Ride a Bio Bus from North Carolina to the Virginia Key Grassroots Festival Feb 8-12th

World-Renown GrassRoots Music Festival Poised to Take Centerstage at the Historic Miami Virginia Key Beach

Scheduled to perform: Chaka Khan, Del McCoury, Arrested Development, Immortal Technique, Beausoleil, Keith Secola & His Wild Band of Indians, Locos Por Juana, The Lee Boys, Donna The Buffalo, Jahfe, & more…

In the spirit of family, cultural celebration and fun, The Historic Virginia Key Beach Park will serve as home to the world-renown Virginia Key GrassRoots Festival of Music & Dance, February 9 – 12, 2012.

The Festival organizers are planning to fill a bio diesel bus in North Carolina to travel down to the festival. Here’s what they say about it:

Hey folks! We’re planning on renting out a 55 passenger bio diesel bus for an epic road trip from the Shakori Hills Festival location in triangle area NC down to the Florida Keys for the first annual Virginia Key GrassRoots Festival. http://virginiakeygrassroots.org/

The bus leaves Wednesday, Feb 8th and returns Sunday, Feb 12th after the music.

The Tour Bus is super comfortable with DVD and bathroom, and runs on locally made bio fuels.  We’ll drive 1600 miles round trip (14 hours each way), starting out in the night so we’ll wake up at the beach! $120 per person covers fuel and drivers, and saves you festival overnight parking costs of $50.00. Plus, you can bring your camping gear with you!

NOTE: We need 55 people to sign up in order to fill the bio bus. Email grassrootsbiobus@gmail.com or Call Iris @ (919) 542 0244 for more info or to sign up.  For more info click here.

The four-day event will showcase some of the world’s most amazing and respected talents from over 50 performing groups whose genres include: roots rock, reggae, hip-hop, Latin, funk, Cajun, bluegrass, African, Kompa, world beat and zydeco. Grammy® Award winning performers Chaka Khan, The Del McCoury Band and Arrested Development will headline the inaugural festival along with the legendary ska/reggae band Fishbone, Donna the Buffalo, BeauSoleil avec Micheal Doucet and several South Florida local favorites Locos Por Juana, Suenalo and ArtOfficial.

To learn more about The Virginia Key GrassRoots Festival, performers, or to purchase tickets please contact Emma Hewitt at (786) 332-4630 or visit us at http://www.virginiakeygrassroots.org.

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Virginia Key GrassRoots Festival: Global Music Festival Debuts in Miami with Headliners Chaka Khan, Arrested Development, Del McCoury, & Donna the Buffalo

Global Music Festival Debuts in Miami with Headliners
Chaka Khan, Arrested Development, and Del McCoury

Family-Friendly Virginia Key GrassRoots Festival February 9th-12th, 2012
Welcomes Community Participation

The world-renowned GrassRoots Festival of Music & Dance is coming to The Historic Virginia Key Beach Park in Miami on February 9th-12th, 2012. Founded in upstate New York in 1991, the non-profit festival showcases top tier world and roots music performers from a wide variety of genres; Latin, Reggae, Hip-Hop, Americana, Funk, Cajun, Bluegrass, Indie Rock, African, Kompa, World Beat, and Jam. International and Grammy Award winning artists will perform alongside some of Florida’s premier bands – Chaka Khan, Del McCoury, and Arrested Development.

Throughout the four-day, family-friendly event, a Kid’s Village will offer interactive activities. Local artisans and visiting craftspeople will display and sell their work. In addition, celebrity dance instructors will provide ongoing group instruction and festival performers will conduct daily music and instrumental workshops. Those interested in wellness will find movement classes, flow workshops, massage and more in The Healing Arts Area.

The festival welcomes local residents and out of town visitors. The on-site campgrounds, just a short walk from the beach, are open to all festival attendees for a reasonable fee. Space is for tents and vehicle camping. Day Tickets, Discounted 4-Day Passes, and Special Packages are available by phone (786) 332-4630, online www.virginiakeygrassroots.org, and at the gate.

The Virginia Key GrassRoots Festival’s mission is to promote community engagement through music and arts education, while supporting environmental sustainability, and social justice. To this end, GrassRoots invites local non-profit groups to set up booths in the Community Advocacy Area. For more information please contact Emma Hewitt at emma@grassrootsfest.org or (786) 332-4630.

