Dec. 2011

CONTENTS
The holiday shopping frenzy is on, full throttle. We've had our Black Friday, Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday. Now that it's actually the month of Christmas and not Thanksgiving, how about a month of music? I would like to give you some as a gift in thanksgiving for you letting me stay in touch (see vidcast Dec. 13), and I'd love it if you'd like to gift my music to others. We've got two sales for you - 35% off all music, and "what's it worth?" where you pick out what CDs, coffee mugs and oval magnets you want and tell us what they're worth to you. I love a good gift exchange. Wherever you are, whatever and however you celebrate, may these holidays that come in the darkest shortest days of the year bring much joy and light to you and yours.

1. Upcoming Shows
2. The New Website
3. Free Solo Holiday Vidcast Tues. Dec. 13th
4. Two Sales - 35% off and "What's it Worth?" 
In My Ears: RJ Cowdery "Other Side of Love"
Essay: "Paradox of the Season and the Meaning of Stars"

Help a little or a lot by sharing a song or CD from the website via email or Facebook, hosting a house concert or something in between: http://andrewmcknight.net/help
Thanks most of all for reading this!
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1. UPCOMING SHOWS More details and links at website.
SA 12/3 * PURCELLVILLE VA - Intermediate Guitar Workshop, "The First Steps to Flying Fingers", 2pm at Shamrock Music Shoppe
Advance reservations recommended - 540/338-3313 or 571/420-1433; 108 N. 21st St. [ZIP 20132]

SA 12/3 * PURCELLVILLE VA - Concert at 29 Vines, 7:30pm
Limited seating and advance tix save $3 - 540/338-3313 or 571/420-1433; 105 E. Main St. [ZIP 20132]

SA 12/10 * RALEIGH NC - Concert at UU PEACE Fellowship, 7:30pm
4104 Watkins Rd [ZIP 27616]

SU 12/11 * RALEIGH NC - "The Inward Winter Dares to Bloom" Special Music Service, 10:30am
At UU PEACE Fellowship, 4104 Watkins Rd [ZIP 27616]

FR 12/16 * STRASBURG VA - Cristina's Cafe, 8pm
219 W. King Street, [ZIP 22657]

Do you see an open date when Andrew is within a reasonable drive of your area? We're always happy for help hosting a show, little or large - please email us with ideas, and check out the new suite of programs and workshops for libraries and schools http://andrewmcknight.net/programs. We keep the full confirmed calendar updated on the website.

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2. THE NEW WEBSITE
After a ton of work, and some technical headaches down the stretch, we launched the new, state-of-the-art http://andrewmcknight.net this week. We've added some new features for the music fans, worked hard to make appropriate content easily available to presenters and media, and taken advantage of as much current web technology that helped meet those goals. Among those new features:

• a searchable song database, by title or CD; quickly find a page to hear and/or buy, read lyrics, see any available performance videos of the song, and soon we'll offer a few guitar TABs as well.
• a new tour date feed from ArtistData.com. (Now if we could just figure out how to make events easily download into your calendar on your laptop or smart phone :)
• an easy-to-navigate Gallery of videos and photos, including for the first time a gallery of Andrew's landscape and nature photos
• And speaking of videos, we have some new ones thanks to Art Woodward, who captured Andrew's house concert at Tim and Tiffany Piazza's lovely Concerts in the Cabin series in September. We put together a special house concert page for folks who haven't yet experienced the magic, http://www.andrewmcknight.net/houseconcert. You can see those new videos - "One More Year", "Bad News" and "These Shoes"
• a beautiful new design courtesy of our graphic design guru Raphael at Mr. Jackdaw

The website would not have been possible without the skills and the energy of Laura Solomon at http://DesignfortheLittleGuy.com. Laura's talents and knowledge of Drupal allowed us to really design a new site from the ground up to meet the needs of the many different types of visitors.

We invite you to take a tour, and share your feedback - it's likely you might find a broken link of two in your travels, and we'd be grateful to hear about your experiences good and bad. We'll be happy to forward your comments to Laura when appropriate too, kudos for a job well-done!

