Getting around again 🤞 Spring 2023

[TANIA OPLAND]

Even with baby steps, and despite many setbacks along the way, we are actually making progress toward being on the road again.

After escaping our hillside hunkerage in Alaska we spent eight months restoring our home base in Western Washington to livable condition, even though a couple of major projects didn’t get done. Now we’re working on the same with our Irish cottage, which suffered an even longer abandonment. In many ways, though, it survived better. I guess three and a half years doesn’t seem as long to a two hundred year old cottage that had been completely neglected for more than 30 years before we found it.

Things are coming together. The house is warm and cozy. One or two plumbing problems pale to insignificance after what we worked through when we returned to Washington! The car has been cut loose from the brambles that were growing through it, started, cleaned, run, and (after much frustration) insured. Some damage to some instruments is being repaired, but we have enough things to play to keep up our rehearsals for our much anticipated shows.

Finally!! Our (thrice postponed) 2020 UK tour:

Wed 4/12 Llantrisant

Thu 4/13 Bromsgrove

Fri 4/14 Norwich

Mon 4/17 Stirling

Sun aftn 4/23 Hebden Bridge

Sun eve 4/23 Southport

Wed 4/26 Cottingham

Thu 4/27 Louth

Tue 5/2 St Neots

Wed 5/3 Spalding

Thu 5/4 Congleton

Sat 5/6 Whalley, Clitheroe

See full details at opland-freeman.com

After that we’ll be spending some time in Ireland, getting more work done on the house and studio. In July, Tania is very excited to be indulging her Early Music infatuation by attending a week of workshops - Scoil na gCláirseach, hosted in Kilkenny by the Historic Harp Society of Ireland. Then, while Mike stays on to get even more work done on the old cottage, she’ll scoot back to the Pacific Northwest to join the 6th annual Vashon Sessions project - an intensive weekend of musical collaboration. The curious can listen to the results of Vashon Session #5 on Bandcamp.

That’s all the news for now. We hope you're having a good Spring - perhaps less soggy than the one we are having in Ireland ☔️.

Hope to see you somewhere down the road,

❤️🎶☘️ Tania & Mike

TANIA OPLAND & MIKE FREEMAN - Acoustic World Music - www.opland-freeman.com