GrassRoots is seeking volunteers to help in all areas of the festival, from the Street Team to Hospitality Kitchen. In trade for hours worked, Volunteers are rewarded free festival passes. For more information visit http://virginiakeygrassroots.com/volunteer

Festival Line-up:

Arrested Development, ArtOfficial, Beausoleil Avec Michael Doucet, Big Cosmo, The Del McCoury Band, Donna the Buffalo, Driftwood, Fishbone, Giant Panda Guerilla Dub Squad, Greg Humphreys, Jim Lauderdale, Keith Frank & the Soileau Zydeco Band, Keith Secola & Wild Band of Indians, The Lee Boys, Locos Por Juana, Mixed Culture, Preston Frank, Revelation Mizik, Roy Jay Band, Rubblebucket, Sim Redmond Band, Suenalo, Thousands of One, Toubab Krewe, Willie Watson & the Evil City String Band

Visit the website for additions that have been added to the lineup

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The Duhks on Tour This October!

The Duhks On Tour this October!

Thur, Oct 6th, 2011   Newton-Conover Auditorium  Newton, NC
Fri, Oct 7th      Pisgah Brewing Company     Black Mountain, NC
Sat-Sun, Oct 8-9th      Shakori Hills Festival    Silk Hope, NC
Wed, Oct 12th     Jammin’ Java     Vienna, VA
Thurs, Oct 13th      Kent Stage     Kent, OH
Fri, Oct 14th      The Newton Theatre    Newton, NJ
Sat, Oct 15th      Infinity Hall    Norfolk, CT

www.duhks.com

The most vital acoustic music being made today acknowledges its predecessors and lives in the here and now. The Duhks, a band of five skilled, high-energy, tattooed musicians from Winnipeg, Manitoba, has been riveting audiences and winning staunch fans around the world with just that kind of music. The Boston Globe says about them, “Canada’s premier neo-tradsters romp from world-beat to blues, urban-pop to old-timey, with wild-eyed invention, haunting traditionalism, and spine-rattling groove. Who says the Frozen North can’t sizzle, eh?”

Since the release of their self-titled album in 2005, the consequent re-release of its Canadian debut (Your Daughters and Your Sons) to their most recent release (Fast Paced World), the band has won admirers as diverse as David Crosby, Dolly Parton and Doc Watson. This isn’t surprising, given the band’s blend of soul, gospel, North American folk, Brazilian samba, old-time country string-band music, zydeco and Irish dance music, folk rock and the attraction to these interwoven acoustic styles. The Duhks’ unique sound has also earned the band a Grammy nomination, one Juno Award, two additional Juno nominations, two Folk Alliance awards and an Americana Music Association nomination for Best Emerging Artists.

NPR says, “The inventive Canadians in The Duhks are widely beloved for their smooth blend of traditional roots music and soul, which they inject with well-placed Afro-Cuban and Celtic influences.” Ultimately though, according to band founder and claw-hammer banjoist Leonard Podolak, the Duhks “just want to play music that speaks to everybody.” Mission accomplished.

2008’s Fast-Paced World was the first Duhks record to feature prodigies Sarah and Christian Dugas. The siblings have been immersed in music their whole lives, thanks in part to their musician parents. “We had a family band that toured across Canada when I was 7 and Christian was 9,” remembers Sarah. “My father had a recording studio in the house, so I grew up hearing a variety of musicians playing everything from rap to rock to world beat. I grew up in a fun and creative environment.”

Joining the band in 2011, violinist Duncan Wickel‘s (formerly of Asheville, NC and now in Boston, MA) studies also began early with classical violin training at age 4. He was soon after introduced to Irish fiddling and has evolved into a wildly diverse and highly accomplished improviser, composer and technician on the violin; which fits amazingly with the Duhks diverse sound.

Guitarist Jordan McConnell also started digging into music at an early age and he started making guitars right out of highschool. He built both the guitar he plays on stage and one of Leonard’s favorite banjos as well. Currently, Jordan’s luthier business is taking off through the roof- a guitar he built was recently played by Seth Avett of The Avett Brothers alongside Bob Dylan on the Grammys!

Sarah and Christian have started playing as a duo and signed with Southern Ground Records (Zac Brown, Wood Brothers, Sonia Leigh). Since then they have played on Zac Brown’s Cruise “Sailing the Southern Seas” as well as the renowned folk and roots cruise “Cayamo”. They released an EP titled “Another Day” in February of 2011.

