Summer 2008: Celebrating Minnesota's Musical Heritage

What better way to celebrate summer than to meet where the Rivers meet -- and enjoy a picnic supper, accompanied by songs that were sung by our grandparents? Join us at the junction of the Mississippi and the Minnesota for beautiful scenery and beautiful music. Curtis and Loretta will present songs from the new Minnesota Heritage Songbook on Thursday, August 14 on Picnic Island at Fort Snelling State Park. This Sesquicentennial event celebrates our first European immigrants; Minnesota's Civil War soldiers; our loggers, miners, and farmers; and all the other people who settled Minnesota.

Make your plans now to join us at 6:30 pm on Thursday, August 14 with your picnic supper for an exciting evening hearing and singing along with the songs of our ancestors. This family-hour Sesquicentennial concert and the Minnesota Heritage Songbook are funded by the Minnesota Sesquicentennial Commission and the Friends of Fort Snelling. A State Park sticker is required for admission to the park, but otherwise the event is free. Information: 612-725-2724.

For more information about the Friends of Fort Snelling, visit the www.FortSnelling.org.. For more about Fort Snelling State Park, visit State Park Web Site.

News Winter 2008

Check us out on youtube at

These 5 songs are from a concert we did at The Back Room at the Barton Arts Center in Great Bend, Kansas in November.

News Spring 2007

by Loretta

Happy Spring to you all! First off, for those of you in or near the Twin Cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis, we're doing our annual hometown concert at the Cedar Cultural Center on Saturday, March 24. (See touring page for all the details). The Cedar is one of the premier folk music venues in the upper Midwest, and we can't wait to get back up on that stage. It is a prime listening room, with a warm, intimate feeling, and a state of the art sound system. All the seats are good! It's one of our favorite places to go hear music when we're in town. So mark your calendars for March 24, and come on down!

We're celebrating landmark anniversaries this year. Twenty years ago we were married (to each other!) in Santiago, Mexico (near Manzanillo). People sometimes ask us if it was a "legal" marriage. Yes, indeed, we sent in all the appropriate forms and papers, etc. etc. Of course our marriage certificate is in Spanish, and we can't read it. We figure we're either married or we're Mexican citizens!

Our other big anniversary is the day we met each other, 30 years ago! If you've ever read our bio page, you know we chanced to meet on a beach in Santa Cruz, California. (OK, Curtis picked me up!) We don't really remember the exact date. We may not have even known it then, as we were young starry eyed musicians, with no watches or calendars. But we do know for sure it was 1977. And our best guesstimate is that it was April.

We've covered a lot of ground since then, that's for sure. We went from hitchhiking up and down the West Coast to driving a mini-van all across the U.S., from doing sixties folk songs to writing a lot of our own songs, added several instruments, (oh yeah, got married!), and played about a zillion gigs. For people like you. We are so thankful to all our audience members over the years. Without you, where would we be? Singing to ourselves in the shower, no doubt.

We put something like 40,000 miles on our van this year, touring all over in support of our latest CD, "Just My Heart For You," which is on the "Top Albums of 2006" on folk dj at http://folkradio.org. We're also on that website's "Top Artists of 2006." It's a website that posts playlists of folk radio dj's across the U.S. and overseas.

In the spring we did a tour on the West Coast. On the way out there, we spent two luxurious days at Chico Hot Springs, just south of Livingston, Montana. If you're going that way, check it out! There's an historic lodge where you can get a room very reasonably (plus a newer, modern hotel), and a huge hot springs swimming pool. No sulphur smell either. You can swim in the pool and look right up at snow capped mountains. Exquisite.

We were out West for nearly two months. We returned to some of our favorite venues, including the Center for Wooden Boats in Seattle, Three Rivers Folk Society in Kennewick, Washington, Old Liberty Theater near Portland, and Portland State University. And we played at some brand new (for us) places, including The Historic Roeder Home in Bellingham, Washington, Collective Visions in Bremerton, Don Quixote's near Santa Cruz, California, and the Kelsey Schoolhouse, a concert sponsored by our friends Bruce and Cindy Hayden, in the mountains above Sacramento.

We made several shorter trips to do gigs in the Chicago area and out state Illinois, to South Dakota, Iowa, Texas, and Arkansas. And we played a good bit around our very own Minnesota too.

In the fall we headed south to visit Luba Tryszynska-Frederick in Miami. She's the subject of a song I wrote, "Angel of Bergen-Belsen" (see old news). She's a holocaust survivor who saved 54 children from the Nazis while she herself was a prisoner in the death camps. This was our fourth pilgrimage to her place. She's 86 years old now, and her health is not what it once was. But she's feisty as ever, and we had a wonderful time listening to her stories, singing old Yiddish songs with her, and singing "Angel of Bergen-Belsen" to her. It is such an honor for me. Plus, I taught her how to play a little bit of harp! She made us potato latkes one night. Very delicious!

We did concerts on the way to Luba's, in Tampa, Bradenton, and Sarasota. Just a few days after we got to Florida we got word that my mom was in the hospital back in Minnesota. So after we'd visited Luba for a few days, we drove back to Texas, where we'd left our little Yorkie, Molly, with Curtis' mom. Curtis stayed to visit his family for a week, and I flew back to Minnesota.

Those of you on our e-mail list know my mom's been sick and in and out of the hospital and rest home ever since. But there's good news now, that she's going home in the middle of March. She has heart problems (atrial fibrillation), which seem to be under control now with medication. The other problem took months to be diagnosed, but we finally found out she has a rare autoimmune disease called Sjogren's Syndrome. Mild cases of this disease give you dry eyes and mouth. But in her case, it's very severe, and it's given her peripheral neuropathy and vasculitis. So, her feet, legs and hands are numb and in pain, and the disease is also attacking her blood vessels.

They've got her on some heavy duty medicine now, which has really helped with the pain, and the attack on her blood vessels. So, she's hanging in there, and I've had the good fortune to be able to spend a lot of time with her.

If you're still reading this, wow!! Thanks for reading my whole missive. We'd love to hear from you. Drop an e-mail to curtisloretta@att.net. Say hello, tell us you'd like to be on the e-mail list to get notices of concerts, or critique my news writing skills

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