Mastering Luck

Big Picnic Day in Nashville for Jeni & Billy! Mastering our new live CD, "Jeni & Billy - Live from LA with The Big Picnic Band." Sounding wild with energy and magical moments of musical collaboration!!! We'll be taking it with us to Britain at the end of April. If you are in the USA or Canada and would like a copy before you catch us on tour again, send $17.50 (USA fans) or $24.50 (Canadian fans, sorry, horrible postage costs) to jeniandbilly@gmail.com via PayPal. If you'd rather send a check, message me. CDs will go out in late April. UK fans, we'll have them at all shows! 

Mixing, Mastering, & Printing CDs is a crazy expensive undertaking, so pre-orders are always a happy happy thing for us!

First ever band versions of three of these Jeni & Billy favorites, and one of the first songs I wrote, The Hoot Owl, with Craig Eastman on an eerie gourd violin (a Rebec) that takes you right into the Appalachian mountains. Plus live versions of six songs from Picnic in the Sky. I love live CDs. They are always my favorite CDs of my favorite artists like Joni Mitchell's Miles of Aisles and Buena Vista Social Club. This live recording has crazy energy, everyone! We all brought our very best creative selves to this night and it's Jeni & Billy like you've never heard us before. 

The Hoot Owl

Chicken Ridge

McHenry Street

Picnic in the Sky

Reckoning Day

The Robin & the Banjo

The Mill Hurries On

The Mystery of You & Me

If I Ever Get $10

Sweet Song Coming Round

Dillon O'Brian on Piano, Organ, Accordion & Guitar

Craig Eastman on Violin, Low Violin, Rebec, Mandolin & Lap Steel

Dave Way on Bass

Denny Weston, Jr on Percussion including the famous Shovel & Rake

Billy Kemp on Vocals, Guitar, Banjo & Harmonica 

Jeni Hankins on Vocals, Guitar, Banjo, Mandolin & Flatfoot

Mixed by Dave Way

Reckoning Day – LIVE at Caltech! Our FIRST official concert video!

We are over the moon to announce our all new YouTube Channel and launch our FIRST official concert video "Reckoning Day -- Live" performed with the Big Picnic Band at the Pasadena Folk Society on November 15, 2014. PLEASE FEEL FREE TO SHARE and we hope you will subscribe to our YouTube Channel, so you'll be the first to see our new videos. We have several in the hopper right now! 

Tremendous thanks to Pattie Van Over and Mark Indictor for creating the video with such love and care. You two are stellar! And many many thanks to Dave Way for mixing the live performance so lushly and beautifully (P.S. Ahhhhhh!!!!! Wheeee!!! On the new Grammy, Dave!).

This night was made possible through the enormous talents of the Big Picnic Band -- Craig Eastman, Dillon O'Brian, Denny Weston Jr., and Dave Way. Special thanks to Ali Moynihan Eastman for being our angel that night and looking after ever detail as only a best friend can.

And thanks to Greg Hankins for helping me get our YouTube channel in order. 

Remember to subscribe to our Channel for new videos.

And PLEASE consider SHARING "Reckoning Day -- Live" to get the word out about our music! 

You'll also find several newly added videos for Henry Lee and Single Girl (originally a special feature on our Longing for Heaven CD). And we've highlighted some of our favorite fan videos on our favorites page. 

All so exciting! Thank you for celebrating with us! Yes!

A masterpiece!

Here's the second of the terrific reviews that came on yesterday! Thanks so much to  Richard Smith for writing it and sending it out of the blue yesterday! One of our all time favorites along with especially smart reviews by Hazel Davis, Paul Kerr, and Three Chords & the Truth.

This and the Sing Out review take the edge off the totally chaotic scene here in Nashville as we quickly switch to touring in a VW Golf & tent for the next four weeks instead of the Airstream. Bebe the Jeep is still in the ER with a major costly repair ahead. Crossing fingers for Hollywood to call & say they want to use Reckoning Day in a new Keira Knightley film, so that we can get the Jeep out of hoc in February! :)

Ah, the glamour of folk music! But at least we are going to Florida where tent camping is feasible in January! We could have been destined for South Dakota!

Hope you'll send us luck as we get everything packed in time! Here we go into the attic for the sleeping bags....

The best review of my life just happened to come in today….

Sing Out on Picnic in the Sky!

When you send your CD out for review, it's a very odd act of hope and fear. When you get back two of the best reviews of your life in the same day, you wonder if something is in the air. I'll post one today and one tomorrow. Thanks very much to Sing Out for this review!

I hope you will read it and leave a comment on their site and/or here!

This is the review I have been dreaming of ever since I decided to hang up straight poetry and start putting my poems in song form about 12 years ago. I was sitting in the Old-time tent at Merlefest listening to Polecat Creek sing a bone-chiling a cappella ballad about a widowed man overwhelmed by his children. They were singing, what to me, was a poem. Later that same year, I heard Anne Hills sing a haunting song with a Tibetan singing bell, and I felt she was calling to me to lift my voice and sing simply about “them that made me.”

The place I come from in the coalfields of Appalachia is one of the the most beautiful and misunderstood places in the world. And it is my aim in life to continue to tell the stories of my home as best as I can. If I am called to turn my pen to other places like West Baltimore, then I will follow that call and bring my best words to it. I am ready to tell every story that comes to me and I can only hope that someone like Mr Weir will take notice. Absolutely, because it feels great and encourages me. I cried when I read this review. But I also hope this review will mean that the stories of these places and these people who called to me, will reach others who may need to hear these particular stories.

I have been sustained, galvanized, soothed, and troubled by storytellers, including mentors like Hazel Dickens and Sarah Ogan Gunning, in my life and I hope very much to “do them proud” as Mawmaw would say. This review encourages me to keep at it.
Thank you very much, Mr Weir, from me, Billy, and the Big Picnic Band!

California Dreaming at Caltech

Short report from Pasadena, California:

When your dreams come true,

sing a new old tune,

wear a yellow dress,

bring your friends,

so they can dream with you.

When dreams comes true,

have your true love by your side,

wear a yellow dress,

and have your heart open wide.

The Big Picnic Band at Caltech on November 15, 2014 -- including fellow dreamers, Craig Eastman, Dave Way, Dillon O'Brian & Denny Weston Jr. (special guest Carolyn Baker not pictured here). Also not pictured, dreamer Alison Moynihan-Eastman, right hand woman, and dreamer Patricia VanOver, Filming guru.

Photo by dreamer and songstress, Fur Dixon.

Big Picnic Band

Short Report from Sherman Oaks, California: The Big Picnic Band! Thrilled to pieces, chuffed to bits! Photo by Alison Moynihan-Eastman!

Rehearsal time

Short Report from Los Angeles, California: On our way to rehearse with the Big Picnic Band! Concert tomorrow, Sat Nov 15, Pasadena Folk Music Society at Caltech. 8pm start. http://folkmusic.caltech.edu