When not performing with the Duhks, Leonard has been invited into the Cecil Sharp Project based in the UK, as well as a new project, he’s started with some great Canadian songwriters called Dry Bones who performed earlier this year at the Vancouver Folk Fest.

With all of the side projects taking off, this tour is a special and rare opportunity to see the band. According to one blogger‘s live review, “The Duhks have soul in spades and a heart beat that pulses more true than an Ibiza night club. A night spent with The Duhks is summed up best by their own encore, ‘HALLELUJAH!’ Hallelujah indeed.”

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The 20th GrassRoots Festival Kicks Off Today in Trumansburg, NY

GrassRoots Festival of Music and Dance ~ A Music Lover’s Paradise

www.grassrootsfest.org

Click here for this year’s schedule

The 20th annual GrassRoots Festival of Music and Dance starts today in Trumansburg, NY!!! There has been a ton of talk  about this years fest; here are a few excerpts and links to the full articles. Enjoy!

Paradise Sound

by Luke Z. Fenchel on July 21, 2010 The Ithaca Post

Four days. Four stages. Almost 80 bands and artists. All are good reasons that the Finger Lakes GrassRoots Festival of Music and Dance lives up to its motto, “a music lover’s paradise.”

… old-time, world beat, sacred string, country, bluegrass, Cajun, Zydeco and even rock ‘n’ roll, in an extravaganza that brings together musicians from around the world and up the street

…The seeds for GrassRoots were sewn more than 20 years ago, when the band Donna the Buffalo invited two other Tompkins County acts to get together and perform a benefit concert to support the fight against AIDS. Gathering at The State Theatre, The Horse Flies and Johnny Dowd’s Neon Baptist performed a show that had both a social and a musical component.

…“It was fueled by the AIDS crisis at first,” Jeb Puryear noted. “But soon, it became a focal point for positive energy for tons of people around.

“We were interested in creating a musical event that had a social purpose on top of it, and they become equally important,” he added. “We were creating the groundwork for a really long thing. With each year, it grows further and further into the local fabric.”

…“GrassRoots is like a little city,” Executive Director [Jordan] Puryear said. “It’s a team effort. All of the attendees, all of the crew chiefs that volunteer their time, and all of the others that lend a hand to make it what it is.”

… “There is a sense of ownership that doesn’t really play a role in most summer festivals,” Romer said. As a result, festival organizers feel “like the audience are our bosses.”

At the end of the day, the significance of a festival relies not on the caliber of its headliner but by the quality of its constituents. It is the milieu, not the marquee that makes a gathering memorable; community rather than celebrity. Try to conjure up a mental image of Woodstock: for the most part the focus would surely center on the crowd and not the stage.

…A considered mix of the global and the local, the festival elucidates connections between zydeco and reggae, hippies and Touregs. At GrassRoots, all music is dance music, and it’s dance music from every nook and cranny of American culture. Dropping by Trumansburg this week answers the question not only what the next American music will sound like, but what community can feel like.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE: http://theithacapost.com/2010/07/21/paradise-sound/

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Music festival celebrates 20 years

By Derrick Ek, Corning Leader , Posted Jul 20, 2010 

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Grassroots was founded in 1991 by Jeb Puryear – the songwriter, vocalist and guitarist for the host band, Donna the Buffalo – along with a large circle of his fellow musicians, friends and family that has since become its own self-sustaining non-profit organization supported by hundreds of volunteers.

…

…“Before long, though, lots of people just came along and said, ‘Hey, looks like you need some help organizing this or that,’” Puryear recalled. “All these people with good energy, really brilliant people, put all this stuff together and make it work. The volunteerism is amazing.”

In terms of attendance, Grassroots has slowly grown to approximately 10 times its original size: About 1,500 people attended the inaugural edition, and a total of 15,000 came through the gates last year, according to the festival office.

…Puryear sees no end in sight for Grassroots, which has the feel of a family reunion sometimes, he says.

“I would like to see it go on forever, pretty much,” he said. “It’s not like this amazing trick or anything. The vibe is going good, people like to get together, they like to hang out and play music, they like to hang out and listen to music, they like camping. If you go up there, you’re going to get all of that.”

READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE:  http://www.the-leader.com/features/x700416709/Music-festival-celebrates-20-years

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Afromotive & Josh Blake’s Jukebox play the Lab for the World Cup Celebration!

