Michigan Organic Music Festival

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Saturday, March 7th 2009

Family Farm Music and MOFFA present:
The 3rd Annual Michigan Organic Music Festival

with music from Rachael Davis and Joe Reilly
and films: The Greenhorns trailer and Homegrown: Earth, Work, Music

(SCENE) Metrospace
110 Charles St. East Lansing
www.scenemetrospace.com

Doors at 7pm
First film at 7:50
Tickets are $8 in advance or $10 at the door
Tickets sold at Elderly Instruments and Everybody Reads

Contact: Chris Dorman (517) 803-5742, laughinglight@gmail.com

The threads between music and local agriculture are interwoven by the mutual respect of the land and its inhabitants. Both sprout from the land itself. Our community’s need for healthy food and local music has never been more apparent in this current economic downturn. Please come celebrate our local culture and stimulate our local economy at SCENE Metrospace in East Lansing and think spring thoughts on your way here.

Artist Bios

Joe Reilly has been a singer, songwriter, and guitarist for over twelve years and has had extensive performance and touring experience, bringing messages of hope and peace in his songs to audiences in the Midwest and across the United States.

Both of his parents are singers and guitarists and Joe grew up listening to their classical and liturgical music in his home and church, learning that music can be prayerful, healing, and celebratory. With their help he began to teach himself to play guitar and sing. In addition to self-instruction he has also studied voice and guitar privately and at the Old Town School of Folk Music in Chicago.

Joe is Italian, Irish, and Native American (Cherokee). His background in the study and performance of many different musical styles, including Native American music, folk, blues, jazz, liturgical, and classical, as well as his academic studies of environmental justice and racism and spiritual roots in Catholicism and Native American religions has led to a writing style that incorporates these diverse influences into a unique and powerful voice.

After more than two years of writing songs with and for children, singer songwriter Joe Reilly is ready to release a full-length album of environmental songs for kids of all ages. Titled Children of the Earth, the album includes a chorus of kids’ voices singing with Joe and his guitar on several of the twenty-three fun and educational tunes. The songs teach environmental science and ecological stewardship while entertaining kids and adults alike.

Rachael Davis has been singing on-stage since she was two years old. Being born to parents who never intended to keep her very far from music for very long seems to have made all the difference in the world. Before she was mobile, Rachael would be set in a car seat and placed in the middle of a song circle, and with silver bells on her ankles she would shake her feet to the rhythm. At one-and-a-half Rachael was singing "Somewhere over the Rainbow" to anyone who asked, and at two she started performing with her parents on stage.

In the span of her 6 year solo career Rachael has shared the stage with Boston based singer/songwriter Vance Gilbert, folk divas Claudia Schmidt and Sally Rogers, Prairie Home Companion regulars Robin and Linda Williams, Greg Brown, Taj Mahal, Robert Earl Keen, Fred Eaglesmith, Josh Ritter, jazz legends Marcus Belgrave and Winston Walls -- amongst others. She has opened for Dar Williams, David Lindley, Dr. Ralph Stanley, Little Feat, Garnet Rogers, Chris Smither, Dave Carter & Tracy Grammer, Richard Shindell, Susan Werner, Peter Mulvey, Eddie From Ohio, , Clive Gregson, Willy Porter and many more.

In September of 2001, Rachael moved from Michigan to Boston and within the span of seven months was awarded a Boston Music Award for Best New Singer-Songwriter. In 2002, Rachael contributed "Lonely When You're Gone" to the Respond II compilation (which can be found at http://respondproject.org), which also includes such luminaries as Joan Baez, Dolly Parton, Ani DiFranco and the Indigo Girls (amongst many others). And in 2003 Rachael took home the grand prize in the Telluride Bluegrass Festival’s Troubadour Contest.

Film Bio’s

The Greenhorns is a documentary film that explores the lives of America’s young farming community—its spirit, practices, and needs. As the nation experiences a groundswell of interest in sustainable lifestyles, we see the promising beginnings of an agricultural revival. Young farmers’ efforts feed us safe food, conserve valuable land, and reconstitute communities split apart by strip malls. It is the filmmaker’s hope that by broadcasting the stories and voices of these young farmers, we can build the case for those considering a career in agriculture—to embolden them, to entice them, and to recruit them into farming.

Our mission, as small grass-roots nonprofit based in the Hudson Valley of New York, is to support, promote and recruit young farmers in America.

www.thegreenhorns.net for more info

Homegrown: Earth, Work, Music is a twelve minute video documentary about a new generation of farmers and musicians working together to build vibrant communities and economies in Michigan. The film highlights Michigan State University's Student Organic Farm as a training ground for progressive young farmers, and the collective

Earthwork Music which combines the talents of many of Michigan's most exciting folk musicians, artists and activists to promote Michigan culture and sustainable livelihoods through concerts, festivals, fundraisers and original music throughout the state. Profiled in the film are MSU's Organic Farming Certificate Program Coordinator Corie Pierce and her partner folk musician Chris Dorman, along with the musical duo Seth Bernard and Daisy May, co-founders of the Earthwork Music collective. The documentary was produced though MSU's Telecommunications Department by Trilby MacDonald, a filmmaker and graduate student in MSU's Department of Geography.