Archive for the ‘Amy Nelson’ Category

Amy and Paula and Willie, in Austin

Friday, January 15th, 2021

Monday, January 4th, 2021

Amy Nelson, Cathy Guthrie, Folk Uke, “All I Want for Christmas”

Thursday, December 24th, 2020

Sunday, December 6th, 2020

Willie and his girls

Tuesday, November 24th, 2020

Folk Uke with Bonnie Whitmore tonight

Thursday, November 12th, 2020
Image may contain: 1 person, text

“This week in the Virtual Gallery, I’ll be joined by the stellar Amy Nelson. Here’s how you join https://bonnieandamy.app.rsvpify.com/

Lana, Willie, Amy Nelson

Monday, November 9th, 2020

Folk Uke – People are Talking about “Small One”

Monday, October 26th, 2020

www.
by:

The singing, songwriting and ukulele and guitar strumming duo of Amy Nelson and Cathy Guthrie, known as Folk Uke, boast a fascinating stylistic DNA with distinctive and winning twists to it.

With endearingly sweet and lovely vocals and melodies, they adeptly craft and deliver original songs that can be provocative, profane, and pointed as well as uproariously funny. Case in point is their new single, “Small One,” their well-aimed stab at pathological narcissism, bullying, and male braggadocio that’s ideally suited for the current state of the nation and election season.

Folk Uke explain that the objectionable behavior of a number of public figures fed into the song. Its words call to mind many men whose misogyny and abuse reflect an overcompensation for shortcomings in their masculinity: “With abuse of power, you’re man of the hour/Stopping to trample on each precious flower/Do you mind if I don’t have this dance?/Keep your VIP-ness in your pants.”

 A clever animated video for “Small One” was created by musician and visual artist Micah Nelson (Amy’s brother) and his wife Alex Dascalu Nelson. The couple, aka Particle Kid & Sister Lu, has made similar videos for Micah’s future-folk solo project Particle Kid and psych-punk orchestra Insects vs. Robots. He also plays with his brother Lukas in the group Promise of the Real, who have backed Neil Young on recordings and in concert. Folk Uke has also posted a lyrics video for the song on YouTube (links below).

“Small One” does have its application to today’s political mood. “We have to point out what is dividing us so that we can become united,” says Cathy. Amy adds, “it’s not black-brown versus white. It’s love versus hate. There are more of us who love,” 

“I think that life is just so heavy already that we make music to soothe ourselves and make ourselves laugh.” Cathy concludes. And in doing so they provide comfort and healing laughter to an ever-growing community of listeners. Amy and Cathy are backed by a blue-ribbon roster of players on “Small One.” The recordings began just before coronavirus lockdown with producer and fellow Austin, TX resident Jeff Klein (My Jerusalem).

Thanks to file sharing, the track is graced with remote contributions by Rami Jaffee (Foo Fighters, Wallflowers) on keyboards, Bill Reynolds (Band of Horses) on bass, JT Bates (Bonny Light Horseman/Big Red Machine) on percussion, Matt Pynn (Dwight Yoakam, Miley Cyrus) on pedal steel, and Walker Lukens and McKenzie Griffin on backing vocals. 

Folk Uke hail from two of America’s foremost musical families. Cathy is the daughter of longtime folk music star Arlo Guthrie and granddaughter of American musical icon Woody Guthrie. Amy is the daughter of country music legend Willie Nelson. Both fathers have appeared on Folk Uke recordings.

Yet as the Seattle Post-Intelligencer observes, “They might have famous musical parents, but… Amy Nelson and Cathy Guthrie are deserving of recognition in their own right.” The two met and bonded in the late 1990sin San Diego when they both worked at Croce’s, a restaurant and bar run by Ingrid Croce, the widow of singer-songwriter Jim Croce. Soon after the first time they hung out, Amy took Cathy to buy her first ukulele.

They began writing songs together but approached any music career quite informally, eventually debuting as performers at Woody Fest, the annual Oklahoma gathering that celebrates the legacy of Cathy’s grandfather. In 2005, Folk Uke released their self-titled first album on their own label. American Songwriter hailed it as  “likely to be the best folk record out today, and I’m not folking around.” Reincarnation followed in 2011; their most recent album, Starfucker, was issued in 2016.

They’ve charmed listeners with sometimes quite irreverent and NSFW songs deceptively delivered with their honeyed voices and harmonies like “Shit Makes the Flowers Grow,” “Motherfucker Got Fucked Up” (their No. 1 Spotify global hit that was heard on “Orange is the New Black” which Vanity Fair noted made a scene “even better when two voices begin to harmonize so sweetly it’ll take you a moment to realize exactly what they’re saying… you can’t help having this mellifluous, macabre tune stuck in your head.”) and “Knock Me Up.”

The duo’s distinctly yin-yang approach enables them to tackle tough topics with humorous leavening and irony. They also skewer aspects of the music business that they grew up around on “Starfucker” and “BJ to a DJ.”

