hey folks,
we're on tour down southeast for all of march. we started out in DC a couple weeks ago and have been southbound ever since. the first week of this tour was a special treat when we got to play for a number of different climate justice and immigrants' rights/no new jails events. More on what i'm talking about can be found at www.capitolclimateaction.org and www.thepeopleunited.org respectively. We've got a bunch more shows for these next couple weeks, capping it all off with a benefit for United Mountain Defense (www.unitedmountaindefense.org) somewhere in Knoxville around the very end of the month. Then after a two-week break we'll be getting back on the road, this time for our first ever extended run of shows in the northeast. Check back here or on www.herestothelonghaul.com for tour dates as they develop and other info about the band.
one last bit of news we're very excited about is that the first annual Mountain Aid will be held in Chatham County N.C. June 19th-20th of this year and we'll be playing alongside Kathy Mattea, Donna the Buffalo and a bunch of other great performers. This festival is a benefit for the Pennies of Promise campaign to get a new school for the kids of Marsh Fork Elementary (www.penniesofpromise.org).
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_______Playing both contemporary and traditional mountain music, Here's to the Long Haul is born of the historic and ongoing movements for justice in Appalachia and beyond. Willie Dodson and Joe Overton first met and played music in Southern West Virginia in 2006 at the second annual Mountain Justice Training Camp, a gathering of folks working together to fight mountaintop removal coal mining (www.mountainjusticesummer.org). The two developed the idea of an Appalachian string band that would celebrate the culture and life of the mountains by playing traditional music and original songs that tell stories of grassroots movements and everyday people in the mountains and far beyond.
We are yet another offshoot of the deep and wandering roots of Appalachian music, fed by the waters of modern grassroots resistance to that which is wrong and the creation of that which is good in our mountains. You all are that water. May we all keep each other strong, singing, and moving forever forward.
