Hi Friends…

I love writing these missives to you guys every month and letting you know what I’m up to. I don’t have too many shows right now, but I’m going to Kansas City on the 17th for 5 days. It’s the big International Folk Alliance Conference, where I will do a bunch of  “showcases”. Practically every venue for folk artists will have a representative there and it’s where most of us get booked for the coming 12 to 18 months.

Then, on March 4, 5 and 6, I’m traveling to Texas to do 3 rather unique shows. As most of you know, even though I’m a songwriter, as a matter of philosophy, the preponderance of the songs I do are from other songwriters. NOT THIS TIME… I’m doing these three shows with Karen Mal (my adopted daughter!) and Will Taylor… they are both incredible musicians and singers. It will seem strange to do only my stuff… but I’m really looking forward to it. You can find all of the details on the shows page of my website.

I’ve been told that my Ireland tour, which is June 26 – July 5 this year has only three slots remaining. If any of you would like to join us for the trip of your lifetime, please, check out my Ireland tour page.

And last, but certainly not least, I pride myself on presenting shows that are absolutely nonpolitical. I want my shows to be about things we can share and have in common, not things that divide us. Having said that… this year has been such an unfathomable year politically that my friend Eric Schwartz and I have written a song which we hope everyone will find funny, no matter which end of the political spectrum you’re on. We recorded it and did a really low-tech video of it… we’ve been sitting around giggling at it… but then perhaps that says more about me and Eric than anything else. We’re gonna release it on our Facebook pages, asking people to share, if they like it. It will also be on YouTube and any other medium we can think of. Here’s the video:

Let me know what you think…

Thanks, and hope to see you soon!
Ronny

Happy New Year, folks! Hope you all made it through the holidays in a happy way, and are ready for a great 2016 full of music and stories. I’m looking forward to seeing all of you at some point in my travels around the country – you can next find me at the Wine and Song Concert Series in South Pasadena, California at the Arroyo Club this Wednesday, January 6th. And I’ll be heading to the International Folk Alliance Conference in Kansas City next month. You can find all the details on the shows page of my website.

As most of you know, I lead a wonderful musical tour of Ireland every year. This year, as in every year, we will go to Cork, Kerry and Clare for ten glorious days. Now, don’t get me wrong, it’s a cultural tour too… but the emphasis is on the music. My Irish partner knows all the TOP, TOP Irish musicians and singers and we have music every night. Either we have a private concert for our little group in our hotel or we are the special invited guests at a local pub where we have the front row seats…. it’s magic. We’ll be going this year June 26 through July 5 and it will sell out very quickly… if any of you might be interested click on the Ireland tab on my website and all the info is there. Only a few seats are left, and I think you’ll find it to be the trip of a lifetime!

I want to tell a little story about one of my trips. During the famine in the 1840’s Ireland lost half of it’s population… one quarter to starvation and one quarter to migration. There is a “famine” graveyard in Skibbereen, County Cork, one of the hardest hit areas during the “hunger”. In this graveyard there is a mass grave where nearly 10,000 people are buried under a reverent expanse of the greenest grass.

The most prominent clan in Skibbereen at the time were the McCarthy’s. A few years ago I had a young man from Memphis who was visiting Ireland for the first time along on my tour. His name was Sean McCarthy. He had known very little of his heritage before the trip, but soon discovered his ancestors had migrated from Skibbereen. The day we visited the graveyard, he stood at the site of this mass grave, gob-smacked. I wrote the song below for him…

Wishing you all a wonderful 2016.

Your friend in songs and stories,
Ronny Cox

Hello folks – here we are in December again! I’m always pretty conflicted when the holiday season rolls around… Christmas was always my wife Mary’s magic time. Sometimes it seemed Mary was in the Christmas mode all year long. She was either considering a gift for someone or wracking her brain thinking of a gift for someone. It didn’t have to be the perfect gift… but it did have to be one that Mary felt would specifically be for one certain person. The boys and I got a whole bunch of presents from Mary… not expensive gifts, that was never her style, but always personally wrapped herself. (By the way… in our little family, you couldn’t give a gift you didn’t wrap yourself… NO STORE WRAPPINGS!) Getting a really raggedy wrapped something-or-other from a 3-year-old was as good a present as a dad or mom could get.

Christmas morning with Mary was chock full rituals that were followed to the letter every year. Stockings were dealt with first… kinda controlled mayhem as our boys went from one wonder to the next… getting more and more excited. Then… a pause for breakfast.. with my two boys wolfing it down, anxious to get to the main event…. opening the presents.

Each of us staked out our territory – where we were gonna be, and then John, being the youngest, ran back and forth from the tree giving each person their loot. Once the presents were stacked in front of each of us, then, starting with John we proceeded by age. He would open a present, show it off, perhaps play with it awhile.. and finally would then point to Brian… and on and on and on. Like I said… everyone got LOTS of presents. Even though we arose early on Christmas morning, it still took till noon or later to open the presents. Ah… what a time.

What I mean about being conflicted at Christmas time is this….. Mary passed away on Dec. 18th.  So it’s always a little difficult at this time of year now. It’s fun to remember those Christmas mornings, but then……I miss her very much.

You can find me in Williamsburg, Virginia this New Year’s Eve, performing for the Williamsburg First Night, and then I’ll be in Maryland January 1st and 2nd……..check my website for the latest schedule. I’d love to see you there!