For more info visit: https://dreamspider.wordpress.com/2010/05/18/funk-and-world-beats-at-the-lab-for-the-world-cup-kickoff-on-saturday-june-12th/

You can also find this event on Facebook

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Funk and World Beats at the LAB for the World Cup Kickoff on Saturday, June 12th

Daytime Big Screen airing of the USA v. England game
Late night dance-party with Afromotive and Josh Blake’s Jukebox

It’s time to get excited for the worlds biggest sporting event! Come and celebrate the kickoff of the World Cup at the Lexington Ave Brewery, the LAB, in Asheville on Saturday, June 12th.  There is a full day and night planned with Funk , World Beats, and Soccer!

The folks at the Lexington Avenue Brewery are showing the first USA game (USA Vs. England) on a projector screen in their main room for the soccer community and fans in Asheville! Kick off is at 2:30pm. This year, The World Cup  is being held in South Africa. Get into the spirit with halftime and post game entertainment in by the Asheville Manding. Asheville Manding is Ryan Reardon and Adama Dembele from Afromotive along with Tasana Camara, who is a singer/kora player/balafon player from Guinea. The band is named after the Manding people of West Africa, one of the largest ethnicities and the “keepers of the flame” if you will, of traditional West African music.

The daytime event is a “suggested donation” benefit for former ABASA president and player Jack Brown and his family. Jack recently was admitted to the hospital with flu-like symptoms and ended up having a serious infection. It turned out that he had to battle a life threatening infection which resulted in the loss of his right leg. We are calling out to all soccer fans to come enjoy this game with a great crowd and atmosphere, and to donate what you can to Jack and his family as they begin to tackle a mountain of medical bills. Members of the soccer league will be taking donations at the door. There will also be a raffle following the game with some pretty sweet prizes.

The late-night dance party features music by Afromotive and Josh Blake JukeBox in the back room at the LAB. The doors open at 9pm with JBJB starting around 9:30pm. Afromotive headlines and the music will go til 2am. The cost for the show is $7.

Adama Dembele. Photo by Jon Leidel.

Afromotive:
Afromotive is creating a new wave of high energy dance music fusing West African rhythms and instrumentation with and American funk and pop sensibility for an experience that can only be described as infectious. Proudly born as a multi-ethnic crew in progressive Asheville, NC, the band has earned a formidable reputation over four years of relentless touring and festival appearances. At their core is thirty-third generation djembe player Adama Dembele from Ivory Coast, West Africa. He has performed with many prominent world acts including Oumou Sangare, Salif Keita, and Sogona Djata, to name a few. Adama’s vast knowledge of West African rhythms and intercontinental touring experience combines with his American counterparts’ hook-laden song writing and polished production for a fresh new take on the world beat genre. With positive reviews and sales of their debut full-length studio album and appearances at various national and regional festivals, including Bonnaroo, Joshua Tree Music Festival, and Echo Project, Afromotive continues to share their passion and energy with the masses.

Josh Blake

Josh Blake’s Jukebox:
On route to Jamaica in January 1997, Josh stopped in Asheville, N.C. to visit some of his friends. Soon thereafter he moved to Asheville to help establish the musical force known as GFE. A multidimensional artist, Josh’s musical understanding is based on his 16 years as guitarist and songwriter. With a travelers knowledge of our world, Josh aims to use his talents to bring unity and jubilation, to spread earth consciousness and end social injustice.

Josh Blake’s Jukebox is composed of some of Asheville’s finest musicians. The drummer Patrick Thomas and guitarist Casey Kramer are from the funky Asheville powerhouse Strut. The band also features Kyle Colclasure on bass from the local hip hop band GFE and more recently Super Collider. Affectionately dubbed “The Hot Sauce” female vocalists Carolyn Smith and Marisa Albert spice up the show with beautiful harmonies. Keyboardist Frank Mapstone from Yo Mamma’s Big Fat Booty Band and The Big Old Nasty Get Down has been known to join in on the fun. Multi-instrumentalist, Matt Williams, adds to the diverse sound of Josh Blake’s Jukebox. It is not unusual for Josh to include any number of special guests during his performances. Along with packing local venues, Josh was honored to have a song selected for the 2008 Mooged Out album, and has been chosen to play many of Asheville’s special events and festivals. With songs that range from rock to ragtime, hip-hop to funk, Josh Blake’s shows deliver what most listeners crave…great diverse music with lyrics that emphasize proper intention.

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