Over the next several days, Ken and I will be taking the final steps to transfer The Back Porch News website from him to me, including a change in hosting location. Please be patient if you run into any difficulties using the site. Hopefully that won’t happen and the transfer will be invisible to you. Thanks in advance for your understanding.

Started in 2007 to honor independently owned music retailers, and celebrated the third Saturday in April, Record Store Day is April 18th this year. With special promotions, artist appearances, guitar giveaways and fun activities, it is becoming a popular event. Find your nearest participating record dealer here.

The annual Alaska Folk Festival started Monday in Juneau and continues through this weekend. This year’s “guest artists,” the only paid act in the festival, are De Temps Antan, a traditional band from Quebec. The festival mixes amateur and professional music. Public radio station KRNN is streaming the festival live.

Newsweek is offering Bob Dylan fans a free listen to one of the songs on his new album, Together Through Life. The magazine will also be carrying Dylan’s ongoing conversations with music author and VH1 exec Bill Flanagan. The album streets April 28. More details in this article.

If you live anywhere near Hendersonville, North Carolina, you might want to find a way to listen to folk singer/songwriter Jenny Arch. According to a recent BlueRidgeNow article, she plays regularly at the Back Room in nearby Flat Rock, has recently left a band to concentrate on solo work and plans to record a CD this month. I’ve listened to song samples on Jenny’s MySpace page, and believe we will be hearing much more from this musician. I’ll watch for the CD release and keep you posted.

New South Wales, on the east coast of Australia, is the location for two festivals over Easter weekend: the East Coast Blues and Roots Music Festival (“BluesFest”) in Byron Bay, in the far northeast corner of the province, and the National Folk Festival in Canberra, 1,000 kilometers to the south. Both festivals have attracted some outstanding musicians.

Artists playing BluesFest include local acoustic folk performer Cheynne Murphy, gospel legends Blind Boys of Alabama, alternative country husband-and-wife duo Kasey Chambers and Shane Nicholson, folk duo Nardi Simpson and Kaleena Briggs, known as Stiff Gins (their name a reclamation of a derogatory term for Aboriginal women in Australia) and (I just have to mention this guy) rockin’ blues musician Seasick Steve, a former hobo who became an “overnight success” after years of performing music people didn’t hear.

The National Folk Festival offers folk music and dance performances and workshops. Among the many scheduled artists are Australian band Wongawilli, Scottish-born Canadian singer David Francey, Australian trio The Fiddle Chicks (Emma Luker, Kim Perry and Dee Trewartha) and Australian singer/songwriter Neil Murray. There are so many excellent musicians playing this festival that it was hard to pick just a few representative performers. You can listen to highlights here or check out the program for the full list.

Assuming all went as scheduled, Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts presented Bernice Johnson Reagon with an honorary doctorate of music last Friday at their annual Liberal Arts Symposium. Reagon founded the a cappella group Sweet Honey in the Rock and is curator emeritus of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History. She already holds a doctorate in U.S.A. History with a concentration in African American History, Cultural and Oral History Methodologies, earned at Howard University near the beginning of her long career as a folklorist, singer and composer.

A National Headliner Award in the Public Affairs category was recently given to the “Texas Music Matters” program of KUT 90.5 radio, based at the University of Texas at Austin, for the audio documentary “Amazing Grace: The Story of Willie Nelson.” The documentary was produced by David Brown of KUT along with journalist Michael May. The awards are given by the Press Club of Atlantic City.

Louisiana bluesman Sonny Landreth’s Levee Town CD, originally released in 2000, will be reissued April 21 in an expanded format. Jennifer Warnes, Bonnie Raitt and John Hiatt contribute vocals. For reference, here’s a review of the original.

In a previous post, Ken described the release of a 1999 Folkways series in podcast form. The web site location for that series has changed, so I just wanted to provide the new link. The series includes interviews and sound recordings from many of those involved in creating, finding and/or preserving what we know as American folk music.

This Texas folk trio released its first album in five years on March 31, and is on tour now. The Flatlanders started their journey in Austin last weekend and will be playing in Ithaca, New York today and Albany tomorrow. After performing in New Hampshire and Connecticut, they return to play in New York City and then go on to Massachusetts, Maine and Pennsylvania and make a circle back around the country, visiting a total of 19 states through June. The group will also perform at the Country Rendez-Vous Festival in France in July.

Group members Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Joe Ely and Butch Hancock are all singer/songwriters. They co-wrote about two-thirds of the tracks on the new CD, Hills and Valleys, released by New West Records. Judging from my own listening to the web site samples, fans won’t be disappointed with the results. Brad Buchholz of The Austin American-Statesman has written a detailed review for the paper’s Austin360 site.

Vancouver Island singer/songwriter Scott Valentine is trying a novel approach to publicize his music. For each of 52 consecutive Tuesdays, he is giving away a music download of at least one song, totaling 57 songs. He began the project March 24, and the songs are from his 4-CD debut album, Seasons.

Valentine’s record label is Thorny Bleeder. His manager, Brian Thompson, has this to say in the label’s press release:

“Scott wrote, performed, recorded, produced, designed and printed the album entirely on his own over a two year period. It’s a culmination of the pains and heartaches of his past and his hopes and dreams for the future; a document of the peaks and valleys of human drama, as seen through his own life experiences.

Seasons consists of 4 CDs (one disc each for Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter) and 1 DVD (Seasons: A Film Journey). 57 songs span across the four seasons, representing a young man’s expanding consciousness through his journey of mortality. The companion DVD, Seasons: A Film Journey, is a visual representation of the album realized in a well crafted, stylish, and professional short film. An extended, four-song, concept music video shot in HD.

Valentine creates an intensely personal feeling with his music that truly penetrates the heart and soul, generating astoundingly beautiful music. With an uncanny sense of melody, Scott’s rich and soulful voice reveal an old-soul with a wisdom beyond his years. Accompanying his soaring baritone is a five-string, open tuned rhythmic guitar style all his own. His songs have an immediate sense of honesty and clarity that’s all but lost in much of today’s music. His natural and effortless folkiness somehow make him impossibly real and familiar, like an old friend delivering a message of hope that’s hard to ignore.

‘I hope Seasons can offer comfort and hope to people who desire something more from their life. I believe that hope does exist and is alive and well, burning just beneath the surface, even if the majority of the music industry has stopped looking to find it.’”

Valentine’s music style is compared to “Eddie Vedder, Ray LaMontagne, Bon Iver, Damien Rice, and Iron & Wine.” Check out the videos on his web site, in addition to the free downloads that are already there.