I always like to include a song that I’ve recorded at the end of these messages to you: this is a song which is in the Cowboy Hall of Fame, as perhaps the greatest Cowboy Christmas song.  It’s certainly my favorite. It was written by my dear friends Wendy Waldman and Carol Elliott……

However you celebrate this time of year, I wish you all the happiest of holidays!

Your friend in songs and stories,
Ronny Cox

Hello folks! I am very excited to announce the release of a new CD, “Inishfree – A Tribute to The Enchanted Way”, that includes a song I’ve written for Ireland. This recording is a compilation of songs written and sung by American singer-songwriters who lead Inishfree Irish Musical Tours (except for track #1.) The name Inishfree comes from the William Butler Yeats’ poem, The Isle of Innisfree. The tours began in 2005 when U.S. songwriter, Johnsmith, and the late Irishman, Tom Pigott, teamed up to create Enchanted Way Tours. Tom’s favorite song was On Ragland Road, where the phrase, Enchanted Way, originated. We all owe a big thanks to our comrade, Tom Pigott, may he rest in peace. I am honored to continue to lead tours each year to Ireland as part of the Inishfree company.

The title of my song on this CD is Sean McCarthy, and I am very proud of it. The other artists included in the compilation include Tim Grimm, Joe Crookston, Moors and McCumber, Kate Campbell, Joe Jencks, Chuck Brodsky, Buddy Mondlock, Small Potatoes, Kitty Donohoe, David Roth, Johnsmith and Tom Kimmel, as well as a recording of Tom Pigott singing On Ragland Road.

If you would like to buy a copy of the CD, please contact info@inishfreetours.com, and they will take care of getting one to you. The price is $10 plus $2 shipping, and the CDs are available now. I know you will enjoy this special compilation and I hope you enjoy my contribution of Sean McCarthy. I’ll be headed to Ireland soon for two tours this year, both sold out – but have also already starting planning next summer’s tour. For more information on that, check out my Ireland tour page.

I love New Orleans… it’s one of the great cities of the world, in my opinion.  The food is good, the music is great and there is  an energy and excitement there that is palpable.  It’s the only city I know of where the cab drivers know who is cooking where, and the coolest places to have a drink, or listen to music or to just hang out.  By the way, low fat cooking there is when they only use one stick of butter.  I have the Jones for Mr. B’s barbeque shrimp constantly.

In the early 90′s, I was there shooting a pilot for a TV show… we got to spend over 4 weeks there… to tell you the truth, Mary and I weren’t really too anxious to get home.

It was kind of an exciting time for me.. the pilot was my first foray back into the world of acting after taking an almost  2 year sabbatical.  I guess, I should explain that… I had done a TV series called CopRock that I really loved and I realized how much I missed the music in my life.  My son, John, had just left home for college and I didn’t have anyone to play music with… so, I turned down all acting work for almost two years, and since I didn’t know where the folk music community was, I went to Nashville and managed to get a record deal.  Harold Shedd signed me to the Mercury Nashville label… ha ha, I should point out that he signed 4  of us new artists at the same time… Shania Twain, Toby Keith… Billy Ray Cyrus and me.  As you know, they all went on to Country Music stardom and I went back to acting… and eventually found my brothers and sisters at the Kerrville Folk Festival.

Anyway, while I was in New Orleans, my Murcury Nashville record had just been released and I was soooo proud and full of myself… I had a cassette of my album and people could actually listen to it on the radio.  Not that people were, mind you, but they COULD.  A fellow cast member in the TV show we were doing was originally from New Orleans and his parents still lived there, and they loaned him their car for him to drive around while he was in town.  We used to go out and sit in his car and put my tape in the player and I could pretend that we, along with gazillions of others, were listening on the radio.  Pretty heady stuff!!

Well, one night he parked it in, I suppose, not the best section of The Quarter and when we came out the next morning the thieves had broken the windows of his car and had ransacked it and had taken everything.  Well… not everything… they had left my cassette.  Even the damn thieves are critics!!  I can just see them now… taking my cassette out of the tape deck… looking at it….”Hmmm, Ronny Cox…. I don’t think so!!”

Anyway, I got a song out of the whole deal.  I wrote this song with two of my favorite guys…. Tony Haselden and Jimmy Stewart…

I love words… imagine that, a songwriter who loves words.  Having grown up in New Mexico I’ve also had a life-long admiration of the Navajo culture, and I found a Navajo word that just knocks me out.  The word is hozh’q… I know, I know… it looks like a cat stepped on a computer.  It is pronounced (phonetically) hoe-shk with the accent on the first syllable.

Hozh’q, is in many ways a road map of how we should live our lives… you see, in the Navajo culture, wealth and possessions mean nothing.  They don’t care how much “stuff” you got, what matters is how you live your life… a fully conscious and participatory life.  What matters is how many times you’ve kissed your granddaughter… how many times you’ve stayed up all night to watch the sun rise.. or spent the day watching cloud formations, or saw a coyote in the wild… embracing every moment of life.. taking everything in.  So often… days, weeks, or even months go by and we just slide by with them and we miss out on so much!!!  Hozh’q reminds us not to do that.

When I was writing this song with my dear friend Wendy Waldman, we decided to put a spoken section in the middle of the song.  They’re just ideas I had that I thought would enrich my life.  And I would love it if people hearing the song were moved by them, but then I realized something even better, perhaps. The listener could substitute the things which would mean something in his of her life.

As always… I’m including a stream of the song… if you’ll just click below, you can hear it.