Well, we attended the annual performance of the McClatchy family band this evening, in the old wooden schoolhouse next to Debby's home in Dutch Flat, California, the perfect little Gold Rush town where she spend summers while she was growing up. Her brother Leo and sister Cheryl were in the band, and Leo's son Jake played bass. Diane Dixon Johnson played bass fiddle and a mean piano (after running a hundred-mile race last weekend), and Bill Gallagher played percussion. Debby also did a "guest performance" in the guise of Lotta Crabtree. I hadn't met Leo before - he's a very talented singer and guitarist.
Most everybody in the audience had known the family for years, so it was a perfect venue. The people in the audience were normal, small-town folks, not folkies. I knew all the songs but one - old treasures that everybody could sing with. Here's what they sang:

• Valley of the Shenandoah Ridge (Debby)
  
• Row, Row Your Boat (Debby - a Coon Creek Girls song from her new CD)
  
• Bye Bye Love (everybody in the whold damn place)
  
• Desperado (Leo)
  
• Mama Tried (Cheryl)
  
• We've Got Franklin D. Roosevelt Back Again (Debby)
  
• This Land Is Your Land/Yankee Doodle Dandy (Diane)
  
• I've Just Seen a Face (Beatles song sung by everybody)
  
• Ghost Riders in the Sky (Leo)
  -Intermission-
  
• The Glendy Burke (Debby as Lotta Crabtree, with a story)
  
• Banks of the River (Leo - I think he wrote it)
  
• Don't Fence Me In (Diane)
  
• Your Cheatin' Heart (Cheryl)
  
• The Boxer (Leo)
  
• Hard Times Come Again No More (Debby, Cheryl, Diane - lovely rendition)
  
• 16 Tons (Debby)
  
• Will the Circle Be Unbroken? (all)
  
• Goodnight Irene (all)

Debby said she's made Dutch Flat her permanent home again, so she and her husband will have a place where they can walk to the store when they become little old peple and can no longer drive. Right now, though, she's traveling 5 to 7 months a year. She'll arrive in England in early August.
I suppose many of you will enjoy her performances over the next several months, but it sure is great to see her perform in her home town.
-Joe Offer-