Murphey’s Midnight Rounders head back to the studio

While at the Sacred Harvest Festival in SE Minnesota I took the opportunity to catch up with Brad Murphey, Teresa Frank, and Bonnie Hanna-Powers of Murphey’s Midnight Rounders.  I brought over a bottle of wine and asked them what they were up to.  I was excited to hear they were heading back to the recording studio directly from the festival.  My excitement grew when they told me they were going to be putting out not just one CD, but two. Interview and video of performance below.

Murphey’s Midnight Rounders in studio sessionphoto from facebook

Brad:  We’ve started recording again, the next two CDs.

Teresa:  It’s going to be a two CD release.  We’re staying with the same kind of a format with a Pagan CD and I don’t want to call it non-Pagan…

Brad:  Pagan friendly.

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Celia, on the Road at Sacred Harvest Festival – Interview

Celia Farran, singer, songwriter, actress, and storyteller who dishes up the most delicious concoction of the silly and the sacred, performed  at Sacred Harvest Festival on Tuesday, August ninth . I got a chance to talk to her the next day.


What have you been up to since you last appeared at Sacred Harvest Festival?

I have been working really hard, really hard. I have been consistently putting out Cd’s

Do you have your own studio?

I have my own studio now. The first CD I did on my own equipment wasAlabaster in Blue‘, which the song ‘Symbol is on. I’ve done everything else myself since. I do the recording and then have someone else mix and master it. My most recent CD, ‘Carry Me Home‘ , I did all the recording, engineering, and the mixing, and the mastering. The learning curve is steep, a whole other hat to wear. Continue reading

Festival Fashion

You may not think of the grass at a festival as a high fashion runway, but Pagans do have style and there are fashion trends spotted at festivals. The #1 trend at Sacred Harvest Festival this year was hair ornamentation.  Complex braids, bright flowers, feathers and head scarves all replaced the trend from former years of having very natural, flowing hair.  Also, tie dye is out, tribal and Oriental patterns are in.

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Book review: Walk Like A God

Walk Like A God, by Drew Jacob, sounds like a book that should be on every Pagan’s book shelf.  After all, right on the cover it says “how to have powerful spiritual moments with no church and no dogma,” which is what Pagans do every day of our lives.  The book is not a Pagan book, it’s a book that could be read and utilized by any person, religious or not.  It is also a book that could anger any person, religious or not.  Walk Like A God challenges you, making you face deeply held beliefs you never even knew you had, and challenge is not always a soothing experience.

Title:  Walk Like A God

Author: Drew Jacob

Price:  $8 in eBook format

Available:  Only on-line

The book is short, it clocks in at 86 pages, but it is devoid of fluff and filler that other authors place in their books to up the page count.  The lay-out s spacious and makes good use of imagery.  If you’ve read the Rogue Priest website, than you’ll have a good idea of how the book lay-out feels.    Reading the book I was struck by the way information is presented.  It’s very hands-on with specific ideas, tips, and suggestions on how a person can seek and travel down their own spiritual path.

Notice I am using the word ‘spiritual’ and never religious in regards to Drew’s book.  That’s because atheists will be just as (if not more) comfortable reading Walk Like A God than any theist.  That is the book’s blessing and curse.  The appeal is widened as it is written for a much more inclusive audience than polytheists like Drew, but the idea of living a spiritual life without faith in a higher power of some type pissed me off at times.  I realize that people do live spiritual and ethical lives without being a theist of some flavor and I have no problem with what others do in their lives, but the Gods are the center of my spiritual life.  I can also understand and support the idea that you can live a connected life full of amazing experiences without religion, but Drew’s book goes a bit further and excludes the Gods, not just organized religion.

That concept is the part that will both attract and challenge many Pagans and readers of other religious flavors.  But if you accept the challenge, you will benefit.

Once you stop looking at the book as a guide to spirituality and start reading it as a very practical how-to on living a fuller, richer, and more joyous life, you start to get into the groove and see how the steps Drew leads you through can change your life.  How to become more loving and connected to other people.  You’ll see nature as truly sacred and not just the lip service many of us pay to idea.  You’ll go outside your comfort zone to experience how adventure can become a core personal growth practice.  This book is meant, in short, to transform your life.

Does it?  It can.  If you are willing to have an open mind, an open heart, and are willing to get up off your ass.  Frankly, that puts many of us out of the running.  We aren’t willing to do much of anything other than be wage slaves and allow our time and minds to be sucked away watching tv.  But if you are ready to make serious, deep, and profound changes in your life by taking a walk in the woods – get this book and go live the life you dreamed of when you were a small child and hadn’t yet given up.

As for what Drew is up to next?  He’s practicing what he preaches.  He’s going to walk across two continents to meet the Gods.

Book Review: Tears of the Sun

This installment in the Emberverse series adds depth to the narrative, further develops familiar friends, introduces new characters, and contains a hero’s death. Mild spoilers.

Book:  Tears of the Sun
Author:  SM Stirling
Publish Date:  September 2011
Sample Chapters
Buy the book:  Amazon and Barnes & Noble
Author’s Yahoo Group
Previous PNC coverage of SM Stirling: Author’s Books Change Opinions About Paganism
WitchVox article:  Creating a Wican Tribe

Background on the series:  A mysterious event happens across the globe that results in 90% of the population dying within one year through starvation and disease. Electricity, gun powder, cars, all the things that make modern life possible stop working. These books could have come across as grim, but the author focuses on how humans band together and not only survive, but thrive in this new world they find themselves in. The books contain classic fantasy elements, but the setting and the characters are not. They are your friends and neighbors and is set in towns you live and work in.

Those that survive The Change (as the event becomes known) band together in small, isolated groups and form new, surprising cultures. After living through the horrors of those early days, people push their immediate past into the land of myths and mine myths for ways to reinvent their lives. A professor of medieval history and his SCA friends use feudal England as a model for a new society. It turns out being handy with a sword is valuable in a world where guns no longer work. A soldier turned devout monk is elevated to Abbot and the abbey becomes a fortress to guard the flock from roving bands of cannibals. Teenagers infatuated with Tolkin grow into serious scouts and caravan guards as the Dundain Rangers. Iowa, due to its ability to feed its population, becomes the most powerful area left in the old United States. Bib overalls and a feed cap become the dress of the upper class and Farmer is a title of respect. An Army officer in Boise dreams of holding the United States together and preserving the Constitution, but instead recreates the Roman Legions. A pseudo-Celtic clan is formed in Oregon when a community coalesces around a Wiccan coven with a Bard and powerful witch as a High Priestess. The Lakota once again follow the ways and Gods of their ancestors and the buffalo number in the millions.

 Tears of the Sun takes place 25 years (and 7 books) after The Change. The main hero, Rudi Mackenzie, has fulfilled his quest to find the fabled Sword of the Lady, but now he has a war to fight and win. The maxim “As above, so below” is lived out as the Gods – all of them – walk the earth and weigh in on the war. After all, the fight is really Theirs being played out among men. The book follows the leaders of the Dundain Rangers as they plan a daring rescue in the very heart of enemy territory and goes back in time a bit to cover the events happening back in the newly formed High Kingdom of Montival (formerly the NE Untied States and parts of the Midwest). Much needed information is filled in and the plot action helps advance the series, but it isn’t the action scenes that steal the show in Tears of the Sun – it’s the death of a main character and the development of another.

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