The Konsorados & Allen Dobb

May 11th,12th,13th 2012

The tour celebrates music & sight with partial proceeds going to the Trish Turner Memorial Fund (Seva Canada).

Seva Canada is an organization marking 30 years of service preventing blindness and restoring sight in developing countries.

For more information please visit their website @ www.seva.ca

The tour begins in Victoria :

Friday, May 11th, Victoria
The Solstice Cafe 529 Pandora Ave. tel 250-475-0477
doors open 7:30 pm show at 8:00 (food available) admission by donation

Saturday, May 12th, Duncan
Duncan Garage Showroom (upstairs) 201-330 Duncan Street
doors open at 7:30 pm, show 8:00 pm
advance tickets $12 for sale at Ten Old Books tel 250-715-1383; $15 at the door

Sunday afternoon, May 13th, Lantzville
House Concert at 7329 Millard Drive
doors open at 1:30 pm, show 2:00 pm, admission by donation
call Donna at 250-390-4592 to reserve

The Konsorados are a husband and wife Folk/Roots duo from Lantzville, B.C.

Donna Konsorado a singer-songwriter and music promoter. Her roots in Western Canada stretch from her current home on  Vancouver Island to the big sky landscape of Saskatchewan. Donna’s unique style of folk music reveals her prairie roots, and embraces the sensibilities of Vancouver Island and the coast.

Donna spent many years playing and touring with Roots/Blues artist Ken Hamm,

and has promoted concerts in the Nanaimo area for artists such as John Reischman, Tom Wilson, David Essig, Tim Williams, Joel Fafard, Doug Cox & Betty Soo.

She supports Seva Canada (blindness prevention in developing countries) by donating a percentage of the proceeds from each concert to the Trish Turner Memorial Fund.

Bill Konsorado is a keyboard player and percussionist.

He received classical training on piano early in life but soon found improvised music a more natural form of expression.

Bill has been around pianos all is life and is a professional Piano Tuner/Technician. During the 1980’s and 90’s he performed and recorded with Neo Tribal Vision, a world beat tropical party band on Vancouver Island.

With his wife Donna, in the Konsorados, he provides instrument and rhythmic accompaniment to her original songs and adaptations of other songwriter’s material. He also performs his own instrumental compositions and unique arrangements of popular melodies. In addition to traditional piano and organ sounds on the keyboard. He uses a number of realistic guitar sounds that compliment the rootsy nature of Donna’s vocals. Bill is also pioneering a one man band technique, playing drum-kit simultaneously with the keyboard.

… like pulling up a chair in the kitchen kinda music that’ll get you tapping your toes and smiling in no time.”  Gillian Butler…

Allen Dobb  …”is one of the finest and most literate tunesmiths in this country” … Peter North, Edmonton Journal

He knows the country. He’s farmed and tossed bales of hay, juggled an academic career in Range Management from Washington State University, and applied his education in the Arizona desert and on African plains. You can hear his travels and deep roots in every song.

His music career has taken him to major festivals across North America with his former band “Dobb & Dumela” and as a solo artist.

For the past few years Allen has been a member of the District of Highlands Council, his focus, time and passion has been directed toward community on southern Vancouver Island.

Music in your eyes Tour will bring Allen down from the mountain for a rare musical treat. A celebration of community, music and sight.  www.allendobb.com

We’ve just returned in body, our minds to follow at a later date ? When people heard we were going they asked if we were going there to tour or if we were bringing instruments at least? No, just bringing ours ears and hoping to search out some of the local music, which we did. We celebrated Bob Dylan’s Birthday on Rhodes Island, Greece with a group of ex pats, swapping  songs and telling stories of what Dylan’s songs meant to each of us. I also played a few songs on a borrowed guitar at a dinner party we were invited to at a carpet shop in Ürgüp Cappadocia but that was it and that was just fine.

We heard some wonderful musicians mostly playing traditional Turkish instruments, dumbek, saz, a banjo type instrument (çumbuş) that was really loud because of the aluminum pot. We went to a Whirling Dervish show at a Caravansaray in Cappadocia, the musicians and dancers where amazing. We came away from the ceremony truly humbled by the beauty and conviction of the performers. Rumi lived not far from the area we were visiting in a city called Konya.

“In generosity and helping others be like a river…” Rumi

It was good to be away and good to come home. I feel out of the loop here but have crossed over another one that will forever be part of my experience. How lucky we are…

“Turkey is like a jewel in my memory” Randy Adams

Bill and I had a very successful tour in the spring adding in a cattle drive and some visiting. This was our first time out on the road playing music together and I must say that touring with your partner is wonderful at least in my experience. He is such a talented musician , adds so much to my songs. We’re great traveling companions. Thank you so much to all the venues and wonderful people who put together shows for us.

We’ve lost some very dear friends this past year.  It’s time to live every moment , live life to it’s fullest … I still waste as much time as ever and don’t pay enough attention.  Will that change ?? Can’t say for sure…

Same old things I’d like to do or change for the New Year …. a couple things I’m sure of is that Danny Barnes is still my main inspiration for banjo music and Ken Hamm’s coming back to town for a bit at the end of Feb. and we’re going share a night over at the Roxy Theatre on Gabriola on Thursday Feb. 24th. Will be so great to play along side Ken once again. Bill will join us for that gig too. 

