Greetings Friends and Fans!

No live gigs scheduled recently, but I hope that will be changing in a couple months. I've recently joined forces with Myke Weiskopf, a talented song writer/multi-instrumentalist in a new band called The Rescue Party. The group is a "chamber-power-pop quartet" of guitar, violin, bass, and drums. Myke's songs are literate, melancholy, downbeat acoustic-electric pop in the manner of XTC married to Rufus Wainwright with Elvis Costello and Freedy Johnston as bridesmaids. Some "unique" covers added to the musical gumbo. Currently we are looking to add a keyboardist, and with a few more good rehearsals will likely start booking gigs early in 2004. (We do have a gig set for March 20 in Arlington VA at The Galaxy Hut, but I'll remind you of that later…)

Meanwhile I'm working on writing tracks to record for another group, Shave Librarian , and doing some more classical subbing, on viola, for the Parkway Concert Orchestra. I'm also featured in an article in the Music for People Fall 2003 newsletter (sorry, the article isn't online), for which I was interviewed while at their Art of Improvisation workshop last August.

I've added a number of items to my website, http://BettyWiderski.com, recently:

• The Performing page now includes an MP3 file sample of The Rescue Party performing one of Myke's songs.

• Also on the Performing page, check out the link to my Yahoo calendar, where I'm posting info on both my own upcoming gigs (marked with 3 asterisks) and on other bands' gigs you should check out.

• Did you know that I have a blog? "Blog" is short for "Web Log", a sort of on-line journal. Follow the “Journal” link on any of the pages. The November 7th blog contains a picture of the new band.

• The Links page has some new entries, including a Gear and Sources section with links to dealers with whom I've had good interactions.

That's it for this time. I'll be in Canada November 30 to December 6 for Marion Woodman Foundation activities (part of my personal experiment in String Theory: how many lives in different dimensions can I maintain simultaneously?! I knew that degree in Physics would come in handy some day…).

Happy [insert various November/December holidays here]!

Betty
http://BettyWiderski.com
Strings are everywhere…