Sweets Mill String Band – Original members Harry Liedstrand, Cary Lung and Ron Tinkler will be joined by Larry Hanks (the band’s original guitarist, Jim Ringer, died in 1992).  This was the band that accompanied Kenny Hall on his classic Bay Records LPs of the 1970s, and this will be their first Bay Area performance in over 20 years!

Kenny Hall and the Sweets Mill String Band were recorded in three long sessions in the spring of 1972. Thirteen of the tunes were released that year by Bay Records (TPH 727). Volume 2 (Bay 103) was released sometime later and was a collection of 14 songs and tunes from that same recording session. This CD contains most of both volumes 1 and 2. The band includes Kenny Hall on mandolin, Jim Ringer on guitar, Ron Tinkler on banjo, Harry Liedstrand on fiddle, and Cary Lung on mandolin. Larry Hanks plays the jew's harp on several tunes.

The Sweets Mill String Band had its musical birth in the Central San Joaquin Valley in and around Fresno, Sweets Mill, Pierce's Park, and the orange groves of Centerville. The music is old-time style in the tradition of the Skillet Lickers, the North Carolina Ramblers, and Valley folks such as Ron Hughy, Otis Pierce, and Kenny Hall.

In the mid 1960s Ron Tinkler and Jim Ringer were teaming up with Kenny Hall for music jobs around the valley. In 1967 Harry Liedstrand and Cary Lung joined the informal music making that was happening in the homes of friends and out at Pierce's Park. By 1969 Kenny, Jim, Ron, and Harry were playing up and down the West Coast at universities and folk festivals as the Sweets Mill String Band. Cary formally joined the band in 1971 to stand in for Kenny when the Sweets Mill String Band gathered together with a host of other west coast musicians to form the Portable Folk Festival. Kenny kept the home fires burning in California while the Portable Folk Festival toured the country, playing at festivals, colleges, pot-lucks, and coffee houses.

As the 1970s and 1980s wore on, the movements of life took everyone in different directions, though we occasionally got together for a party, a reunion concert, or just a visit and some informal tunes. While balancing the challenges of raising families and pursuing careers, everyone continued to play music, be it old-time, country, or Irish.
Kenny recorded several albums including a solo album "Kenny Hall," with Philo Records in 1974; "Kenny Hall and the Long Haul String Band," with Voyager Records in 1980; "The Happy Neighbor Club," with the Fresno Folklore Society in 1988; and "Raise the Roof: Kenny Hall and the Long Haul String Band." Kenny has appeared on albums with the Boys of the Lough, U. Utah Phillips, Jean Ritchie, and others, as well as on anthologies from San Diego and Fox Hollow Folk Festivals, and the Festival of American Fiddle Tunes. 1999 saw the publication of Kenny Hall's Music Book, Old-Time Music for Fiddle and/or Mandolin by Mel Bay Publications. Kenny, with his wife Marta, has made two trips to Ireland, and played many festivals across the U.S. He still lives and plays music in Fresno, California.

Jim Ringer traveled far and wide, singing and writing songs before leaving us on St. Patrick's Day in 1992. He recorded many fine albums, including "Waitin' For the Hard Times to Go" for Folk Legacy, and "Good to Get Home" and "Any Old Wind That Blows" for Philo Records. Now we like to think he's playing music with Hank Williams and Otis Pierce. Virgil Byxbe, who named the Sweets Mill String Band after his Sierra Mt. music gathering, also passed on shortly before Jim in 1992.

Cary Lung moved to Tucson Arizona where he became a toy-master and created an enchanting toy store. Playing with toys, laughing with children, and playing Irish music all while raising two beautiful daughters, Chloe and Haley, have kept Cary young at heart and full of fun.

Ron and Ellen Tinkler are working and teaching in Mendocino County. Together they have raised two new Tinklers, Omie and Jesse, and countless gardens, flowers, and vegetables. Playing music and singing together have kept their home country-cozy and a great meeting ground for old-time country music around Northern California.
Harry Liedstrand is teaching children and playing music in Walnut Creek, California. He and Cindy play music together and have two musical kids; Terrell plays guitar and violin, and Farrin plays violin and dances. When joined by Harry's father Al, three generations fiddle old-time music together at the annual Liedstrand Family Show in the giant redwoods of California's north coast.