There’s some new music on the horizon… Leslie Alexander has a new record coming out as well as Jenny Allen both produced by John Ellis, both will be amazing . Also Russ Wilson, bass player from Junkhouse is sending me his records plus he’s recording a new one. Tom Wilson was here recently with his band “Lee Harvey Osmond” incredible show. I haven’t been that excited about music for a while. He calls it “Acid Folk” . Seems he’s found a pretty cool groove, some where between Junkhouse and Blackie & the Rodeo Kings.

I still miss Willie P. Bennett like crazy. I was playing “Country Squall” today and it was bitter sweet. Also learning a Townes Van Zandt tune called “Flyin’ Shoes “. 

 I’ve been doing some writing too and look forward to spending more time playing in the year to come.

Here’s to a good 2011 …..

Here’s to music and family and friends and love and peace …wouldn’t that be good.

And here’s to Greece in May and possibly Istanbul.

Thank you to everyone for supporting live music .

xoxoxoxo

Jerry Paquette is the man behind, in front and in the middle of Nanaimo’s music scene. So many, including me would have never accomplished musically what we have with out his skill, knowledge, humor and down right love of music.

When your sitting in a isolation recording room for the first time, a big microphone in front of you it’s comforting to look out the little window and see the engineer smiling and tapping along to the beat. He always made you feel compfortable.

I have been so fortunate to work with Ken Hamm and Jerry as a Producer/Engineer team.

There were times when we would just get together to visit. Jerry would talk about setting out on the road again, telling us of his travels with Susan years ago when they went across Canada playing music. He talked about supporting his daughter  Alyse in her up and coming music career.

Now it seems Jerry is heading off on another road, one none of us know, there’s no maps, no GPS . It’s the road we’ll all travel one of these days. Alyse will carry Jerry’s music down the road that we can follow and will, she is so talented. I wonder if Jerry’s son Lucas will be the next Nanaimo Recording Engineer (here’s hoping).

Jerry became sick on New Years Day of this year, 2010. He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer , one of the most aggressive.

He is with his wonderful family in the Palliative Care Unit @ Nanaimo General Hospital . They have been so generous in creating a blog so that all of us that love him and care so much for his family can check in and send our thoughts and prayers, share stories for everyone to read.

http://jerrypaquetteandfriends.wordpress.com/feed/

Hold onto your hat, or it’ll blow like a tumble weed

Rollin’ down highway 2 headed east

The tall ghost rider and the banks of the Oldman slip away

Change, change, change…

Red ribbon and black hair tangled in the wind

I know your aim is to save the Oldman

Cause if they dam the river it will change the land forever

Change, change, change…

Water is the blood that runs through our history

don’t spill a drop…

the water is valuble

Count wind turbines high on a hill

harness it up, the wind is valuble

Change, change, change…

Hold onto your hat or it will blow like a tumbleweed

Rollin’ down highway 2 headed east

The tall wind turbines providing all the power we will need

for this

Change, change, change…

May 1976 Native Funeral of Nelson Small Legs Jr. Southern Alberta

the song is called “Change”, I wrote it a few years ago after driving through my beloved Southern Alberta homeland both horrified and impressesd with the wind chargers and for my dear friend Nelson who fought against so much and gave his life as a martyr, attempting to stop the McKenzie Valley Pipeline and the Oldman River Dam from being built. He was the leader of the American Indian Movement in Alberta. He was a leader of his people. I wish to this day he was here, he could have made a change…

Three Rivers, three cities and then they built Hanford or was it Hanford that built the cities and kept the people thinking opportunity is close and the air they breath is still pretty clean and the water won’t burn you, it’s so muddy you can’t tell if it’s changing…
but we used to swim in the Yakima and we’d pack a lunch and go looking for rattlesnakes

me and my Sister

I missed the movie which was on last night but have since read some reviews and watched a clip or two on the internet, I believe that this may save some lives, coupling wild horses and wild men, this could be the first time either has trusted , this all makes so much sense…

http://www.pointgreypictures.com/wildhorse/wildhorse.htm

In August my husband Bill and I went to London, spent 14 days  checking out that wonderful city, now places like Soho, where Ray Davies met Lola make sense. So much of the music we listened to in our informative years came from the British groups.

Davies has written some great political songs on this album.

Here’s the chorus to one called”Vietnam Cowboys” .

“Mass production in Saigon

While Auto workers laid off in Cleveland

Hot Jacuzzi in Taiwan

with empty factories in Birmingham

now it’’s Baby boomer’s in Hong Kong

and Cowboys in Vietman

Makin’ their movies”

I’m not much for writing political songs but tonight this came out.

So heres to Ray Davies for the inspiration, also to John Pilger his writing makes sense to me.

John Pilger is a world-renowned journalist, author and documentary filmmaker, who began his career in 1958 in his homeland, Australia, before moving to London in the 1960s www.johnpilger.com

He believes a journalist ought to be a guardian of the public memory and often quotes Milan Kundera: “The struggle of people against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.”

My Song (no title)

If we could   just remember

we would not make that mistake again

It doesn’t matter black or white 

running for everybodies life this time

what is it that makes you think

that you have all the answers

Bring the boys back heal the wounds

tears will wipe the dust out of their eyes

If women packin’ guns is a good thing

like Annie Oakley and Buffalo Jane

This is the Great While North

of course you’ll  need to kill something

There is a thousand or more ways to win

the respect of a republican

lipstick on a white collar

raise the flag, raise the dollar