April 22, 2011: Plant seeds and sing songs.
In the spring, you watch for the grass to start turning green and growing. You wait for the leaves to unfurl. You anxiously search for those first blooms to gently open to the world. Well, this spring, you will need to keep an extra eye out for Leela and Ellie Grace because they are gonna be sprouting up all over!

As of Tuesday night, the 2600-mile distance between the sisters has shrunk to approximately 5 feet! Leela arrived in Asheville to spend a week working up new music and performing several shows in beautiful Western North Carolina. If you are near Asheville, NC, don’t miss their concert on Monday, April 25!! In May, Leela and Ellie will pack their bags and their new songs and hit the road for a tour across the Midwest. Find out what they’ve been up to since the last time you heard from them…

Spring Tour Dates (Go to Tour page for details):
* April 23-24: Asheville, NC. Biltmore Estate.
* Monday, April 25: Asheville, NC. Concert at The Magnetic Field
* Saturday, May 7 (Leela): Portland, OR. w/Chris Kokesh at Artichoke Music
* Monday, May 9 (Ellie): Asheville, NC. Contra Dance W/Blue Eyed Girl at The Grey Eagle
Leela and Ellie Grace Midwest Tour:
* Friday, May 13: Kansas City, MO. Concert presented by KC Folk Music
* Saturday, May 14: St. Louis, MO. Concert at The Focal Point
* Sunday, May 15: St. Louis, MO. Afternoon Workshops at The Folk School of St. Louis
* Tuesday, May 17: Alton, IL. Concert at the Hayner Library
* Wednesday, May 18: Fairfield, IA. Concert at Cafe Paradiso
* Thursday, May 19: Warrenville, IL (Chicago area). Concert with Fox Valley Folklore Society
* Saturday, May 21: Columbia, MO. Hometown Concert with Open Borders Music Series

Since last joining musical forces to teach at a wonderful bluegrass camp outside of Edmonton, Alberta last October, they have been rocking the music and dance scenes in their respective hometowns. Ellie spent the fall performing across the Southeast with her beautiful old-time band, Blue Eyed Girl, and touring more widely with other dance companies and bands. Meanwhile, back in the mountains, she was busy directing and creating innovative choreography for her Cape Breton step-dancing troupe, Twistycuffs. This winter she fulfilled a long-term dream by appearing in the musical “Rent.” All the way across the country, in Portland, Oregon, Leela was performing solo shows and collaborating with singer-songwriter and fiddler, Chris Kokesh. She also was featured in a successful percussive dance show presented by sean-nos Irish dancer, Maldon Meehan. In February of this year, Leela made a splash as a solo artist at the International Folk Alliance in Memphis, TN. She has also continued to ruin many of the good residents of Portland by teaching them the joys of the banjo, harmony singing, and clogging.

Best of the Spring to you!
Ellie and Leela

December 10, 2009: Though we have been back on American soil for quite some time now, we are still glowing from the warm reception we received from our dear neighbors to the north.  We catch ourselves humming the stirring national anthem, O Canada!  Okay, we don’t actually know the melody. . . or the words.  So, really we are simply saying “O Canada” repeatedly.  The point being that our October 2009 Home Routes Tour through western Canada was an amazing adventure and grand success!  The curious among you can read more about it further down in this newsletter or, since they say a picture is worth a thousand words, you can simply visit our photo album on Facebook.  

In spite of the fact that we missed both Black Friday and Cyber Monday (did you even know there was such a thing?), we still want to offer a special holiday sale to our faithful fans.  Between now and the end of the year, our 2008 release, Where the Waters Run, and our Leela and Ellie Grace  t-shirt will be on sale for $14!  Our previous self-titled release will stay the same price since it is flirting with collector’s item status as supplies run low.  Our CDs and T-Shirts can be ordered through our website store. Our latest release is also available through indie distributor CDbaby and can be digitally downloaded through iTunes and digstation.com.  We would be honored if you gave our music as a gift this holiday season!   

And now the story of Leela and Ellie’s Excellent Adventure 2009. . . We kicked off the tour in style, performing for a full house at Artichoke Music in Portland, OR.  Leela’s fine banjo and singing students and many other friends and fans came out en force to cheer us on and send us off to Canada!  From our vantage point at the far end of the tour, we know that it was a roaring success and a brilliant adventure, but our initial foray onto Canadian soil got off to a bit of a shaky start.  With all of our instruments, CDs, proper documentation, and grand enthusiasm in tow, we were dismayed to be held at the border for five hours.  Perhaps they had heard one too many banjo jokes and were made highly suspicious by that banjo in the backseat.  After shuffling us around to several different border crossings, they finally realized they had made a mistake (though they did not say as much) and announced that there was no problem with us coming into Canada after all, but there must be a caveat.  And that caveat was that all of our CDs had to be stored in the back room of an IGA grocery store in a tiny town in Washington State in order for them to allow our entry into their country!  With no other option and daylight fading fast, we signed the paperwork (usually for gun storage) and left hundreds of our CDs in a rickety shopping cart.  Five hours behind schedule and with a bit less faith in humanity, we finally crossed onto Canadian soil.  Ah, but the amazing, welcoming, generous people we proceeded to meet along the way more than restored that lost faith!

