February 8, 2010

 As the winter roars on in the northern states, we’ve cocooned ourselves in Florida and are transforming an edgy folk album into an alternative wonderland. We have no definite date on the album’s release (we’ve been hard at work for almost 2 years), but hope to join our producer in Philadelphia in April to mix the spices into a magical meal for your ears.

 Our shows have been sparse, but our voices have been growing both spectral and dark and our sound has been evolving in ways both beautiful and strange, in ways only the songs themselves can explain.

September 14, 2009

Outside our Pennsylvania Studio lives a skunk named Ramblewood who emerges from his den at two a.m., scrounges around in our basil plant, hungry for fresh banana peels, and never fails to leave us a handful of flower petals from the blooming bushes he rambles through on his way to say hello. We wish you all could meet him, though he is shy and might not know what to make of you, being so tall and dressed in clothes.

Since we last wrote we appeared on A TELEVISION SHOW. You can watch it on our VIDEO PAGE.

Once the show cuts to the Peach Orchards, you may take a break, walk around the block, perform some rigorous stretches, etc. because the peach segment drags a bit, though there are some jovial moments with the cowboy in the straw hat. WE DO RETURN AT THE END OF THE SHOW FOR MORE MUSIC!

At the end of our Northeast Tour, we played at two marvelous and mystical venues, The Moondancer Winery’s Annual Folk Festival, and Philadelphia’s PSALM Salon, which is run by a wise world-wanderer and truly joyful being. We treasured our time at Moondancer and at PSALM and made some lifelong friends, including the wonderful duo, Folk By Association.

Our crisp, autumn thanks to all who joined us on the journey and all who have yet to meet us on the vibrant sine wave of time. 

July 28, 2009

July was a bottle rocket filled with guitars and sparks. We started the month with a wonderful live show on SOUNDSTAGE 1520 (WCHE) near Philadelphia, interviewing and playing with host Charlie Silvestri, who was so generous that he gave me (Wolff) a very fine straw cowboy hat which came in mighty handy at the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival, which ended a few days ago and was a staggering scene of rainstorm after muddy rainstorm, spiced with hard-driving sun which painted our skin red in tiger stripes. The highlight of our trip was playing with Bread and Bones, a magical trio from Vermont whose song “Time is Passing” is a haunting, yet uplifting anthem of this wild ride we’re all on. We also enjoyed a whole slew of other musicians around the campfires including Coyote Grace, Lucky 13, Phil Henry and on and on. Our most memorable and venerable show this month was at Bob Beach’s house in Philadelphia where we played in a hallowed parlor haunted with the sounds of the Avett Brothers, Samantha Crain and other rising lights. Bob was an amazing host and a master on harp. He graciously and gorgeously accompanied us on many of our songs, lifting them to new levels of musical grace. We thank him. We thank you all…

Here's a link to our show on SOUNDSTAGE 1520:

http://soundstage.podomatic.com/entry/2009-07-06T06_50_43-07_00

May 29, 2009

My littlest niece, Parker, says she likes Pennsylvania because she likes pencils. And pencils are great, she says, because she can draw beautiful pictures with them. Pictures with rowboats and giraffes and drums. She plays a drum kit, by the way. A tiny drum kit with all the fixins. I asked her if she plays it often and she told me that she does, but sometimes she’s scared to play because people might hear and it would be too loud. We know how you feel, Parker, since The Orphan Trains have been working on, nay, banging on, a fine set of drums here in quiet Wyomissing…

May 10, 2009

The Orphan Trains are pleased to announce that our very own Amanda Birdsall won 3rd place in the Susquehanna Music Festival's Songwriting Contest this year. Independence Day (from On The Night You Were Born) was one of her two songs!! We made the drive to Havre De Grace, Maryland and enjoyed a rich and rollicking evening at SMAF, then drove the dark road back to Pennsylvania in the cool pre-dawn of Saturday Morning.

April 29, 2009

 In a few days, we’re off on our Northeast Tour, which begins in Maryland with Amanda’s Performance at the Susquehanna Music & Art Festival’s Songwriting Contest. She’ll be performing “Independence Day” from our first album and we’re very excited about her being chosen as a finalist! Then, we’ll be roaring along the leprechaun roads and beautiful byways of Pennsylvania, stopping off in York, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Harrisburg and many other spots. We hope you who are reading this will take the time to make a trip for music. We’ll be out there playing it for you as the whole East coast whips into summer with seven billion saplings rising and seventy billion blooms.

March 31, 2009

As summer rumbles his way into the South, flickering lightning through the sky, we’re toiling in the dark cavern of music-making and rehearsal, tuning ourselves for Northern Adventures ahead. We’ve booked a handful of dates in the Northeast and will begin those shows in May. Until then, we’ll continue to wrestle alligators in the recording studio flipping them over on their bellies so they can sleep and dream and sing. Our movie of the month is The Bothersome Man, a foreign film about a world without art where everyone is content to busy themselves with redecorating. It’s a wonder of a film, a poem with strata of thought and imagery. After nearly thirty shows since our return from Oregon, we’re blessed to be barreling along the curvy tracks of our musical life, smiling into the brisk and cooling wind.

