’t forget about tonight’s Katy Bowser chat!