Happy 2014! After
three years of hiatus, The Muellers reunited in early January for two
reunion shows in central and midcoast Maine. It was wonderful to see so
many familiar and new faces at the shows. Check out some video clips below!
The Muellers wish to thank all of you for your continued interest in our band, other related musical activities, and Bob's upcoming trans-USA unicycle ride! We have two bluegrass dates currently on the calendar and hope you can make one or both! April 1st we'll be playing a benefit concert sponsored by the University of Maine Farmington with proceeds donated to Japanese earthquake relief. And on April 2nd, we'll be back in Camden for another appearance in the Friends of Music series sponsored by the First Congregational Church of Camden. Details can be found on our schedule.
Other dates of interest: Sunday, May 8th at 4 pm, The Tom Mueller Group, jazz quintet, at the First Congregational Church in Camden, Tom on piano performing fresh interpretations of jazz standards, as well as orginal compositions and arrangements. Approximately May 15th, Bob leaves from Portland, Maine on his unicycle, destination Seattle, Washington! Info will be posted soon at www.BobAcrossAmerica.com. Sunday, Aug 7th, 4 p.m., First Congregational Church in Camden, Tom Mueller, piano and Susan Poliacik, 'cello, will present chamber music featuring works of Debussy, Brahms, Beethoven, and a newly-commissioned 'cell sonata composed by Tom. Sunday, October 16, 4:00 pm, First Congregational Church of Camden, Tom Mueller will present a concert of North German organ and harpischord works.
Hope to see you at the April shows and other Mueller dates! There will probably be bluegrass shows added in Maine over the next few months, but my advice is catch us while you can, Muellers are starting to fly off in all directions!
We're way overdue for an update! The musical Muellers are alive, well and holed up in Maine! After several years of touring, we are staying put in our home state, playing selected dates as we pursue some other interests. We've added a couple of dates to the calendar and have several dates pending, so please check back if you are in need of some pickin' and grinnin'.
Here's a little bit of what's going on with the family... Tom, while not playing guitar and singing in our band, is a world-class pipe organist on a mission--namely, he's presenting in concert everything that J.S. Bach wrote for the pipe organ, somewhere in the neighborhood of 350 pieces of music. He performed the first concert in January and is scheduled to achieve his goal (approximately 18 concerts) in October. You can read about him here. The younger Muellers are enjoying time home with serious piano study, something that had fallen by the wayside when we were on the road a lot. And while much of what we are doing is musical, Bob, 19, is training for a trans-USA unicycle ride! Here's a couple of links if you want to learn more about Bob's unicycling: www.onewheelrolling.com www.youtube.com/1wheelrolling
Thank you so much for supporting our family!
Hi everyone,
We hope that you are enjoying the summer! It's been one of the wettest, coolest summers on record (at least in our neck of the woods), but that hasn't stopped us from playing as much as possible!
I've just added a couple of new August dates to the calendar, so check it out and see if we'll be playing near you in the next few months. We'd love to see you at a show.
Tom M.
We are still sorting through the pictures from our last road jaunt, but here's a few standouts that I've discovered so far.
Hanging out before a gig at the KASU bluegrass series in Paragould, Arkansas.
Karen and Tom waiting outside the aquarium at the Omaha Zoo during one of our off days in Nebraska.
Warming up a couple of songs while waiting for a soundcheck.
Tastee Treet! This little restaurant in South Dakota is a local favorite that has been around forever.
Laurah and Tom with Danny, one of the staff musicians at Silver Dollar City.
Laurah, Sarah, and Tom, standing outside our favorite barbecue restaurant/gas station/gun shop in southeastern Missouri.
The album is done!
After a winter of late nights in the studio and 2 a.m. doughnut-and-coffee runs, our fourth album, The Muellers, will be available tomorrow. It features a bunch of originals and a couple of standards run through our tangy musical sensibilities.
Here's the track listing:
1) Drag the River
2) What a Beautiful Day
3) Love Please Come Home
4) Fire
5) Sound of a Lonesome Fiddle
6) Born Again
7) Train to Tennessee
8) Cold Hard Light
9) Bury Me Beneath the Willow
10) Silver Bells
11) Won't You Come and Sing for Me?
Come listen to a bunch of new tracks on MySpace and let us know what you think! The album will also be available for purchase on our website within a day or two, and should be on iTunes and other online sites by the end of the month.
After a successful and fun run at the Florida State festival, we are slowly heading west to our next engagement at the Two Rivers festival in Leakesville, Mississippi. Our grandparents are travelling with us, and with their Camry and our trusty van, we form quite a merry convoy.
Laurah and Grandma
Trying to capture Tom's infamous "something-is-out-of-tune" look
Grandpa and his dream fish.
