Fly to Blue: News

Just thought this could make someone laugh or smile.

Nice things were said about Fly to Blue recently in the Santa Barbara Independent. The Independent featured over 150 local bands. It's hard to believe there are that many bands here in Santa Barbara!!! Anyway, we are one of the bands that they covered in the paper.

The Summit Summer Festival in Oregon was great fun, the sound system and sound person were exceptionally great. It is always a pleasure to perform with true quality sound and so nice to play outside in the open on a beautiful sunny day. And boy was it sunny that day! I thought I would melt. There was an amazing choregraphed street dance, painted faces, food, pies, Thai ice tea and amazing art from many local artesians. As the sun went down, the party continued with the wonderful live jam band "Ladyz n the Barley," who really rocked the crowd out with their socially conscious lyrics and beautiful harmonies.
I had such a good time hanging out with my family and new baby nephew, Lake. He fell asleep in my arms four times! It was so good for my heart. He's sooooo cute. I realize I am a little biased, but really it is true. He's got beautiful big brown eyes. He looks a lot like his dad, my big brother. It was really sweet to see how in love my big brother and his wife are with their first born little one. I also got to hang out with my older nephew Quentin, who is such a cool and genuine person, and my niece Cheyanne, who had the funniest pair of striped socks that I have ever seen.....a sign of her good sense of humor. However, there was one draw back; the train. My parents live, literally 25 feet from some freight train tracks!!! The train would idle for 20 minutes, rumble, rumble, rumble, loud, loud loud. Just sitting there, keeping me awake!!! Augh!Getting sleep became an issue for me :( and I love to sleep, so I did get a little grumpy. Well part of the problem was that I somehow bought a bag of decaf coffee, but I didn't know it until a few days later when my sister-in-law pointed it out to me....after I had a day-long migraine from not having caffiene. No wonder that coffee wasn't working...silly me!! I am a little slow without my caffiene though, so that is my excuse.
The thing that I dig about Oregon in August is the blackberries. I made sure to eat a lot of them cuz they are all free and all over the place!!! The other thing that's really cool is all the animals, lots of dogs, cats, chickens and horses and other strange beasts. Chickens are really strange, but I must say turkeys are even stranger. Bird brain, bird brain!! I even saw one snake, which I was not actually that happy to see. I screamed and jumped high up in the air for old times sake. It was just an impulse, really, I did not plan it.
Oh, but it's good to be back home in California.
--Valarie

What a fun time we had playing music in San Jose. We got to catch up with a lot of our buddies and we were up into the wee hours of the morning talking about music and lots of great philosophical things.

Thanks to Molly and Reeves of Smith & Wyer Photography for taking our new promo shots.

Last week played music at UCSB for a collaborative work with Cybil Gilbertson of the Santa Barbara Dance Theatre. The work consisted of Cybil's spoken word and dance movement combined with our dark circus song "Trapeze Lady" as a tribute to Cybil's Aunt Barbara. The piece got rave reviews in the Santa Barbara Independent! It was a cathartic experience and we all hope to perform it again and perhaps make a video of many of the elements from the piece.

"The lights were on and the atmosphere was festive thanks to Fly to Blue.....It was a bewitching blend of personal memoir, breathtaking movement, and Fly to Blue's live, original music...it was a moment that transcended art." by Justine Sutton - the Santa Barbara Independent.

Happy Earth Day our fellow Earthlings! We played "Spring Song" and "Old Hippie" as well as some other of our earthiest songs on the mainstage of the Earth Day Festival at the beautiful Sunken Gardens in Santa Barbara.

We have added new players to Fly To Blue. Jeff Lowry is playing bass with us and Allen Jewell is playing percussion. We've been having fun at rehearsals and shows lately.

Happy New Year!

We were selected as one of the Best of 2007 for Channel 17 TV's Musical Cafe. We were part of the live studio audience and interviewed after our clip was spotlighted for the show. It was pretty good. I even hit David in the nose with a microphone! It was an accident, of course. Also part of the Best of 2007 performers were the lovely Delaney Gibson and blues man Morganfield Burnette.

