Stephen's new guitar string bracelet

Custom bracelet for Stephen Cohen (sterling, bronze, ebony, piano key ivory, guitar strings

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by Kristin Shiga

I am so pleased to have my new guitar string bracelet! It was custom made by Portland artist and "metal babe" Kristin Shiga. I've had this idea for a guitar string bracelet for awhile, and Kristin was able to take that idea and my original drawings and plans, and create something truly elegant and beautiful. I will be so happy to wear it at performances and other special occasions. I am also planning to use the above photo of the bracelet laying on Kristin's sketches for the cover for the new WALKING WILLOWS album. A working title for that album might be:  "by hand"

The WALKING WILLOWS in New Mexico!

From the Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge website

 

 

 

 

Cellist Alison Reynolds sits in a few songs with the WALKING WILLOWS at the Boba Cafe Cabaret in Las Cruses. We love having a  local musician sit in with us. It adds to our touring experience in so many ways. We did two Saturday night shows at the Boba Cafe Cabaret to an attentive and enthusiastic audience. Thanks go out to our presenter, Chris Waggoner, an old high school friend of Rich's. Chris did so much for us, including promoting our performances in Las Cruces tirelessly and  finding  a double bass for Rich to use for the entire tour. We are grateful for renewing some old friendships, and for making many new friends in New Mexico. Another highlight was Rich augmenting the many musical colors he creates with the double bass by playing piano on a few songs in our Las Cruses and Santa Fe performances and playing electric bass on a few songs  in Taos  (thank you Peggy of the Taos Inn for lending us your husband's electric bass in Taos!). All in all, the New Mexico tour was a great experience for us on so many levels!

 

We performed at the Adobe Bar at the Taos Inn. There was a wonderful audience of locals as well as Taos visitors in this perfect music venue. We liked it there so much that we stayed in our rooms at the Taos Inn an extra night.  

Here is the sunset over El Dorado from La Tienda, where the Performance Space is located.

The Performance Space is an 
acoustically tuned concert space located
in La Tienda, which is a community of
galleries, restaurants and businesses in the hills outside of Santa Fe.

We appreciated the hospitality extended to us there by our wonderful hosts, Steve Ewers and Destiny Allison. And we were so happy to see
Paul Schmidt and Joe Breza, two friends of Stephen from his 1970's days in New Mexico that he was seeing again for the first time in 38 some years.

After the last concert was done, and Rich was already back in Seattle, Stephen was in New Mexico for one more day. He took a walk, guitar in hand, in the Sevillita National Wildlife Refuge (located in the open spaces south of Albuquerque), stopping along the way to play a few songs under the blue New Mexico sky.

From the Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge website.