OCTOBER EVENTS

October 1st kicks off the month in a big way. The Berks Parks and Recreation hosts the 35th Annual Heritage Festival at the Berks County Heritage Center - a variety of exhibits, demos, and great music on stage both October 1 and 2. Also on the first and second, the Goggleworks hosts its Makers Festival with over 90 juried artists and more than 30 GoggleWorks artist studios to tour. Both the Reading Leiderkranz's Ocktoberfest and Stoudt's Ocktoberfest are also October 1.

TEACHER FEATURE: MIKE HERTZOG

Mike Hertzog has been playing music as a soloist and a member of a band for over three decades. He's a founding member of several of the bands in which he's played, including the Blue Mountain Gang and its predecessor, Far From The City. The venues he’s played include The main stage of the IBMA Fan Fest (Owensboro, KY), Mountaineer Opry House (Milton, WV), The Capital Theater (Chambersburg, PA), Musicfest (Bethlehem, PA), Central PA Festival of the Arts (State College, PA), Sunset Park (Oxford, PA), Godfrey Daniels (Bethlehem, PA) and The Keswick Theater (Glenside, PA). He's also performed at countless fiddle and Bluegrass festivals and on radio stations including WBYO, WDVR, the Heartlands Hayride and WEEU’s Community Cafe. With his band, Mike has often opened shows for legends that include The Osborne Brothers, Jimmy Martin, Larry Sparks, Little Roy Lewis and the Lewis Family and The Boys From Indiana. As we write this newsletter, Mike is in Germany performing with East Side Dave and the Mountain Folk Band - a band that returns to Germany regularly and receives rave reviews when it does.

Mike plays Scruggs-style banjo, guitar, mandolin, dobro, dulcimer, fiddle, harmonica, piano and probably other instruments that we don't know about. He is a fine singer and songwriter. When he performs, he most frequently plays banjo or guitar.

His own musical interests include Country and Bluegrass, but he enjoys and teaches many styles of music. He teaches beginning through advanced banjo and guitar and beginning mandolin and dobro.

Mike is at Meadowood Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday, offering both daytime and evening lessons. He teaches children and adults, pre-schoolers and pensioners and everyone between. You can hear Mike describe his teaching, and a sample of his playing in an audio clip that's on the page we have for him on our website. 

Meadowood so is pleased to have him as part of its cadre of excellent musician-teachers.  

KU's 2016-17 PERFORMING ARTIST SERIES

KU PRESENTS! HITS ANOTHER HOME RUN WITH ITS LINEUP

Every year, Kutztown University's KU Presents! brings wonderful performances to the area. KU Presents recently announced its 2016-17 Performing Artist Series shows. They are 

• Kelli O'Hara - Thu, Sept 15, 2016 7:30 p.m.

• Rosanne Cash & John Leventhal - Sat, Oct 22, 2016 7:30 p.m.

• US Army Field Band and Soldiers' Chorus - Mon, Nov 14, 2016 7:30 p.m.

• Elisabeth von Trapp w/Carolian Brass - Fri, Dec 02, 2016 7:30 p.m.

• Pilobolus - Shadowland - Wed, Feb 08, 2017 7:30 p.m.

• Kodo - Dadan 2017 - Tue, Mar 07, 2017 7:30 p.m.

• Branford Marsalis with Kurt Elling - Wed, Apr 19, 2017 7:30 p.m.

Meadowood is pleased to collaborate with KU on one of these shows, Rosanne Cash & John Leventhal on Sat, Oct 22. Because Cash is a Martin Guitar endorsed artist, KU and Meadowood have invited Martin Guitar Company to join us and to bring some of the wonderful guitars Martin builds so you can you can look at and play them. Also, Meadowood has tickets for the show to give away - if you would like a chance at those tickets stop by the store to enter a drawing between now and Fri, Sept 30.