We got up early the next morning, with only a few hours of sleep under our belts, to try to make up lost time and make it to our first venue, still over a thousand kilometers away.  As we continued to drive north in the early morning hours, there was no doubt in our minds that we were arriving in winter.   In a lifetime of performing, we have never missed a performance.  But as we battled treacherously icy roads and blizzard conditions in high mountain passes, we were heartbroken to have to cancel our concert in Fort St. John, BC.  We were taken in on that cold, winter night by a Home Routes host with a round house in the bush. . . with a llama wondering about, no indoor plumbing, a woodstove for heat, and solar panels for electricity.  Rested up and relieved to be safe, we finally arrived on day three of our adventure at our first show in Grand Prairie, AB!  The crazy things we do to bring a little more music into this world.  The warm, cozy bookstore where we played that night and the wonderful folks who welcomed us to our first of many successful shows made it all worthwhile!

And that was just the beginning. We cannot explain in words the beautiful country that we saw and the amazing communities we were welcomed into each night. The full house in the majestic Canadian Rockies in Hinton. . .the sparkling fireside concert at a church in Spruce Grove. . .the raucous, laughing crowd in Evansburg. . .the sweet evening of music on the sheep farm in St. Paul. . .the enthusiastic, packed room in St. Albert. . .the homey Singing Waitress Café in Lloydminster. . .the Canadian cowboys in Ponoka. . .the animated music lovers in Edmonton. . .the incredible community in Rocky Mountain House. . . the final grand show in Calgary. 

We had the realization that our tour was amusingly similar to a blind date.  For over two weeks, we were driving through the Canadian countryside, following directions provided by Home Routes to the houses of people whom we had never met.  The hosts were opening their homes to a pair of sisters whose music they had likely never heard prior to our concert.  And it worked spectacularly!   Canada, we would consider going steady with you. 

We came home with many new friends and fans, memories of amazing conversations about politics and culture and music, a true appreciation for all of our house concert hosts, a deepened love for the Canadian landscape and society, and a healthy respect for icy roads and border guards.   Though the U.S. may not have a wonderful centralized organization like Home Routes to create house concert circuits, there are still house concerts happening all across the country.   For those of you who have never had the opportunity to attend a show in one of these venues, we highly recommend it.  Perhaps you even have the perfect living room to host a concert for a touring musician. . . move some furniture, borrow some chairs, and create a night you will never forget!

After spending much of this year on the road, we are both ready to stay a little closer to home this winter. Leela is gathering a growing army of banjo and harmony singing students who may soon take over the world (in the most peaceful possible way, of course). She will continue doing solo performances around Portland and working with other musicians from the Northwest. Ellie is busily preparing her Cape Breton step dancing group for upcoming performances in Asheville. You may also find her performing regionally this winter with her fabulous old-time trio, Blue Eyed Girl. We look forward to seeing what mysterious adventures will come our way in the spring of 2010.

We wish you all warmth and peace this winter. 

Ellie and Leela  

October 5, 2009: We are feeling the beginnings of that certain chill in the air. . . loving the crisp, cool mornings. . . watching the first leaves give up the fight and float down to the ground.  And what are we doing to celebrate the arrival of fall and the coming of the cold air?  What any foolhardy folk musicians would do, of course, we are driving over a thousand miles north of Portland, Oregon and going on tour in Canada! 

After a wild summer of traveling, performing, or teaching in over thirty states and with thousands of miles and many cross-country flights under our belts, perhaps we should sit back and rest on our laurels.  Or maybe just sit back and rest.  But conquering the continental United States just isn’t enough!  And so we are about to behold nearly 3,000 miles of spectacular Canadian countryside and share our music and dance along the way!   

We are going to be on tour for two weeks in British Columbia, Alberta, and Saskatchewan through a wonderful Canadian non-profit organization called Home Routes.  Home Routes, according to their website (www.homeroutes.ca), is dedicated to “the love of music, to making music more accessible to a greater number of people and to supporting the artists that make the music.”  The organization teaches people in towns all across Canada how to host house concerts and then hires world-class roots musicians to perform on circuits through these communities.  We will be welcomed into a new community every day and will play a show every night for two weeks. 

