. This summer featured a visit to Weiser, Idaho
. followed by my fifth year as an assistant at
David Grisman and Mike Marshall's Mandolin Symposium in
Santa Cruz. I then played a cool gig with David Jacobs-Strain, Joe Kyle Jr. and Joe Craven in a Palo Alto park before returning home to my Port Townsend potato patch.

At the Festival of American Fiddle Tunes, I was fortunate to wind up playing a few country dances that lasted way into the wee hours, driven by the drop-dead vocals of Kelley Breiding from North Carolina. Then I went to the Oregon Country Fair, where David Jacobs-Strain really rocked.

Back home now, I cut piece of music for Galen Garwood's 'Ed & Ed' documentary which will debut at the PT Film Festival this fall. Hot Club Sandwich is back in the studio, working on the next creative endeavor, which is rumored to include the vocals of a certain legendary Dan Hicks. And Lee Stripling and Paul Anastasio invited me and the fine guitarist Rich Levine to cut a record for Paul's Swing Cat label. We cut some of Lee's favorite swing tunes in the session, along with several that Lee's dad, Charlie Stripling, recorded with the Stripling Brothers in the late 1920s. Lee really tore it up at age 85!