Hope you all are enjoying the holidays. It can be a stressful time so we try to chill! We had a great time in the Bay Area early this month. We got to see some old friends from Saratoga and play some tunes at our old stomping grounds, Blue Rock Shoot. Aly's holiday bash was a big success! We've been working on some new material we think you'll like. Be on the look out for David's new album due out in February 2008! We're also completing our debut Fly to Blue CD we hope to release by June 2008 - lots of new sounds for you to enjoy. Be safe and stay warm. Happy New Year and Much Aloha! Fly to Blue (David and Valarie)

We were happy to be part of the Mark Ludmer's Best of 2007 Indie Music Show at Rocks nightclub in Santa Barbara. The night was great with all sorts of great performing singer-songwriters with many different genres and cool stories and music.

Hi All! Hope you're having a great summer. Valarie and I have had a blast the past few months. We both just celebrated birthdays - Valarie's in August, David in September. It's good to be alive and comfortable in my own skin...

We played the Bitterend in NYC, met some great new friends and fans, and will be returning soon. Much thanks to Arthur Sadowsky (bassist) and Kevin Garcia (percussionist) for dynamic times together! You guys are super!! Also thanks to Aly Kahn for his hospitality and hosting our stay. You rock Aly!

Valarie is enjoying the break from UCSB - lounging, reading, singing and writing. Scrappy, Posey, Grandma (the kitties) are purring a lot - could it be the love or the food? David is near completion of the solo album he started on Maui. An ordeal of love to be sure. You'd gonna love it - promise! We've begun a duo album too, and plan to give considerable attention to its completion in the months ahead.

OK, so the weather is still really nice. Let's get in the water and surf and enjoy what life has to offer. Good things happen to bad people, and bad things happen to good people. And we still have choices to make every day!! Aloha all sistas and bradahs. See you in the wata' brah or me give some lickins.

David and Valarie
Fly to Blue

We just played the Channel 17 Indie Music Show's Launch Party at Rocks. Rocks is so much fun for musicians to play for several reasons; 1. They have a great sound system. 2. They have a great sound person. 3. They have lights!!! Yea, it is cool. It is a great place to catch a show for the same reasons.

The Launch Party was a success. Mark Ludmer, who created the TV show, also hosted the launch party. We all watched the show on the projection screen first. Then the live music by, Kurt Frost, Fly To Blue, Delaney Gibson, and then Karen Thurber. Great performances by all!! The best thing about the show was getting to meet a bunch of new people and musicians. There was a real sense of community in the air.

Yes!! At long last summer is here!! Happy Solstice! We recently opened for Jonatha Brooke at Soho in Santa Barbara, California. It was a great show. Jonatha was awesome on stage and ever cool off stage. Buy her CD's!!! She is amazing. We have been fans for a long time, so it was so cool to open for her. We had a large band for that show, electric guitar, congas, djembe and bass. But most of our smaller shows we are performing as a trio with Bill on bass. A lovely modern dancer, Chelsea, also joined us at Soho and put some dance movement/expression to our music. What a show!!!

We played music last week for the Santa Barbara Dance Theatre's "New Works." The show was at the University of California, Santa Barbara. We were a 4 piece for that show, percussion is a good thing for modern dance. The local entertainment newspaper did an article on the event, and mentioned Fly To Blue. The show was all about new choreography by the SBDT dancers. Part of it was like a dance open mic. The stage was open for who ever wanted to come out there an express themselves. We played Trapeze Lady, too. That was a popular song with the dancers, lots of imagery. It was an interesting evening because the building had a black out. We played unplugged to candlelight. The dancers were beautiful.

Yesterday we taped for a new show called the Indie Music Show. We performed two songs to be broadcast on local TV in the next month or two. It was good fun and we got to meet some other wonderful musicians and artsy fartsy type folks. What songs did we play, you ask? We played "Island" and "Fly to Blue."

David's CD that he started 5 years ago in Maui is in the final mixing stages. It is sounding really good. It has cool instrumentation and production including violin and steel guitar on a few songs. Of course it has bass and percussion, as well. There are such great songs on there too. This will be different than the regular Fly To Blue stuff, and excellent too. Many of the songs on David's album are inspired by Maui and have such beautiful imagery. But it is the mood that I find the most captivating. The album has such a great vibe to it. Fly To Blue fans will love it.
- V

We had a great show in Redondo Beach. The crowd was great and responsive to our inevitable humor and jest. We tried "Trapeze Lady" another way. It is a dark sort of circus song. We did this song duet style. David sang the verses and I sang the chorus in a wicked way, which is so fun.

that David is a surfer?

Please have a look at some cool surf photos in our photo gallery.