Hello all,
We are enjoying the sunshine and warm breezes of Florida! It's so different from Maine, especially during the spring (which Mainers euphemistically refer to as "mud season"). Last night we played our first set at the Florida State Bluegrass Festival amid heavy rain and tornado warnings, but we were pleased to see that quite a few people stuck around until the end of the night.
On Saturday, we will be presenting three different workshops for festival attendees. Tom will be presenting two: one on mandolin, and another on harmony singing and songwriting. After our set that afternoon, the entire family will be available for a Q&A session, talking about the nitty-gritty of being a family bluegrass band. We presented a similar workshop last year at Bean Blossom, and I was surprised at how many people it drew.
Hi folks!
A couple of exciting updates today:
First, The Muellers will be opening for Claire Lynch at One Longfellow Square in Portland, Maine, on February 15. Details and tickets are available at http://www.onelongfellowsquare.com/. Tell your friends!
Also, I've just posted a couple of new tracks from the upcoming CD on our Myspace page, so skip on over there and give it a spin. Both tracks are available for free download as well! www.myspace.com/themuellers
BIG NEWS
Two things:
First, the band has taken another lurching step into the 21st century, and now has a band instant messenging account. Add the screenname muellerfamilymus to your contacts, and hit us up. We don't bite--in fact, we'll be glad to hear from you.
Remember, that's:
muellerfamilymus
Second, we now have an account over at flickr.com, one of the internet's premier photoblogging sites. I've uploaded hundreds of pictures from 2008, and we'll be adding many, many more in the next couple of days. We're going to try to get about eight years worth of musical pictures posted, tagged, and captioned. So skip on over to our photostream and check it out!
I've posted a few new pictures that our friend Jeff Pouland took at the Rex Theater in Galax, Virginia. You can check out some of his amazing photography work at http://www.jeffpoulandphotography.com/.
Now that we have a couple of weeks off, we are taking some time to polish some material that's going to be on the next record, and are learning a couple more songs: one of mine, entitled "Drag the River", an older gospel song called "River of Jordan", and we've been kicking around some ideas of "I'm Gonna Lay Down My Old Guitar."
Stay tuned!
There are new kittens at Mueller central command! On the left, you'll see Delicious a.k.a The D.O.G., and on the right, you'll see Fluffy a.k.a. What'sup What'shappening.
It's the The D.O.G.!
Me, Laurah, and Sarah, at the Tennessee Fall Homecoming in Norris.
Hog scalding is pretty intense.
Well, which is it?
Boilin' down the molasses.
On a Mayberry's Finest advertisement.
Sarah was suspicious of the affectionate couple in the background--I think they were probably suspicious of us as well, judging by the look on that guy's face.
Hanging out with a marionette while waiting for our barbecue to arrive.
At the Gibson store in the Nashville mall.I'm proud to announce that The Muellers now endorse GHS Strings! I've been using GHS products for years, but I'm glad that we can make it official. A big thank you goes out to Ben Cole, Melissa Eben, and all the fine people over at GHS who are helping us do what we do best...wear out guitar strings really quickly.
Check out their website and give their products a shot. Laurah and I recently switched our mandolin setups to one of their light gauge sets, and they sound and play great.
Here's a couple of pictures from the radio show last month. Bear in mind that these were taken in the early morning. The Muellers are a lot of things, but we are definitely not early birds!
We're glad to finally be settling back down in Maine after a couple of busy months of performing and travelling. We had a great time playing at the historic Rex Theater in Galax, Virginia, on their Friday night radio broadcast show, and ended our trip on a high note by performing alongside the Grascals and Dailey & Vincent at the Tennessee Fall Homecoming. It's always a thrill to play bluegrass in Tennesee.
You might have heard us on the radio or TV this week; we've played in the studios of B98.5 and 92 Moose, filmed some performing and interview footage for WABI (that's the statewide news channel from Bangor, if you're not a Mainer), and are looking forward to another studio performance on WMHB (89.7) on Saturday morning. WMHB streams live on the internet, so check it out if you get a chance!
Here we are on stage at the Museum of Appalachia on Wednesday. It was pretty dang rainy, as you can see, but the weather had cleared by the time we played again on Friday, and it was a beautiful, beautiful day. As always, it was great to see and hear our friends in the Grascals and Dailey & Vincent. And I got to hang out with Charlie Acuff!
We've had a great summer playing locally in New England, but we're starting to itch for some more road time. The Muellers will be appearing in northern Quebec this weekend, in West Virginia the next weekend, and then we'll be all over the place for a while. Look for us in Virginia and Tennessee in October and September. Hope to see you all down the road!
Also, we're going to be going into the studio after we return to New England to record our fourth album. The band is still batting around song choices at this point, so if there's a song that you REALLY REALLY like, and want to see on the new CD, you should tell us what it is.
I've got a couple of great live mp3s from some of our spring/summer touring that I'll be posting on our website and Myspace, so check back here often to make sure you don't miss anything!
