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Another update from Christine Lavin with good news:

Via Paul Kehoe at peterpaulandmary.com:
May 29, 2005
MARY IS HOME!!!!

Mary was released from the hospital this week, exactly one month after the
bone marrow transplant procedure, and is so happy to be home!

The graft 'took" and she reports that the donor marrow is making wonderful
cells, ALL FOR HER! She sends her thanks for all the wonderful messages and
letters of support, encouragement and humor that have been coming in for her
since early December .

So, a warm, gracious hello from Mary . . . and she'll be sure to keep the extended PP&M family posted as to how she's doing.

It will still be months before she is out and about, so all get well messages and jokes are still welcome at getwellmary@aol.com. Or go to peterpaulandmary.com and leave a message there. With all the bad news in the world, it's so nice to share some good news with all of you.

Sincerely,
Christine Lavin

Note from Greg - Just wanted to remind you that the best way to continue to get your messages to Mary is to use the email address above rather than the comments on this blog. All I do with the comments on this blog is forward them to that email address, so cut out the middleman and send your greetings direct to getwellmary@aol.com.

This week, the Online Folk Festival salutes Canada (Happy Victoria Day!) with a week of Canadian music.

I have been reading the CanCon (Canadian Content) survey every week for the last couple years on the Folk DJ List and thinking what a great show you could do playing nothing but music made by Canadians. I asked one of the Canadians in the chat room what a good Canadian holiday would be to do this for, and she suggested Victoria Day (which is today, in fact).

And, so, here it is, the first week of strictly Canadian music on the Online Folk Festival. When you see the list below of Canadian artists, I hope you will realize that presenting these artists inlarger than usual does will make a great week of music:

Leonard Cohen, Bruce Cockburn, The Duhks, The ClumsyLovers, The Malvinas, Gordon Lightfoot, Moxy Fruvous,the Wailin' Jennys, Oh Susanna, kd lang, StephenFearing, Jann Arden, Jory Nash, Fred Eaglesmith, The Be Good Tanyas, Barry McLoughlin, Po' Girl, The Band,April Verch, David Francey, Enoch Kent, Tim Harrison, Great Big Sea, James Keelaghan, The Irish Rovers,Oscar Lopez, Joni Mitchell, Kate and Anna McGarrigle, Martha Wainwright, Leahy, Le Vent du Nord, Lynn Miles, Cowboy Junkies and more.

I have about 18 hours worth of all Canadian tunes in rotation and hope to get another 7 to 8 hours worth uploaded tonight. I'm sure you will enjoy this special concept programming week.

Back from being out of town celebrating my grandmother's 90th birthday (more on that later as I have time this week). John Prine is this week's featured artist (5/17-5/22). Many tracks from his new album as well as all the great John Prine songs you know and love.

I know I haven't blogged new adds in quite a while. I'm going out of town tomorrow, so it will probably be another few days before it happens.

I did want to post before I go about my weekend o'folk. Friday night I got to see Chris Stuart and Backcountry in Centerburg at a concert that was sadly very sparsely attended. The band was outstanding, and the concert had a very informal, family atmosphere. Apparently, Chris Stuart was in a band in California with Wayne Dickerson, who now teaches at Centerburg, and so it was almost like seeing a house concert in the school auditorium. The band was tight and played two sets of material that spanned their three albums, plus Mr. Dickerson got a chance to sit in with the band on a couple tunes. It was nice to meet Chris, and we had a few minutes after the show to chat about their recent gig on Woodsongs and the new solo album they are working on for the group's banjo player and occasional lead singer Janet Beasley.

