Strings In The Ozarks at Wildwood

On Labor day weekend Wildwood Springs Lodge, where we work had a Bluegrass festival with Seldom Scene, Sierra Hull & Hwy111 and The Grascals. The Hillbender's opened for all of the shows. Anyway, I got a lot of good pictures and had a great time!

The fun all started on Friday night with Seldom Scene. Nathan, Mom and I got to jam to a few tunes with their Dobro player, Fred Travers!!...

Here are a few pictures of the band...

They asked for an extra guitar, and so Nathan lent his, such an honor! :)


Lou Reid played it! :)
And Ben Eldridge played it...to whom it may concern: His youngest son, Chris plays guitar for The Punch Brothers and is really good! :)

Then Saturday we got to meet Sierra and the band and jammed before the soundcheck!!! It was great!! Wonderful people!



Then we watched The Hillbender's (They won the Silver Dollar City Single Mic competition,) open for Sierra Hull that evening. We hadn't gotten to see The Hillbender's perform Friday because we didn't get off work soon enough...so here are some pictures of them:

They put on a great show!

Sierra Hull & Hwy 111:



Really an amazing show....front row!! :)

Then we got a picture with our "heroes", Sierra and Ron Block! :)

The next day the Grascals played:

After their show, I talked with Danny Roberts the mandolin player and played his 1922 Loar! Not many people get to play those!! He was a really sweet person! Nathan and I got to play some songs with him before they left! It was a blast!

Then Nathan and I stayed up till 3 am jamming with Mark Cassidy and Chad Graves from The Hillbenders...really fun!!

If you would like to see more pictures, then visit my Facebook page. :) Or I might try to upload to Picasa but I'm not sure. :)

So that was our weekend. :)

God bless,
-Natalie

Hi There!

Not much has been happening in the music realm lately, just a lot of work at Wildwood... :)

We hope to get started on making our new CD this fall at The Chapman's studio in Springfield, MO. We're very excited!! We are working up the songs for the CD...we really need to practice more though. Hopefully this month we can more, since work has slowed down.

Hope you're having a great weekend!

God bless,
~Natalie

4th of July Weekend

On the 4th of July The Lonesome Hill Gang played a show at the First Assembly of God here in Steelville...I would like to say it went very well, but unfortunately it was our worst show ever! :( We just weren't sounding tight!! Grr... :P Anyway, that day Josh and Jenny Williams were coming to Wildwood Springs Lodge to spend a mini vacation and he we going to teach Nathan some guitar things...well they decided to come watch our show and you know how embarrassed I was to see them watching us in the crowd!!!! Josh is also an amazing mandolin player...

So we went to the Lodge and had supper and then The Lonesome Hill Gang played another show by the pool (for some of the Buren family), which went so much better!! And Josh actually played with us!! That was so fun!

So the next day Josh and Nathan picked while Jenny and I relaxed at the pool! That was very fun!! I got to know Jenny and had a great talk! Then some friends came and we jammed a little bit...so we had supper and I worked a little bit.

After supper we played with our friends at the pool and opened for Josh's solo show!! He did a GREAT job! Then Bob the owner of the Lodge, shot of some fireworks and they were so neat!!

The next day Josh and Jenny decided to stay one more day and went around St. James and did some relaxing things like going to a Vacuum Cleaner Museum!! :D Then they came back around 4:30pm and Josh taught me his mandolin kick off to "Cold Virginia Rain"!! He's so amazing. He was way to patient with me! :D He sat there and taught it to me till I got it perfect one time through!

So we had a blast getting to know them better...and on the two nights they stayed here we stayed up till midnight talking! :)

God bless,
~Natalie

Kenny & Amanda Smith

On June 12th Nathan and I (Natalie), went and saw the Kenny and Amanda Smith band for free in Rolla with some friends! It was great!!

We had found out not to long before, that the K&A Band were going to stay at Wildwood Springs Lodge that weekend, and that's where we work! And it also happened we were working that weekend! So after the show we had to go to work and serve them supper! That weekend a band called the Stringtown String Band was playing and the night before the K&A Band show we jammed on stage with Stringtown...which was kinda fun....anyway, after super Bob (the owner of Wildwood), spoke to K&A and asked them to play a short set before String town played again and they said they would!! So we got to see two great performances in one day!! :)

After their amazing show, I asked to play the mandolin players mandolin (Spencer Strikland), and he said I could. It was a great mandolin! So Nathan played a little song with me off a little ways (since Stringtown was playing their set,) and Kenny (Mr. Smith) walked up and listened and after the song he asked us if their was a place to jam!!! So we and the K&A Band went up and jammed in the lobby till 1:00am!!

