December Newsletter is here!

Our December newsletter is hot off the virtual press! Highlights are a round-up of 2015, our forecast for 2016, a link to our Rockabilly Jingle Bells, Fan Club news, and an appeal for homestay lodging for the Naples leg of our Florida tour at the end of January. Check it out using this link: http://tinyurl.com/jinglebellsjeniandbilly

Thank you for being part of our adventures in 2015!

This year, we played 70 shows in the USA and Britain. We released two live CDs as well as a travel book about our 2014 tour out west. We made t-shirts, tea towels, and tote bags for our tour in Britain and our fans loved them, so we will have them in the USA for 2016 - and we'll have an all new design in Britain this coming summer! Our Jeep bit the dust in 2015, but our VW Golf, Mr Tomato, took up the slack and carried us everywhere this year - plus he carried 90 pounds of Navajo Bluebird Flour across the USA at the end of our Way Out West tour. Zoom!

Wishing you LIGHT and LOVE! Jeni & Billy too

P.S. If you didn't get the newsletter, your email address may have changed, I couldn't decipher your handwriting, I was tired when I typed in your email address, or you never signed up, egads! Just go to the jeniandbilly.com home page and make it all better by signing up in the white box on the righthand side. You won't get this newsletter, but you can read it by following the link above. You will get the next one and that will be lovely!

Dancing on to new ground

We danced right out of Naples and now we are headed up to Hudson, Florida, where we'll play at the library tomorrow. (2pm, if you are in the neighborhood). Then we have a bit of a break until our last two Florida concerts next weekend in Gainesville at Chuck Levy's and New Port Richey -- Gerry & Fred Cload, hosts.

You know, we were a bit bewildered when we started this tour in a fully packed tomato car, but the joy of this  tour has utterly exceeded all of our expectations!

Thank you, friends, near and far who have brought a smile at our concerts or right here with your encouragement. Happy weekend to you!

Thanks to Joyce for this terrific photo from our last Naples concert for 2015. See you in 2016!

Making it personal

Report from Naples, FL: in two hours this sea of chairs will be a sea of people. Some will be friends, some will be strangers. By the end of our concert, we hope they will all be friends. I am still surprised that in an hour of telling stories and playing songs for people, people will come to the table and buy CDs, tell me a story about their grandfather, and even invite us to stay with them the next time we are in town. We've been coming to Naples for six years and every visit has its own shape and character. Sometimes, a husband or wife will come to the table alone and I will learn that one of our fans who I've hugged and laughed with has gone on up to the picnic on the sky. It's a very personal business, what we do and how we do it. I once talked with a record executive and fellow songwriter who said that Billy and I make a point of making it personal. And he was right. What matters most to me is whether we brought joy today, whether someone may have cried, whether they learned something new, did they have a change of heart, and did they feel they were celebrated by being here and being part of this temporary group of 200 people who will never all be in the same room at the same time with us again? I am so very grateful that this is my work and that you, the libraries, the folk clubs, the cafes, the volunteers, our families, the truck stops, and the mystery of life are with us. Thank you!

Travels with polka dots

Report from Camp JillyBenny, Naples, FL: I admit it. I gave in and bought a pair of delicious flannel polka dot pajamas at Marshalls for $15. It's not cold here compared to NYC, of course, but when the mercury drops below 50 at night in a tent I call that authentically chilly! And how is it that in all my moving from town to town as a kid, I never read Steinbeck's Travels With Charley? What a terrific book and only a dollar in mint condition from the library book sale! Thanks to Debbie Snider for knitting me this hat which I love so much. What is it about fab pajamas that makes me want to jump up and down with glee??

Headquarters

Report from a sleep deprived correspondent with tent hair from Naples, FL: Concert at Headquarters Library at 2pm. Wear your own tent hair if you like!

Rainbows in the rain

Report from Camp JillyBenny, Naples, Florida: Business first, due to the very inconsiderate rain that persists on falling in sheets & drizzles the concert has been moved to the screened room just at the front entrance of the campground. Still at 2pm and they will have tacos.

The camp is holding fast. Despite torrential rain last night, we stayed completely dry in our tiny sleeping tent and our living room tent is water tight as well. Woohooo! On the other hand everything is damp and our hair just gets curlier and curlier.

If the rain stops in the next hour we will be able to do our load-in without getting completely soaked. Otherwise, I may look like a Pomeranian for the entire concert.

Spirits are high, though, in some part because everything in our tent happens to be rainbow colored so it's like we're in a cartoon of our own.

Happy adventures wherever you may be today! And stay dry!

Indifferent worlds

Report from The Hammock, Collier Seminole State Park, Florida: How many worlds flourish unseen and indifferent to us? Trees grow, then fall down. We do not move them, time does. And time moves us, too. My favorite scene from our walk on our first day off in Naples. 

Turbocharged start

Report from Marco Island, Florida: Do the fates know that we seriously need a new turbocharger for our Jeep even though we've just put insane amounts of money into the Jeep? Are they spinning their tapestry and deciding that they'll weave in green and gold strands for us? I only ask because we usually sell all of two CDs at this library, but we sold ten times that many this time around! Did we sing better? We're we funnier? Did we accidentally hypnotize the crowd? I am just really thankful that the first four gigs of the year went even better than expected -- by miles! One thing I loved about Japan is that the Japanese were not at all funny about making offerings for things like success with a turbocharger. Turbocharger prayers are most appreciated. If the tour continues in this vein, we may have one in our future and the Airstream will be swimming the asphalt sea again! 

Hungry for Hungrytown

How absolutely thrilling to get to hear our dearest friends Hungrytown perform in Naples. And how happy we were to have them come hear us, too. Like us, they are on a tour around Florida right now, so check out their calendar and go hear them before they head over to New Zealand or something wild like that. www.Hungrytown.net

I took this snap as they sang a gorgeous a capella version of Woody Guthrie's Pastures of Plenty, which I am glad to say is on their next record!!

First of six Naples Concerts

Short Report from Marco Island, Florida: Here goes the first of six Naples concerts! Setting up now, come over to the Marco Island Library if you're tired of this cloudy day and hear some sunshine at 5:30. 

Tent time!

Report from Naples, Florida: We are on the verge of arriving at the Collier-Seminole campground where we'll be reunited with our terrific friends, Hungrytown! We'll get to hear them perform & play some concerts ourselves, too! We'll be setting up our tent compound & making dinner! Yummmmmm.

Naples, Florida Concerts

Our first Naples concert of the year starts at 5:30 at the Marco Island Library -- it's packed! But we have six concerts here in the next ten days. So come and visit with us at the Collier County Libraries or at Collier Seminole Stare Park! Details on our website. www.jeniandbilly.com