Here are the details about the show:

Rosanne Cash & John Leventhal
Saturday, October 22, 2016 7:30 PM - Schaeffer Auditorium - $38

GRAMMY award-winner Rosanne Cash, one of the country's pre-eminent singer/songwriters, is truly the hardest-working woman in music.  Her credits include the release of fifteen albums, which garnered four GRAMMY awards and eleven nominations, over twenty top-40 hit singles, eleven of which reached Number 1, and the recent prestigious honor of being inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. Cash, with long-time collaborator and husband, John Leventhal bring an exciting show which celebrates her highly-acclaimed and three time Grammy-winning album, The River and the Thread, a collection of original songs that connect and re-connect Rosanne to the American South, the place of her birth and the home of her ancestors.

KU loves to couple performances with related events to make the whole experience, well... an EVENT! This time, KU is pairing the Cash/Leventhal show with the documentary film, The Winding Stream - The Carters, The Cashes, and the Course of Country Music​. The film will run BEFORE the concert at 5:45 pm in the Schaeffer Little Theatre - downstairs from the main auditorium. Why is KU pairing these events? Because the back story of all country music begins with the two iconic families featured in the film, the Carters and the Cashes. Roseanne Cash's very existance and musical foundation comes from the union of these two families, June Carter Cash and Johnny Cash. The film features interviews and performances by Johnny Cash, June Carter Cash, John Prine, the Carolina Chocolate Drops, George Jones, Kris Kristofferson, and others. This loving and comprehensive tribute to this timeless music is the perfect preamble to Cash and Leventhal's concert.   

Come in and enter our giveaway. Or, if you want a sure thing, you can buy a ticket at KU's website.

Tom and Betty Druckenmiller are the core of The Drux - the Druckenmillers. Tom has played music most of his life. Betty started as an adult. Together, they lured their son Nathan into playing music. In time, they became The Druckenmillers, a family of three who performed traditional Appalachian music together. We met the Druckenmillers in the time while Nathan was still in High School. before he went to Kutztown University, before he moved to West Virginia, worked as an instrument repair technician at Smakula Fretted Instruments and married Brittany Hicks. 

Mike met Nathan in a repair class at the Augusta Heritage Center in Elkins, West Virginia. Nathan introduced us to his parents in 2000, the year Meadowood opened. The Druckenmillers were very glad to have a music store opening so close to Allentown. We were very glad to have a family of musicians who shared our value that music is a thing to do, not just a thing to purchase.

Tom plays claw hammer banjo and guitar and sings. Betty plays fiddle and sings. Nathan plays pretty much anything with strings and sings when in the mood. As a family, the Druckenmillers have recorded six CDs: The Road Home, ‘Til the Clouds Roll By, Harvest Time, Morning Star, Bound to Change and Back Home. Some of those CDs included friends, beginning a tradition of extending the Druckenmiller family with adopted musicians.

With Nathan living in West Virginia, performing together has become a rare pleasure for the family, but the EXTENDED family of musicians that formed around the Drux while Nate still lived here still performs with Tom and Betty.

Mike and Paula have performed and recorded with them, but they are not the 'regulars.' Stacy Bechtel, Norm Williams and Rick Weaver are the core the extended musical family that the Drux have built. Stacy adds bass and vocals, sometimes banjo, sometimes fiddle. Norm adds mountain dulcimer and vocals, sometimes banjo, sometimes guitar. Rick adds guitar and vocals, sometimes fiddle. In any configuration, two people to five, the incarnations of the Drux deliver rewarding renditions of Old-Time Appalachian Tunes as well as a few surprising not-old-time tunes in their performances.

Their performances are warm, welcoming and relaxed. They play festivals (Mayfair, Kutztown Folk Festival), historic reenactments (Dreiblebis Farm, etc.), concert stages (Godfrey Daniels, Kimmel Center) and private parties.

SHAMELESS COMMERCE SECTION

These are a few of the things in the store that we think are especially cool.