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3. FREE SOLO HOLIDAY VIDCAST TUES. DEC. 13TH
In the spirit of the holidays, Andrew will perform live from the warmth of the McKnight family dining room in their 110-year old house, Tues Dec. 13th at 9:30pm Eastern time (so the west coasters can get home from work and enjoy the fun)! We invite you to join the chat room; most likely he'll play a request or two, perhaps a seasonally appropriate tune, and maybe even something new. (He's been working a lot with little people these last couple years, so you never know....)

To watch the vidcast directly, for links to watch via Facebook or Ustream, and for helpful tips on optimizing your viewing experience, it's all at http://andrewmcknight.net/vidcast

As always, it's free, but if you would like to make a contribution to help support Andrew's life and livelihood in music, thank you! The Donate button on the vidcast page makes it simple. This will surely be a welcome break from the hustle and bustle of the crazy holidays, so make plans to kick back with your favorite beverage and let Andrew share his music and stories with you.

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4. 35% OFF AND "WHAT'S IT WORTH?"
Our email inboxes have been filling for weeks with various merchants large and small imploring us to take advantage of their "biggest sale ever". We're not really big on the Black Friday thing, or the big box retail thing, or really, the made-in-distant-lands-by-underpaid-hands thing either. So we've got two deals for your holiday shopping, and they both expire at midnight Dec. 20th - that's pretty much our last shot to get physical merchandise to you by Christmas.

Get 35% off any music, download or CD plus download. It's that simple - visit http://andrewmcknight.net/music; listen to any song to your heart's content for free, and buy whatever you'd like with the music player widgets. Use the code MAILLIST11, and save 35% at checkout. Simple. And directly from the artist, who made the music, and who will happily personalize it for you.

But, if you visit http://andrewmcknight.net/store, you'll see that we also have some very nice coffee mugs and magnets as well as music. So here's the deal - tell us what you want and what you are willing to pay for it, and we'll do our best to make it happen. What's it worth to you? Two CDs, 2 coffee mugs and a car magnet. Three magnets and a CD. Whatever you're interested in, email us at info@andrewmcknight.net and we'll be happy to help with your holiday shopping.

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"IN MY EARS"
I spent another weekend in a hotel/resort with some 800 musicians and industry people last month. These events are a celebration of music and sleep deprivation, with literally hundreds of 15 minute showcases in dozens of hotel rooms until the very wee hours. While most of us artists are there primarily to introduce our work to people who might actually be inclined to pay us to perform it, I set myself a different goal this year - make 10 new musician friends. It's not hard to do, I have known of many of the people there and made casual acquaintances of many of them. The last night I was part of a really fine late night song circle with Carolann Solebello and RJ Cowdery. I came home with a lot of great CDs, but RJ's new In This Light is phenomenal. She is a great singer and songwriter, and the sounds on her CD are exquisite. One of my faves is "Other Side of Love";
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8xbIvPO_SE
or just go hear clips from and then buy it at http://www.rjcowdery.com/music  Meanwhile, I'm liable to tell you about a few other faves from the NERFA conference next month.

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ANDREW'S ESSAY: "Paradox of the Season and the Meaning of Stars"
The winter holidays arrive again with the ever-present temptations to spend and save, while a music man searches the heavens for meaning.

"Another year is winding down in the usual frenzy of big box retail sales and glamorous holiday specials all over the TV. Weren't we just doing this? I mean, I guess there was that long hot wet summer and all, but the flashback effect is pretty vivid.

It's an odd thing to watch us being exhorted to spend, spend, spend in every direction, and yet we constantly hear about the rough economy, the millions without jobs, the many millions more with jobs who've lost ground these last couple years due to rising insurance costs and salary freezes, and of course there's the big bad federal government throwing hundreds of billions of imaginary dollars around for every unimaginable thing. We are a paradox it would seem. Basic economic theory about supply and demand, goods and services, saving and investing - it all seems to go by the wayside at this time of year.

So how to put things in perspective seems to be my challenge this year. . .

[Read the rest at http://andrewmcknight.net/essays]

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