Seasons Greetings and more...

December 10, 2009

Seasons Greetings!

Cindy arrived in Los Angeles to rain and below average temperatures (“freezing!” to LA natives). The Refugees started recording our 2^nd CD this week! We cut four new tracks with fabulous drummer, Scott Babcock and we are extremely excited about it! It will be very different from the first but obviously still featuring our vocals and harmonies. We have written five new songs together so far for this album, with one or two more on the horizon. As with the first record, we also will have a couple each of our own songs we’ve “Refugized”.

We’re finishing up a year of a lot of road work, touring all over the country and Canada, truly solidifying The Refugees as a band. 2009 was an odyssey of sorts, we learned a great deal about ourselves and about us as a band. Along the way, we met some wonderful people and played some kick-ass shows. We go into this new phase now, recording a new CD and booking for 2010 with assurance, confidence and optimism about our future.

Going back a week or two, here is an example of the glory of “the road” (other than the performance itself) --The Refugees met in Calgary, Alberta for one concert, Thanksgiving weekend. Now for Wendy and Deborah, the travel consisted of getting on a plane Friday late afternoon in Los Angeles and flying non-stop to Calgary, arriving three hours later. For Cindy, flying from Maine was a completely different story. Long, tedious story short (cancelled flights etc)--it took her almost 22 hours to get to Calgary on that Friday. Now the concert itself on Saturday night, and the folks at Bow Valley Music Club were awesome! We were well taken care of and had a great time! We love Calgary! (And they seem to like us—we’ve been there three times in the last year or so and go back in January!) Only hours after arriving it seemed, Cindy, Deb and Wendy got to the airport on Sunday at 6:30am to fly home and discovered that through an error of United’s making—Cindy didn’t actually have a ticket! She DID have a ticket according to her itinerary and receipt—but not according to the airline. So… let us just thank the good folks at DELTA—who finally after an hour and a half of them being on the phone with United not being able to get it fixed—actually fudged a bag tag and a ticket, walked Cindy through immigration and security and put her on the plane! During this time Wendy and Deborah had a nice breakfast and some coffee at the new and lovely Calgary Airport. (Why, you might ask, would you fly to Calgary, Alberta, Canada for only ONE gig? And you would have a very good point! We’ll just say that we are learning from our experience.)

We look forward to seeing many of you along our path in the coming year. We will be playing sparsely for the first few months of 2010, we are doing our first dates in Europe in April. But hopefully we will be bounding across the country in the summer and fall months with our new CD in hand.

We wish you all peace, love and joy this Holiday—and all that in the New Year too!

With much love and appreciation,

Cindy, Deborah and Wendy