On Saturday I went to the Central Ohio Folk Festival. I'd never been out to Battelle-Darby Creek Metropark, and it turned out to be a nice setting for the festival, and a beautiful sunny day. It seems that the COFF is mostly a picker and performer's festival, where many of the people go to hang out and jam and maybe catch a couple workshops. There was a spotlight concert tent, where there were performers all day, though the performances were generally pretty sparsely attended, which was a darn shame because I saw several really good performances:

• Dulcimer player Butch Ross, who did impressive interpretations of both "Eleanor Rigby" and "1952 Vincent Black Lightning" in a much too short 20 minute set.
• Columbus area band Halfway Home did a fun set mixing country and folk standards with a couple originals. This groups appears to be a side project for most of the players, who are in other local bands.
• Cincinnati area singer/songwriter Dave Hawkins did a nice set including mostly originals. I'd never heard of Dave Hawkins, but apparently one of his recent folk albums was nominated for several Grammy awards a few years ago, and it just shows another gap in my folk knowledge.
• A songwriting workshop featuring headliner Tom Rush, one of the guys from Mustard's Retreat, Dave Hawkins, Jake Armerding and local singer/songwriter Victoria Parks trading songs and sharing some insights into songwriting was great fun.

The evening concert was great fun. Headliner Tom Rush was outstanding - he had the audience howling with laughter all night, and displayed some impressive slide guitar picking skills as well. Jake Armerding provided support on the fiddle and Tom Rush allowed him to do a set of songs as well, which included my favorite of his, "Ithaca." The Sisters of the Strings, a local band opened with a set displaying a great amount of promise and skill for a group of teenagers. Ann and Phil Case did a set of old-timey standards on vintage instruments (the emcee clearly coveted Ann's vintage Martin guitar). Ann has a good voice and interprets the old-time songs well, and Phil provided some hit and miss vocal harmony and able accompaniment on mostly banjo, but also mandolin and guitar.

Another update from Christine Lavin, by way of the Folk DJ list

Date: Sat, 7 May 2005 13:52:20 EDT
From: Christine Lavin
Subject: update on Mary Travers

Hi Folk DJs and musicians -- this is the word as of 10 PM Friday night, from Paul, who works on the PP&M website. Mary's husband called to tell him:

Mary is in Day +9 and the good news today is that she had an upswing as her white blood cell count was observed to be increasing . . . Very good news! . . . She's rather uncomfortable with the side effects like sores and rashes (no sign of the host vs graft rejection . . .knock on wood!) ..but she knew this was part of the procedure and her Doctors are just so pleased with her resiliance . . .

They commented that a '20something' going through this phase of the procedure would be in agony as there is little to offer the patient to reduce discomfort . . . but Mary understands this to be one of the steps to go through before feeling better . . . and she's dealing with it, the strong woman that she is! . . .

Mary is still loving the jokes and messages . . . Her husband said they make her very happy whenever a new one arrives . . .I'm working on Book 16 tonight . . .So keep the jokes and 'get well' messages coming to getwellmary@aol.com --blonde jokes, all kinds of jokes, letters about going to PP&M concerts -- she loves them all. Thanks so much for helping to get the word out.

Sincerely,
Christine Lavin

A reminder from Greg Grant -- I forward notes for Mary I receive in the comments section on this blog to the getwellmary@aol.com addreess above, but it will get there faster and cut out the middleman if you send your get well messages and jokes directly to getwellmary@aol.com yourself for Christine to pass on to Mary.

Appleseed Records, a folk label that has been responsible for putting out the recent output of Pete Seeger, Tom Paxton, John Wesley Harding, Kate McDonnell and others, has now signed The Kennedys. Their new album, Half a Million Miles, will be out sometime in late summer. Based on what I've seen from both the label and the Kennedys, this seems like an outstanding fit.

He has a great new album produced by soul music legend Dan Penn, and he's a songwriter who has been covered by the likes of Steve Earle, Billy Bragg and Maura O'Connell. All Greg Trooper does is write great songs and sing them with style in a smooth baritone. That ought to be enough to make him a household name, but it hasn't happened yet. The new album has been getting some great reviews and great buzz,and may be the one to put him over the top. Find out what the buzz is all about this week as we feature music spanning Greg Trooper's career.