They are the SWEETEST people!! Zach McLamb (bass player) really liked my mandolin chop! He said it was fun to play with!!! That made my year!!! :) And Spencer gave me five picks and a set of nice strings for my mandolin! Also Kenny and Amanda gave Nathan Kenny's guitar DVD! So that weekend was a total blast!!!

God bless,
~Natalie for all the LHG~

Silver Dollar City

First of all, my brothers and I had never been on a ride or ever been in Silver Dollar City before, so....

May 22nd

The drive down to Branson was great and uneventful thankfully!

When we got to the park we didn't know there was a back way for the musicians so we had to walk all the way through the park with our instruments! It was kind of embarrassing! :-)

We met up with the Bankester girls (Emily & Alysha), on the way down to the Opera house. We had a blast with them! We put the instruments in the trailer and then Emily and Alysha showed us kids around the park. We all (Nathan, Glen, Gage, the girls, and I), went on Fire In The Hole since it was practically a "baby ride"...I still didn't really like it. Nathan and Glen went with the girls on Wildfire....there was NO way I was going on it! The girls did convince me to go on The Giant Barn Swing that morning....Oh-my-goodness.

...uggg. I did NOT like it! It was the worst feeling I've ever had! (I am sorry for making you feel bad Emily!) I will NEVER ride a roller coaster and I don't care if people think I'm a sissy for it! :/

The first day of the competition went okay, though I felt that our practice that day went better then the performance. One of the neatest things about that day though, was that Sammy Shelor and Andy Ball from The Lonesome River Band (Bluegrass), were two of the judges! That was really neat!! They are great guys too! (The next day we watched their show, they are SO good!!)

May 23rd

We had a great day at the park just having fun and practicing for that day of the competition...it went way better then the first time! The crowd was a lot more responsive that day too, so that was nice.

The Bankester's had to leave that day. :'( It was a fun time with them though!! And I got to hold Melissa's baby!!

On Sunday night we (my family), went to the Meyer's condo to eat and have a jam. It was really fun. About half way through we all decided to sit on the floor...for some random reason! :-) It was a large jam too, and it mashed!!! Harry Clark and Mary Meyer were leaving me in the dust! :-) There was a banjo player (Lukas Pool) who played claw-hammer REALLY good! I'd never heard it played so good!

Here are the bands that placed:
1st: The Hillbender's
2nd: The Stockdale Family
3rd: JED AND HARRY CLARK BAND!!! (They are good friends of ours!)
4th: The Punches Family
5th: Southern Raised

Everybody did a great job!

May 24th

The boys and I got up early so we could go swimming at 7:00am at the pool in the area of where the Meyer's were staying. We swam with David and Mary Meyer...when we had gotten all wet, a guy pulled up and said the pool wasn't cleaned yet...no wonder the pool water tasted salty! :P

We got to the park and watched Gold Heart and The Boxcars. Great shows!! Everybody was SO nice!

It was also great to meet the rest of the Clark family!!

Well, I've been writing a while, and there is SO much more to tell but not enough time to tell it!! :-)

God bless you all!

~Natalie

Current Events

Hello there!

I (Natalie), thought I would update the blog a little bit...

May 1st we played for the "Sip N' Savor" in St. James, Mo. at The Rock house, a new gift shop. We had to play for three hours! :-) It went well though.

We've been busy practicing for Silver Dollar City. I can't believe it's next weekend! We are working up one of Mom's original songs for the competition...it's going to be GREAT! We practiced last week up at the Wildwood Springs Lodge with the sound system. It was nice to be able to practice working the single mic. I think we're as ready as we can be. :-) It's just going to be a fun time though!

Just so you know, here is our fan page on Facebook. (Click on the word.)

Thanks for taking the time to read this!

God bless,
Natalie~ For The L.H.G.

Sassman barn dinner....

Yesterday we played at a renovated barn on restored wildlife property. It was very neat!! I wish we could have taken pictures because downstairs there was a room that was like a suet with a cute little room in the back. And up stairs (the loft), was a dining room! (Where we played.)

The show went really well. Especially our newly worked up "Some Day", an A Capella piece!! We had never performed it, but it went way better then expected! :-)

Hopefully we can get a camera soon so these posts will be more interesting! :D

By the way, the schedule doesn't seem to be working on the sidebar...I'll try to fix it.

God Bless,

Natalie~for The Lonesome Hill Gang