Carthage Acoustic Music Festival to Feature Bluestem.

The 9th Annual Carthage Acoustic Music Festival will feature the unique group Bluestem on June 11th and 12th. The members have combined Western, Bluegrass, Gospel, Rock, and humor to create a blend of unique acoustic music. Their western harmonies and bluegrass musicianship teamed with cowboy poetry will surprise and entertain all.

"We love to play and sing. We enjoy people and sharing our music with them. We hope to make you smile and laugh as we share old memories and new ones to come."

Bluestem was the house band for "The Good Time Radio Review" a live radio show on National Public Radio for many years. They have also performed at music festivals throughout the midwest, and given concerts for the past twenty years. They have performed twelve of the last sixteen years at the Walnut Valley Festival at Winfield, Kansas. They are long time members of the Kansas Touring Arts program, The Kansas Bluegrass Association, and The Western Music Association.

Saw one a those little bits a trivia on tv the other day. Said that more people get hurt by television sets that are injured by fireworks.

I don’t know what that says, but it sure goes ta show ya. I’d guess that it could be interpreted to mean that we should be blowin’ up more tv sets. Or we should be watchin’ more fireworks. That’s one a the problems with just knowin’ a little bit of the facts. Ya never really know what ta make of ‘em.

It’s like the old story of the Russian and American auto race. The Russian newspaper was said to report that the Russian came in second and the American came in next to the last. Never mentioned the fact that only two cars entered the race.

This is some fact, but mostly,

Just Jake Talkin’.

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artCentral

ART NOTES from Hyde House

by Sally Armstrong, Director of artCentral

It has been the intention this year to show the work of each of the former directors of artCentral. Prior to myself and Carol Adamec, Lee Ann Sours held the position for a time, and she is responsible for getting the grounds planted with some of the original plantings. Lee Ann and her husband Jack live in Neosho, and are both active artists and member artists of artCentral. Additionally, they play bluegrass music together and in a group, and you may remember them appearing locally and at the Acoustic Festival in June on the square. Lee Ann’s medium of choice is fiber art, including weaving and creative design. The fiber arts that Lee Ann displays are a culmination of a concert that begins with the planting of grass. With God’s gift of rain and the nutrients provided by our mother earth, grass provides forage for her sheep and Angora goats. The fiber from those animals is harvested and processed into yarn, or batting, which is dyed and blended in preparation for her products. The skills and discipline necessary to accomplish this task are a life long acquisition. "I’ve been experimenting with different fibers and techniques since 1987, when I got the goats for making cheese. There was no market for goat cheese then, so I used the fleece." Fifty goats make hundreds of pounds of mohair and they sell the majority of the white fleece to a warehouse. She prefers the colored fleece, which she washes up to five times in hot water and soap. She then uses wool combs to blend different fleece and make the fibers straight, then spins the fleece into yarn. "Jack got a spinning wheel, and I came across a loom." The rest is history, and the beginning of her love affair with fiber art. It takes her about two pounds of fiber to create a throw, and 15 hours to weave on her loom. Lee Ann has won numerous awards with her work, several here during our annual Membership Shows. Next week I will outline her husband Jack’s art with ceramic sculpture and thrown pottery. Their joint show, along with their daughter Suzie, opens here at Hyde House June 28th.