I wanted to take a minute and tell you the tale of Sheila Francis, whom we met on our very first outing to MusicFest in Steamboat Springs 2009, as the fledgling company called Music Fog. It was the last day, and Ben Krech was hell bent on executing an idea he had for a "Gondola Concert Series," getting artists to play while in motion in a confined space, and filming it. We tweeted for a "contest winner" to take the ride in the gondola with Paula Nelson and George Devore for this private mini-concert up and down the mountain. Sheila answered the tweet, and magically appeared in the allotted 5 minutes. 
Since then, she has gamely interned on many other Music Fog road trips, and contributed articles from events we didn't cover; all while she was getting her degree in accounting! A couple of road trips back she wound up behind the Music Fog camera, as an operator, and though that was neither her career path intention, nor ours, we are digging what she is putting down! Don't forget the Music Fog motto is, "How hard can it be?" So, most of our Nashville sessions feature Sheila on camera two, and you can clearly see that she "gets it." Some beautiful shots there!
Our last session on the last day at the Americana Fest in Nashville was with a legend. I have a policy of not telling anyone on the crew when they are going to be in the presence of royalty, so I didn't say Susan Cowsill of THE COWSILLS, though I guess it's not that common of a name, is it? Susan was also with the Continental Drifters, one of the most amazing live bands I have seen over the last 20 years! Susan and band - Russ Broussard, Sam Craft, Jack Craft, and Mary Lasseigne - came in early, and sussed out our 'studio set' the Sweet Suite at the Sheraton Nashville Downtown. Susan checked out the fine guitars we had on hand from Gibson, and decided to play the Hummingbird. She broke a string towards the end of this song, the first in her set, so she grabbed the Songwriter Deluxe Standard for the remaining songs. Nice choices, huh?! The drum kit was on loan from Somebody's Darling, who you will see very soon here at Music Fog. The feeling of tiredness was catching up with us from having recorded 36 previous sessions, the struggles to stay on schedule, and the OMG moment of coming back to our space that morning to discover that a vendor had mistakenly tore down our set; they had removed our "mojo." Frantic phones calls, emails, and texts yielded their return, and then the race was on to rebuild and get the set ready for the day. What originally took over three hours to build, was reset in about twenty minutes! And magic ensued on that last session of the last day.
Susan Cowsill's latest CD is Lighthouse, and was beautifully reviewed by David Fricke in Rolling Stone magazine. In a song that is guaranteed to make you cry, to make you ponder the ebb and flow of the seasons, the eternal pull of the cycle of life, here is "The Way That It Goes," which can be found on the new album.
- Jessie Scott
