FLORIDA 2008 !!!

This was the best FL tour ever!
Ken and Cee Cee, my fabulous Jacksonville hosts, now have a great radio show - Progressive Roots - Sunday nights on WZNZ radio, streaming live at http://www.1460.us from 8-10PM. Check out their myspace, and for all your performers on my list - send them your CDs!!


My visit to the Miccosukee Land Coop was the best ever! Kayaking on Wicissa with Peter Broderson was fabulous - even saw a big ol' gator. The show was lots of fun too... and the next night we saw Roy Zimmerman in Tally, with a great opening set by Floridian Grant Peeples... Roy invited me up for a couple numbers, too! This picture is of Doug Gauss, me and Roy Zimmerman - I'm loving Doug's shirt!



Then on to St Augustine where we ended up raising $1000 for the Winter Soldier Campaign at a concert I did at the UU Fellowship of St Augustine. It was such a fun show! And I stayed with American legend Stetson Kennedy and his wonderful wife Sandra Parks... I just wish our visit could have lasted longer. Here's a photo by JD Pleasant taken at the St Augustine gig.





It was so wonderful to get to Orange City and reconnect with the oh-so-talented Magda Hiller and her most charming daughter Wyatt (partner Chip is no slouch either!).

Then on to JAX for two busy days on campus at UNF, thanks to Andy Johnson, United Faculty, UNF and the efforts of my friend and comrade, Stan Swart. This time I met some really wonderful, engaged, concerned, bright students at UNF. It was so great to see Candice Carter again, and the Amnesty Chapter concert at the Gallery was the best show ever at UNF... Thanks to Shelley Clay-Robinson and her family, and to Roy Zimmerman for a great guest set.

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Before I left Jacksonville, I got to spend most of a day with Jackie Brown's dear friend Ysryl -- he and I paid a call on Dorothy Pitman Hughes ... a feminist icon and wonderful writer who recently opened a bookstore in JAX. Dorothy managed Jackie Brown's remarkable campaign for mayor of Jacksonville (many of you will remember me raving about how amazing Jackie was in these newsletters. My friend Jackie died last year of breast cancer at the age of 46). Ysryl, on the other hand, is a living miracle, having survived catastrophic injuries to his brain when the tailgate from a dump truck almost took his head off last fall.

From Jacksonville I headed to Tampa and had a great visit with Gloria Holloway and her family, and my dear friend Diane Stein. Gainesville with Jenny and Joe Courter was terrific, and the show raised a few hundred dollars to help send them to Venezuela... I'll be looking forward to their eyewitness report. Sarasota was great... catching up with Martha Shunn, the extremely dedicated and effective president of the Florida Postal Workers' Union ... and singing union songs for two hours inside Whole Foods was awesome! I wish I could get some YouTube videos of that show!

WSLR community radio, 96.5 in Sarasota is a great addition to the audio landscape there... the latest project of the amazing Dave Beaton and Arlene Sweeting of Fogartyville... It was great to see the whole Fogartyville gang turn out for the show at JRs Packinghouse... Steve Stokes, Jim Glover, The Merrills and the Johnsons (Ireland bound with me, this summer!), Aunt Marilyn, Faith Fippinger, CC Carter... so many more -- thanks! You made it into a very special night for me!

From Sarasota I headed to Florida Gulf Coast University for a reunion with my old Edgewood neighbor, Vicki Dimidjian, and a chance to meet some terrific activists on this very reactionary campus... Angela and Rob - you're my heros! Then on to my Ft Myers haven with Wendyl and Bill and the gang from Manna Reading Room. And what a fun-filled St Pat's afternoon it was with the United Irish of SW Florida!!! Many thanks to Laura Griffin for lining that up!

The tour ended with two great concerts for the Immokalee Workers in Lake Worth and Dania Beach. Here's a photo that Leonard Bryant took at the concert in Lake Worth -- (The Friends Meeting House that hosted the concert was recently featured on NBC news as a spot where the FBI was infiltrating the anti-war movement!)



Vicki Ryder and Ray Del Papa did a fantastic job of organizing these concerts, which raised close to $2000 for the Immokalee workers' campaign for justice... check out http://ciw-online.org to learn more about their amazing work. And David Engels wrote a lovely review of the Dania Beach concert and posted it on my guestbook, http://www.annefeeney.com/guestbook.html ... a nice highlight to the Dania Beach show was Jerry Gray's banjo and singing -- part of the legendary Canadian folk group, The Travellers, Jerry regaled me with stories about introducing young Gordon Lightfoot to audiences at the Mariposa Folk Festival.

I got to spend those last two days in Florida with Brooke Bell and Amy Carol Webb ... their warmth and hospitality is overwhelming... and Amy http://amycarolwebb.com played my new guitar and sang me two fabulous songs from her upcoming Florida songs CD.

I took Amtrak there and back ... I'll be very happy when we have a democrat in the White House and some much needed funding is sent in Amtrak's direction. I'm hoping to be riding the train a lot in 2008... I'll keep you posted on that adventure. Anyway, there's the Sunshine State in a nutshell.... Thanks to everyone who made it so special!