To kick off this tour, we are meeting in Leela’s adopted hometown of Portland, OR to perform a special show at Artichoke Music.  This will be our first full evening concert in Portland since Leela moved there over two years ago!  Spread the word to your Oregonian friends!   

We hope you can get out and enjoy this beautiful fall. And with the winter holidays fast approaching, don’t forget that our 2008 CD, Where the Waters Run, along with our debut CD and our limited edition  t-shirt, can still be ordered from our website. Our latest release is also available through indie distributor CDBaby (http://cdbaby.com/cd/leelaelliegrace) and can be digitally downloaded through iTunes and digstation.com.  For tour details, click on Tour. We hope to see you down the road!

Peace,
Leela and Ellie

August 25, 2009:  This will be a brief update to let you know about some exciting upcoming performances. We hope you are having a beautiful August wherever this finds you. Leela and Ellie have had a wonderfully busy and successful summer of performing and teaching from Portland, Oregon to Asheville, North Carolina to the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Currently, Leela is in Missouri visiting family on her way to meet Ellie in La Crosse, Wisconsin. Ellie is currently near Boston, MA, teaching at Pinewoods Camper’s Week. This coming weekend, we are very excited to bring our new music back to the Great River Folk Festival in La Crosse, WI. It is really a wonderful little festival with an always-stellar lineup of music. Come see us there, or tell your Wisconsin friends about the festival! We have also just added the sweet Turtle Hill Folk Festival near Rochester, NY September 12-13! Go to our online calendar to find out more about these festivals.

Back home in Portland, Leela will be continuing to teach her clawhammer banjo students and will be offering her By-Ear Harmony Singing Class and a Beginning Clawhammer Banjo Class at Artichoke Music. In Asheville, Ellie will be performing regionally with her wonderful three-woman band, Blue-Eyed Girl. In October, Leela and Ellie will meet again in the Northwest and commence a 2-week house concert tour of British Columbia and Alberta! We are so excited to venture into Canada again! Check our website for details as they emerge.

Peace,
Leela and Ellie

April 9, 2009: We can hardly believe that it is already April! We hope you are basking in a beautiful spring wherever you are. We also hope, for your sake, that you have already dutifully filed those pesky tax returns, unlike your favorite self-employed, procrastinator duo of musical sisters whose respective complex forms still lie blank next to piles of receipts. We know a band in Lawrence, Kansas who goes to the post office every April 15^th and performs the William Tell Overture (a.k.a. the Lone Ranger theme) as last-minute filers rush to make the midnight postmark deadline. That tune may be serenading us in the near future, if we don’t put pencil to form 1040 very soon! 

Since you last heard from us, we have been busy in our respective locales (Leela in Portland, OR and Ellie in Asheville, NC), teaching and performing. Between a sprinkling of solo performances, Leela has a roster of students being tutored in the mysteries of clawhammer banjo at Artichoke Music, taught a clogging workshop at the Portland Old Time Gathering in January, and will be offering classes in beginning banjo and by-ear harmony singing starting in June. Ellie has kept several groups of percussive dancers jumping (literally) with her Cape Breton Step Dancing and Appalachian Clogging classes, while also performing regionally with her wonderful three-woman band, Blue-Eyed Girl.  

In the last week, Leela has enjoyed a lovely beginning to April in Oregon with a string of sunny, warm days. For Ellie in North Carolina, April was ushered in by week of dreary, rainy weather, usually the norm for the Pacific Northwest this time of year. Leela tried not to gloat too much, especially since she will be joining Ellie in the southeastern states in less than a week! 

That’s right, folks. In whirlwind bit of last minute plotting, we have planned a little sister reunion that is coming right up! We’ll be offering several performances, including our first ever house concert in Atlanta, Georgia on Thursday, April 23, organized by dance caller extraordinaire, Seth Tepfer. Find out more on our online calendar and tell anyone you know in the Atlanta area! 

We are continuing to add dates to our summer performance calendar, including the wonderful Family Week at Ogontz (near Lyman, NH) and the amazing Great River Folk Festival in La Crosse, Wisconsin, both in August. Keep an eye on our website for potential duo dates in the Midwest in June, in the Northwest in July, and more! 

Don’t forget that our CD, Where the Waters Run, along with our debut CD and our limited edition  t-shirt, (which says “We will join together one by one until a drop becomes a flood” – yes we DID!) can still be ordered from our web store. Our latest release is also available through indie distributor CDBaby and can be digitally downloaded through iTunes and digstation.com.  

We hope to see you (and/or someone you know – in Atlanta, GA, for example) at one of our upcoming concerts. For more tour details, click on Tour.

Peace,
Leela and Ellie