It was the love of this old music that sparkled and drew us together some 35 years ago. Now, in this new millennium, it still brings us spinning together for a rare reunion concert or festival. Celebrating the currents of life through rhythm, melody, and harmony have merged us together in wonderful ways, meaningful not only to us, but to others as well. Through playing, listening, dancing, and singing we have enhanced our celebration of joy. Just tapping your foot to the rhythm of an internal melody, or humming that wistful tune you feel emerging can make all the difference. Perhaps it would be fun to write some liner notes that read "We're back! And we're better than ever!" But really, this is just a fresh look at a snapshot from long ago.

The Sweets Mill String Band exists as an entity mostly in spirit...gathering together occasionally to make a joyful noise...glad you noticed. 
- H. Liedstrand and R. Tinkler, April, 2001

Kenny Hall & the Sweets Mill String Band will perform in concert at the Freight on Fri. Sept. 10.  Kenny also will play at the showing of "I Hear What You See" at the Pacific Film Archive the afternoon of Sat. Sept. 11.

We are pleased to welcome Alice Gerrard back to the BOTMC; she was here last year and also in 2007 with Tom, Brad and Alice.  Alice Gerrard has been a musician and a proponent of traditional music since the 1960s, when she made the first of her recordings with Hazel Dickens on the Folkways Label. A native of the West Coast, Gerrard discovered traditional southern music while attending Antioch College in Ohio. Later, she made trips to the mountains of North Carolina and Virginia to visit and learn from traditional musicians, playing with them on field recordings and later in the studio. Gerrard has recorded and played with some of North Carolina’s most loved artists, including Elizabeth Cotton, Tommy Jarrell, and Joe and Odell Thompson. She also participated in the Southern Folk Festival tours as part of Anne Romaine and Bernice Johnson Reagan’s Southern Folk Cultural Revival Project, which brought white and black musicians together in the midst of the Civil Rights struggles to share songs and perform with one another in concerts throughout the south. In 1987 she founded the Old Time Herald, still the premier publication devoted to old time music, and two years later moved her home and the magazine to Durham. She continues to make recordings as a solo artist and with Brad Leftwich and Tom Sauber as Tom, Brad and Alice. The International Bluegrass Music Association honored Gerrard with a Distinguished Achievement Award in 2001. In 2009 she was the Lehman Brady Visiting Professor of Documentary Studies at Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she shared her knowledge with a new generation of field recorders. In 2010, Alice received the North Carolina Folklore Society’s 2010 Brown-Hudson Award, honoring her for her contributions to North Carolina folk traditions.


Alice will perform in concert on Fri. Sept. 10 at the Freight,  play for the Wednesday square dance at the Niebyl Proctor Marxist Library, participate in a panel discussion at UC Berkeley on Friday at noon and teach a workshop on Old Time Country Singing at the Jazzschool on Sun. Sept. 12.  She'll also be on hand at the showing of "Sprout Wings and Fly", a documentary film about Tommy Jarrell, directed by Les Blank and produced by Alice and Cece Conway, on Saturday afternoon at the Pacific Film Archive.

The Macrae sisters were born and raised in Portland Oregon, where they grew up playing a smattering of different genres of music, including but not limited to folky guitar, classical violin, Italian opera and jazz flute. Luckily for the rest of the world they've narrowed down their musical undertakings to mostly old time, with a little classical violin thrown in on the side. Marian has been studying the instrument since she was a small child, and took up old time when she was a teenager, along with Gabrielle who had been playing mostly Bob Dylan covers on the guitar and decided to learn banjo when she heard the Portland band "The Government Issue Orchestra" playing at a portland cafe. Joanna quickly followed suit on the guitar. She still sings Italian operas if pressed, but mostly ballads from North Carolina and the occasional country classic. In 2006 Gabrielle moved to Asheville, NC then her older sister Marian followed her, met and married Jamie Herrmann, the current bass player in the band, and decided to move out as well. The two started performing as the Macrae sisters and recorded their first CD in Asheville, with Joanna singing on a couple of tracks. Gabrielle has since moved back to Portland where Joanna still lives, and Marian and Jamie live in Philadelphia where Marian is going to school for music and Jamie is apprenticing with a violin maker. Earlier this year, Marian went on tour as part of singer-songwriter Michelle Shocked’s band. As a band they have performed at the Minnesota Bluegrass and Old Time Association Winter Bluegrass Weekend in Minneapolis, the Portland Old Time Gathering, house concerts, square dances, and small venues around North Carolina and Oregon.

The Macrae Sisters will perform in concert at the Freight on Fri. Sept. 10.