Goodbye Summer, Hello Fall

Well, we made it up and down the East Coast yet again.  The end of this year's Summer finds The And Company with new dwellings, inherited vinyl, a plethora of cookbooks, Douglas Brinkeley's History of The United States, a handmade dulcimer, now 2 copies of Catan the Card Game, Alle's accordion debut, and a renewed artistic spirit.

As for our tour, there are some videos that need some work (unless you want to see a 16-min clip of our 4-min radio performance of "Childhood" in Washington D.C....didn't think so).  But we'll get a few snippets up here soon.  For now, I'll take you on a quick visual summary of our journey...

Alle drove for the first time in 10 years.  Literally.  Here's her smiling at how terrified I am in the front seat.  

We were in this parking spot for 3 minutes deciding if this was a good idea.

We eventually made it to Philly, and then D.C. where we were invited to be interviewed on the George Washington University radio station.  As mentioned before we also played "Childhood", and had a sudden diva-pose session in the studio:

Diva Brian

Diva Mally

and Diva Alle

After we got over ourselves, we moved on to Baltimore and almost missed our gig while getting caught up in how each of us would organize our Catan settlements, cities, and roads.  Alle chose a speech bubble:

(what do you think, is the developement card a Knight, or is she hiding a Victory Point under there?...)

Then on to North Carolina.  Charlotte and then my hometown of Asheville.

In Asheville, something special happened I would like to share with you.  I had a lot of Uncle-time with my new niece Evelyn Joan Tavener, and in this very appropriate video clip featuring three different generations of my family (that's my Mama!) the&co finishes up singing "Childhood" to Evie...

Just in case you didn't get enough Cute today, there's this:

After some much-needed family time, we pushed on to Decatur, GA for the Eddie's Attic Open Mic Challenge.  I am sorry to say that I don't have photos of us playing CLUE: THE VHS MYSTERY GAME in our Super 8 Motel room, but I am happy to offer this taste of the game.  It truly is an amazing hour and a half.

On down the road (or up rather) we ran into some old friends in Raleigh, NC for our biggest show of the tour:

I was fortunate enough to sit in with my old pals The Dogwood Deddy, now consisting of Leon Godwin (Double LG Photos) and his wife, Brianne, slaying the drumkit.  Above is the original line-up, including a surprise visit from Joe Kwon, the cello-extraordinaire of The Avett Brothers.

So now we are back.  And ready for a new season.  We hope all of you are well, and we will hopefully see you at a show soon.  Cheers!

love, Tav