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!

This video clip came from the backstage at the Tennessee Fall Homecoming, in Norris, Tennessee. They have one of the most realistic looking Abraham Lincoln impersonators that I've ever seen. Lincoln always seemed to be breaking out his musical saw to play for people, so we asked him to jam with us on a few tunes. Enjoy!

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.

MUSICAL HAPPINESS IS NEW GUITAR STRINGS

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!

Warming up in t

(We live in Red Sox nation, as you can see in the top left)

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!

Pictures from the Quebec mini-tour. Enjoy!