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FarmStrong Celebrates 1st Anniversary with Community Concert in Gardiner

As FarmStrong completes the band’s first trip around the sun together, celebrating its 1st anniversary in April, it has a lot to be excited about and proud of.  In the first year, the band recorded a live album, sold out every concert that they organized and presented to the public, and just recently completed their first tour, to Oregon.  This year, the band looks forward to a bright future together, with concerts and festivals in western and eastern Washington, and plans for a tour of the west coast in the fall, including a presence at the Folk Alliance Western Region Music Conference in Oakland, CA.

To celebrate how far they’ve come, and where they’re going, they’ll put on a concert in a local venue they haven’t played at yet, in Gardiner.  The Gardiner Community Center has a beautiful hall which overlooks Sequim Bay and the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and which has excellent acoustics… perfect for the band’s trademark vocal harmonies and extremely tasteful instrumentation.  FarmStrong is totally committed to making their songs breathe and come to life, and they do that by “making space” for all of the notes, both sung and played.  While the typical bluegrass band sound showers the listener with notes, sometimes playing around, though and over the singing, FarmStrong is always framing the singers with music that props them up for the listener.  There is a reason that the band’s songs often elicit tears from listeners.

Fresh off of their Oregon tour, the band has never sounded better, and the Gardiner concert will undoubtedly be the best concert they’ve presented.  An extra bonus of this concert is that the tickets will be a little less expensive than the regular $15 the band generally charges.  The band wants folks to show up and celebrate with them!  If you purchase tickets in advance through BrownPaperTickets.com, they are only $8.  They will be available at the door for $10.  Spread the word, and get yourself to this show!

New Look for a New Band of Old Guys

FarmStrong brings together some well worn musicians with a lot more music performance experience than high-tech savvy.  Defying the odds, we’ve created a new website here, using WordPress blogging software as our platform.  It seemed appropriate to actually include a blog as well, so that you can hear all of our incredibly interesting ramblings about songs we’re playing, fun band episodes, projects we’re working on, and stories about life on the road.

Yes, we hope to hit the road this year.  Not a lot, but some.  We’re headed to Portland in April for the Eastside Bluegrass Series (http://www.eastsidebluegrass.com/), as well as a few other concerts. And we’re planning a longer tour in October, hopefully covering from east of the Cascades to down in the SF Bay Area, for the Folk Alliance – FAR West Conference. More about that as that takes shape.

We’ll have more info on the site soon, including video, photographs, and a downloadable press kit for those of you nice folks who are considering hiring us for your event. Please let us know what you think, including what you’d like to see. We’ll have an email form here soon, but for now, just message us through our Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/FarmStrongband.

Hope to see y’all at a show soon!