Clay Riness Covered Up

Clay Riness is a wonderful folk musician and songwriter; and I will have the pleasure to host his house concert where he'll perform the songs that have influenced him the most. Gee Whiz... then I can't ask him to sing the cutting wood song... maybe he'll cover a Greg Brown story song. Some of you might recognize the name, Clay is also Weary Wolf and a contributor to this blog.

Here is Clay's description: blog that Clay posted explaining how this concert booking happened:


So, I just booked this gig. The whole thing happened so fast … proving to me that it was meant to be. No time to over think.

A few weekends ago, as I have mentioned, I spent some time with a few old friends playing and singing some of the most wonderful old songs. Songs which brought memories gushing through the floodgates; songs that were there for me when I was coming up as a young musician; songs that shaped me as a songwriter … that’s what they were and that’s what was so lovely. Talk about a musical version of comfort food.

I returned from the weekend energized and couldn’t seem to put a guitar down. I located and dusted off my old loose leaf gigging notebook and some folders of handwritten fake sheets, some of them over thirty years old, and poured over them, uncovering treasures not thought of since I quit playing out all those years ago. And, I had a reunion with a whole bunch of old friends. So many of those songs were simply brilliant.

I mentioned on the blog how the whole thing made me feel. Then, I got a little email from my friend Dave who organizes and hosts Bluff View Concerts, a little concert series up the road an hour or so.

“I guess we’ll have to talk about a house concert sometime,” he wrote.

A house concert? I haven’t done a house concert in … uh … decades. Probably 1987. What a wonderful thought! I emailed Dave back and told him that I had an idea for a show. I explained that in November of 2010 I had a concert booked at the Regional Arts Center (in conjunction with a one man art show of my father’s oil paintings). That concert would certainly be my normal show of original music, and I made it clear I had some contractual and moral obligations not to jeopardize the potential attendance of that event by being redundant.

You can see what’s coming here, no doubt. Yup. I proposed a show called “The Covered Up Concert” at which I would feature only covers of some of my all time favorite songs. He thought it was a fantastic idea. Further, I think the show will help to promote my November concert nicely, too.

Upon discovering that Dave’s house could seat about thirty-five people, I suggested that if he and his wife Lori were game, I would certainly offer a second show. After some discussion of marketing the event, we agreed to forge ahead with it and scheduled shows for Saturday, April 10th and Sunday, April 11th. I guess this note begins the marketing strategy. Surely we can convince seventy people to come and enjoy some of the best songs ever written, hmm? Well, OK, that’s my opinion there, regarding the songs.

I’m completely jazzed about how much fun this will be. Here’s a link to the flier / poster announcing the event (PDF format). If you’re local enough, please do print it and hang it up somewhere. Make reservations. Join us. It’s going to be a wonderful good time.