The pair’s abundant charms have won them a burgeoning following of fans as well as enthusiastic musical peers, including Snoop Dogg, who notes how “They’re off the motherfucking chain…Dope as fuck.” With three albums to their credit, they’ve played international tours, had a song featured on the soundtrack to “Orange is the New Black” and tracks in such films as “Indie Jonesing,” “The Babymakers” “G7,” “Social Animals” and “Super Troopers 2.” Folk Uke have also opened shows for a variety of artists such as X, The Jayhawks, Tommy Stinson, Kinky Friedman, Shooter Jennings, Wye Oak, Dan Mangan and Dog Trumpet.
 

Connie Nelson, Snoop Dogg, Amy Nelson

Friday, August 21st, 2020

Willie Nelson and family in Life Magazine (August 1983)

Monday, August 3rd, 2020

Life Magazine (8/83)
Photography: Harry Benson
Text: Cheryl McCall

“I’ve about forgotten what a private life is,” says Willie Nelson, padding around his kitchen with a mug of tea. “But when I really want to get away, this is the santuary.”

Here, 40 miles outside Denver, a contented Nelson is secluded with his wife, Connie, and their daughters, Paula and Amy. In the largest of four houses on a 122-acre spread. (One house is an office, the others for rare guests.) The Nelsons’ family life is anchored here; it’s where the girls go to school (public).

But they have another big house near Austin, Texas., site of the country superstar’s personal recording studio. During the summer, Connie and the kids adopt a gypsy lifestyle to keep up with the perapathetic. Willie., who, at 50, shows no sign of setting a more sensible pace. He logs over 200 days a year on the road for as much as $500,000 per concert, and often takes his family along in a customized bus.

“The kids don’t mind the traveling because it’s all they’ve ever known,” says Connie. When she married Willie in 1971, she recalls, “We had to search for pennies before we could go to the grocery store.” In the years since, the royalties form a dozen gold and six platinum albums have made them land barons.

Besides their two “hideouts,” they own a 400-acre ranch in Utah, a 200-acre farm near Nashville and two houses in Hawaii. Their holdings in the Austin area include a 44-acre ranch, an 80-unit town-house complex, the 1, 700-seat Austin Opry House, a motel and a small catfish restaurant called Mona’s.

“That’s a lot of doorknobs,” Nelson says with some satisfaction. What’s it all worth? “It would take a week of inventorying to figure that out,” says his business manager. Recently the Nelsons’s gave LIFE a first-ever look at their homes in Colorado and Texas.

“The most important thing I do for Willie is make sure he gets rest. He doesn’t even realize when he’s running himself into the ground,” says Connie, soaking with her old man in their king-size tub. “I keep the people to a minimum, or before we know it, our time together is gone.”

“When I have time off the road, I try to split it between Colorado and Texas,” says Nelson. To shuttle back and forth, he bought a $1.7 million, seven-passenger Learjet this winter. “The plane makes a difference,” says Paula. “Dad gets home more, and we go to Texas a lot when we’re not in school.”

West of Austin, the family as an eight-room house overlooking the 775 acre Pedernales Country Club, which Nelson owns outright and permits his band, staff and friends to use. His clubhouse office, filled with tapes, awards and a six-foot feathered headdress given him by an Oklahoma Indian tribe, is next to his state-of-the-art recording studio. “I like being able to go in there in the middle of the night,” he says. When fellow muscicians drop by, the beer and tequila flow.

“It can be a continuous party,” Connie sighs. “When one set of people gets worn out, there’s another set ready to go. But there’s only one Willie.” In Austin, Nelson also does some fatherly fence-mending with his children by his first marriage. (Lana, 29, Susie, 27, and Billy, 26, live nearby.) “I was too busy trying to pay the rent when they were small,” he says. “I spend more time with them and my six grandkids now than I ever did before. I like being a father.”

Happy birthday, Amy Lee Nelson

Monday, July 6th, 2020

Happy birthday to the beautiful and talented Amy Nelson.

Happy Father’s Day, Willie Nelson

Sunday, June 21st, 2020
DSC_0101
heartworn

Folk Uke Drive In Show (July 3rd, 2020) in Austin

Friday, June 19th, 2020

Small News from Folk Uke

Monday, June 15th, 2020

Small News! ??? Amy Nelson and Cathy Guthrie of Folk Uke have new song which premieres @Rolling Stone, plus Folk Uke’s got some small news—coming soon…

Folk Uke Stomp Out Toxic Masculinity on ‘Small One’
Their new single SMALL ONE
debuts today at RollingStone.com •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Great news! Folk Uke on Tour 2020

Thursday, January 2nd, 2020

Even more 20/20 dates— Arlo Guthrie with Folk Uke:
Apr. 16 Belly Up; Solana Beach, CA
Apr. 18 Soka Performing Arts Center; Aliso Viejo, CA
Apr. 21 Palace of Fine Arts Theatre; San Francisco, CA
Apr. 23 The Center for the Arts; Grass Valley, CA
Apr. 24 Bankhead Theater; Livermore, CA
Apr. 26 Mondavi Center; Davis, CA
May 6 Boulder Theater; Boulder, CO
May 8 Lensic Performing Arts Center; Santa Fe, NM