<span class="vcard">Joe Weed</span>

Joe Weed

Joe Weed produces music and video at his Highland Studios near Los Gatos, California. He has released six albums of his own, produced many projects for independent artists and labels, and does sound tracks for film, TV and museums. Joe’s composition “Hymn to the Big Sky” can be heard in “The Dust Bowl,” a new film by Ken Burns, which premiered November 18 and 19, 2012 on PBS. Joe recently produced “Pa’s Fiddle,” a collection of 19th-century American music played by “Pa” Charles Ingalls, father of Laura Ingalls Wilder, the author of the “Little House on the Prairie” book series. Reach Joe by calling (408) 353-3353, by email at joe@highlandpublishing.com, or by visiting joeweed.com.

In 2011, Joe produced a documentary that tells the fascinating story of “Pytała się pani”, a Polish folk song’s metamorphosis into an American country fiddle classic. It explains how in the late 1930’s and early 1940’s Cotton Collins, a fiddler from Waco, Texas, heard the tune in nearby Bremond, then the largest Polish settlement in Texas, and re-worked it into a Texas fiddle waltz. The film captures a wide array of people, places and artifacts significant in the tune’s regional and national development. Since the evolution of the tune took place in the twentieth century, some of the primary sources are still living, and shared their memories with producer Joe Weed. You can read more about the premier showing of The Waltz To Westphalia in Bremond, Texas on this website.

You can reach Joe by calling (408) 353-3353, by email at joe@highlandpublishing.com, or by visiting joeweed.com.

Brian Marshall and The Texas Slavic Playboys Play the BlackPot Festival in Lafayette, LA

In October of 2012, after a short visit in New Orleans, I drove two and a half hours up to Lafayette, Louisiana, to play at the annual BlackPot Festival. Each year, the South Louisiana BlackPot Festival & Cook-Off is held at Lafayette’s Acadian Village, a living history park. In addition to presenting many kinds of roots music, the festival holds a “cook off” (hence the name “Blackpot”) in which contestants serve their best versions of Louisiana gumbo, cracklins, and jambalaya. Visitors sample the wares (mmmmm!) and leave tickets at the booths of their favorite chefs. The cooks who get the most tickets from satisfied customers win cash prizes, but nobody seemed overly competitive at this friendly festival.
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