March 2, 2009

February was a blizzard of a month for us, with a dozen music shows, the Coconut Grove Arts Festival and a red burst of tomatoes in the yard outside. Though the treefrogs have been strangely silent, we’ve enjoyed the twittering of sun-soaked birds hopping through the bare sea-grape branches at twilight. Wolff’s poem “Into The Day of Saturn” was quoted by renowned astrologer Rob Brezsny (see Scorpio)and Amanda played & interviewed live on WLRN’s Folk Music Show in Miami while I stayed back at our Coconut Grove Booth and sold a massive, painted bouquet to a couple who taught me the mystical qualities of the number 18. We played some truly marvelous venues last month, including the Labyrinth Café Concert Series in Fort Lauderdale and Luna Star Café, a legendary original music venue that has been singing for 13 years and outlasted the onslaught of Starbucks and other big chains which swooped in and later collapsed. We’d like to thank all of the wonderful folks who came out to support our music! This week, we’re gearing up for a west coast (of Florida) three-date tour in which we’ll play Pine Island, Ft. Myers and Naples. And what a glorious time to roam. The sun is in the sky and the wind is winter-crisp.

January 22, 2009

 We’ve survived our first frozen Florida night, while the rest of the country shivers under bargeloads of snow. Tonight will be the third cold night, but it’s warm inside and our guitars are by our sides. In fact, Dakota is strumming away in the distance, two doors away in her songwriting studio. The months have been roaring along, and we’ve been playing shows at many strange and stunning locations, including an animal-painted stage at a festival in Melbourne, an Elks Lodge for the holiday party of the Experimental Aircraft Association and several art festivals. When we’re not playing music, we’re wandering through the armadillo-infested scrub wilderness nearby, preparing feasts from the steady bounty of our garden or dreaming of the rebirth of America, which, it seems, has begun with a brand new president and a cold snap and millions of smiles.

November 10th, 2008

Two nights ago we played a house concert under a giant bonsai tree, then drove home through a sky of shooting stars and slept late while my wonderful, magical grandmother passed away. One of our new songs, “Long May You Live” had been altered for her, to try to keep her here with us, but after watching nine tubes and a dozen painful procedures plunge her into suffering, I sang the lyrics the old way again, wishing her peace on her swift journey away from here. She valiantly fought cigarette-caused throat cancer 30 years ago and died from that same cancer, come back from the dark underbelly of the sinister devil, Tobacco. She never smoked after the first cancer, but, the damage had been done. She’ll always be with us. Smiling. Sassy. Walking us through her garden in the sunshine, pointing out the orchids and tomatoes and ant lions. Long May She Live in our music, our hearts, our journeys through rain and reunion and release.

You can see her dancing in our video for You & I.

You can also read a poem I wrote for her by clicking this link.

September 24, 2008

The musical highlight of our summer in Oregon was taking the stage and playing a few songs at a Portland House Concert for the Minstrel Prince, Danny Schmidt. As Danny roared north to Alaska and we stepped out of our summer songwriting cocoon, it was wonderful to spend time with such a gracious soul and true friend. From what we heard of his new songs, Danny’s next album will be phenomenal. From the jumping “Swing Me Down” to the simmering “Firestorm” he mesmerized the crowd. Then, we were up, and since my guitar, Lilliana, was being temperamental, we played his guitar, a well-loved, road-honed instrument. It was like writing a poem with Pablo Neruda’s pen. Dakota Rose sang her powerful “Jenell” and I sang “You & I.” The sun sank over Oregon, straight into the Pacific, and we were surrounded by peaceful souls, artists and windpower workers and the tiniest, cutest puppy imaginable, who we filmed for our new YouTube Video. We drove home with our bones full of smiles and our ears full of stunning sound.

August 30, 2008   

We had just returned to Oregon. Settling into our apartment, gathering groceries, drawing with crayons on the walls, etc. It was late night, 2 AM. When I hear Dakota scream in the kitchen. Guess what? A foot-long slug. No, not a foot-long sub. That would have been a NICE SURPRISE. A foot-long roast-chicken sub with spinach. But, no. This was a FOOT-LONG SLUG that appeared to have crawled out of our kitchen cabinet, since there was no slime-trail leading from anywhere else to the slug. Just the slug, leopard-spotted and smiling, her antennae poised for the photograph I rapidly took. "Welcome back to Oregon!" The big, banana slug seemed to say. I took her outside on a piece of paper which rapidly became a sheet of slime and set her free on a tree outside. She didn’t let go of the paper, so I let her have the paper as a gesture of goodwill. It had the lyrics to a new song, a great song, a song about some elves who “borrow” a three-wheeled bike and terrorize the workers at a microchip factory. What a song! But sometimes you just have to let go when it comes to a slug.

August, 1 2008