Name: Private House Concert
Start: 2023-06-21
End: 2023-06-21
Location: Bend, OR

New Year, New Newsy Newsletter!

Hello, friends and fellow music lovers!

Here we are in 2023, can you believe it?! I’m so excited for all the possibility this new year brings!

Lots of fun things are brewing, and I’m excited to tell you all about it! These days I am visioning what I want my year in music and poetry to look like, and much of what I love and treasure about music is already in play! Collaborations, workshops, opportunities to experience music and poetry in community, fun concerts…it’s happening, woop!

I love being an artist/poet/performing singer-songwriter/creative free spirit, and it turns out I also love working a regular part-time job as the Events Coordinator at our town’s beloved Paulina Springs Books! I am so grateful that I get to feel rooted and also spread my wings! My task now is finding and maintaining balance between these parts of me.

BIG GRATITUDE to everyone who came out to our Nature Of Gratitude collaborative event in Eugene and my concert with Halie Loren that followed. What a wonderful spirit lift it was! And thanks to all who joined us for Winter Solstice Restorative Yoga with poetry and music! It was a joy to collaborate with my friend and local yogi Phoenix Reis and to create space for rest and contemplation. More of that please! 🙂

Here’s some fun stuff brewing…

Feb 21 – March 28 – Songwriting In Community: A 6-Week Workshop/Playshop in Sisters, OR! I am honored and thrilled to partner with Sisters Folk Festival to offer this in-person class! We will gather on Tuesday evenings from 6:30-8:30 Feb 21 through March 28 at the Sisters ArtWorks JAM studio (204 W. Adams Ave)! We will explore tools for beginnings and engage in wordplay and writing exercises. We’ll refine our awareness in noticing the choices that songwriters make. We will write, share, listen and learn from each other. I LOVE sharing what I have learned and what works for me in songwriting. I love supporting other songwriters in their creative process and in sharing their work. I love what happens when people who love songs gather to geek out about songs! And I believe we have much to learn from working together. Maximum of 12 participants. $150 per person with pay-what-you-can option available. Please holler at me if you have any questions? Click here for more info and to register.

In poetry news, I’m excited to delve more deeply into poetry this year and bring my next book project to light. (Who knows, it might even be two books!) I hope to attend the Summer Fishtrap Gathering of Writers workshop this summer in Eastern Oregon to study and to meet more writers. And I’m super excited we are hosting our first poetry open mic at the bookstore on Feb 23! We’ll have a wonderful featured poet – Donna Henderson reading from her new work, and also open it up for others to share poems they have written or poems they love. One of my goals is to find more ways to connect through poetry, so I hope to host many more events like this!

In performing news, I’m continuing my collaboration and musical mischief with the She’s Speaking project! As you may remember, friends Bre Gregg, Kristen Grainger and I created She’s Speaking during the shutdown of 2020 with the mission to create forums/spaces where women’s voices and artistry can be heard by all people. We had our first She’s Speaking Live show in November of 2021 and it was incredible!! We blew the roof off that place ha! We’re thrilled to announce that we’ll be doing several She’s Speaking Live concerts this March in celebration of Women’s History Month and International Women’s Day! These concerts feature eight Oregon women singer-songwriters backed by a killer band to share original songs inspired by women and to pay tribute to some of our musical sheroes. We will be returning to the great Alberta Rose Theatre in Portland along with the Lincoln City Cultural Center, and Loucks Auditorium in Salem. We’re also presenting a small three-songwriter version of She’s Speaking Live with us three founders (Bre Gregg, Kristen Grainger and lil ol me) backed by the incredible Dan Gildea and Dan Wetzel in Ilwaco, WA. Stay tuned for more details. SO MUCH FUN!!

Here’s a video we made after our first She’s Speaking Live concert…

I can’t believe how I lucky I am to get to return to beautiful Lange Winery in April for a concert. And I still LOVE playing house concerts and listening room shows, looking forward to playing a private house concert in Bend this summer and hopefully more. And…my heart is soaring thinking about returning to my beloved Home By Dark in August to make music with my good friends in Georgia at my favorite concert series! I’m looking forward to playing shows that feel delicious, healthy and fun! Check out the events page on my website for all of the latest info.

I’m continuing to host virtual song circles, and our next one will be on January 25. These are great opportunities for sharing, listening, and connecting with other songwriters. Originals and covers and poetry are welcome. You can even come and just listen!! Holler at me at bethwoodmusic@hotmail.com if you’d like to join us.

These days my main way to connect with folks through my music and poetry continues to be Patreon. I’m sharing a new video/song and a new poem every month, and this has been so amazing for my writing practice! If you haven’t checked it out yet, I hope you will try something new! I’m doing fewer concerts these days, and most folks don’t buy CDs anymore, so this is a way to offer direct support that helps to keep me going. And hopefully I can bring you some joy/light/beauty in return.

Check out this fun video we made at song camp! Sisters Folk Festival and The Source Weekly teamed up to make a video series called Music On The Metolius, and this episode features Dennis McGregor, Justin Farren, and lil ol me having a blast chatting about songwriting and swapping tunes! Check out all of the videos here on their YouTube playlist!

Friends, I’m so grateful to you for walking beside me on my creative journey! I’m being drawn to finding ways to build community and connect around music and poetry, and it feels so energizing! Less about “me, me, me” and more about “you, you, you” and “us, us, us!” I’ve seen the power of creative expression in action, and I believe music belongs to everyone, and we belong to it. Same with poetry. May we all find more belonging and more time for things that light us up!

As always, I love hearing from you. I hope to connect with you soon!

Yours in gratitude and in song,

Beth Wood

PO Box 551

Sisters, OR 97759

bethwoodmusic@hotmail.com

BW World Headquarters: bethwoodmusic.com

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