News, views, and a bit of whining

Okay - I know some of you are literally roasting in oven temperatures across the country, and if I had 
to choose between that and the perennial grey fall weather we're having on the West Coast, I'd rather 
be cool. So I guess whining is out of the question. I'll refrain. And those in the east - you have my 
sympathy.

Julia and Ted and I spent the last couple of weekends touring the gulf islands - including with UHF 
on Mayne Island and a house concert with Julia & Ted on my old stomping grounds on Saltspring 
Island. Touring the Gulf Islands in the summer is my idea of gig heaven. It's always a strange and 
wonderful feeling to return to Saltspring. I rented a little cabin on the water there for 10 years between
1978 and 1988 and started my life as a songwriter there, before I had family or this great big lumbering 
life I have now. I had weeks on end of delicious solitude, wrote my first three albums there, rowed into Ganges most days for groceries and supplies, shared a huge vegetable garden with my landlord, and generally had one of the finest chapters of my life. The second 5 years or so of that time I moved for
periods to Toronto, LA and Vancouver, and Saltspring was more of a place to visit. But it will always 
hold a very special place for me. Every time I visit I want to live there again. 

But I digress. This letter is really a thinly veiled attempt to spread the word about two shows coming
up that I REALLY want to make sure you know about. The shows with Julia and Ted have been so 
fantastic that I wanted to book a couple of bigger shows to give more folks an opportunity to come, so 
we're at the Belfry Theatre this Thursday, July 28th and Presentation House in North Vancouver the
following Friday, August 5th. And if you're not in either the Victoria or Vancouver area, but have
friends to whom you'd like to forward a poster, just write me at info@estherrecords.ca and I'll send 
youone you can e-mail it to them. Word of mouth is still the best way to get the word out. Links to 
tickets etc are most easily found on the gig page of my website at www.shariulrich.com along with
the full scheduleof shows coming up.

A note that's only going to be relevant to ONE person on my mailing list, so I apologize to the rest of 
you who are not that person! Two women came to the Bowen Island concert from the North Shore 
who had two more tickets for folks who couldn't come, and the person on the door declined their 
request refund the tickets. Well, that's just not right, so if that's you, please write me at the address 
above and I'll send you a cheque. Maybe the karma will balance out the person who advertised
tickets for the Adele concert in Vancouver on Aug. 9 on Craigslist (at double the face value - grrrr),
luring Julia and Ted who are DESPERATE to see her, to e-mail them a deposit of $150 a lot of 
money for two students) only to have their fears that it couldbe a scam realized. No tickets arrived 
in the mail and no more responses to e-mails. There's a special place in hell for folks who re-sell 
concert tickets for profit. And outright stealing? Well, that place just got a little more special. I'm 
pretty sure it involves eternal shaming and deafeningly loud white noise. The kids are SO disappointed 
that their determined attempts to see this artist whose music they've been singing along withat the top
of their lungs on all our long drives, have failed bitterly. It's a strange down side to that level of success -
that the demand for tickets creates a whole black market of exploitation. I'd imagine it would be very disturbing as the artist. Oh, I've been so spared! :-)

Gee... anyone out there have a couple of extra tickets to Adele Aug. 9th in Vancouver?

On a lighter note, many of you have asked me over the years if the Hometown Band albums are 
available on CD. It was clear the record label, now Universal Music, wasn't planning to ever release
them, so I did a licensing deal with them myself. Once again, it pays to ASK! (Who knew?) They've digitized the masters for me and in 6 weeks or so they should be available. YAY!
I'll send a note out when they're ready.

Over and out from me. Happy Trails!

Shari