Just a quick May update to let you in on what we’re up to and where you can catch Beltaine’s Fire this month:

But, before we get there, a big congratulations goes out to drummer Todd and his wife on the arrival of their first child. They had a healthy baby girl May 2nd whom we’re sure will grow up to be just as cool as her parents. Yay!

As for the shows: This month there are three notable opportunities to see us live;

Saturday May 10th we’ll be at the Berkeley Pagan Festival in.. yes.. Berkley. The event gets going at 10am and is an all day FREE event put on by the Pagan alliance. It will be happening in Civic center park at 2151 Martin Luther King jr near the downtown Berkley bart station. Further info and details can be found at http://thepaganalliance.org

Saturday May 17 We’ll be playing the new artists showcase at the Livermore Scottish Highland Games, 1100 Arroyo Rd, Robertson Park, Livermore, CA. Tickets and all the details are available at http://www.livermoregames.com Come out. Wear your kilt. Lynx sure will be wearing his.

Monday May 26th at the Black Cat Bar & Grill in beautiful Pengrove, CA. We’ll be playing a double set, starting at 9pm. A good way to spend a memorial day. This is our first Pengrove show.

In other news, we finally got around to sorting through the video files from our last couple of shows this weekend, and just posted a new one for “Desert Sunrise.” You can catch it in our “Video” section. Also there are a bunch of new pictures in the albums. Also, we had a Beltaine celebration on May 1st. It was great.

MySpace Direktvideo link

it’s a brand new month so here we are again. first thing this month is that Laura has officially released her first solo album, Less the Relevance, and it’s available for purchase from her website: dazedangel.com

as far as new stuff with the band -

we’ll be out in Richmond this Saturday the 15th with Direct Action to Stop the War, performing at a rally there against the Chevron oil refinery and the war in Iraq. The refinery there is notorious for the cancer and asthma causing pollution it spews all over the place and for importing tons of crude oil looted from iraq. how unpopular is the refinery you ask? so unpopular that the mayor of richmond is giving the opening speech at the rally. we’re not used to sharing the stage with politicians, it’s going to be a new experience for us… later in the day there will be a large ‘mass non-violent direct action’ at the refinery itself, basically an attempt to pile enough bodies into the gates to form a human wall, blockade the gates preventing trucks carrying oil or gas from going in or out, and stopping the refinery from being able to operate for a few hours at least. a symbolic victory to be sure, but a victory no less if they can pull it off. good times!

Sunday the 16th, of course, we’ll be in the studio all day recording for our new album. also good times.

Monday the 17th we’ll be playing a free live set at the Expressions College for Digital Music in Emmeryville, the whole thing will be recorded live (both sound and video) and webcast live. You’ll be able to watch the show live from anywhere in the world at this url: http://mediasource.expression.edu/liveCast.htm, starting at 9pm pacific standard time. And, of course, if you’re in the bay area and want to be in our live webcast and in any music videos we decide to cut the video footage from this into - or just want to hang out with us at a cool free show in a unique venue - come on out! Expressions is located at 6601 Shellmound St, Emmerville, CA. There’s only room for 40 in the theater so send us an email ahead of time and we’ll put you on the list.

Saturday the 29th we’ll be playing a (free!) live show at the bistro in Hayward. (1001 B. Street, Hayward, CA) starting at 9pm. We love the bistro because they let us throw shows there for free and pay us out of the bar so we can make money to put towards our albums and other projects and not have to charge ya’ll at the door. If only more venues were so cool….

Other events going on in the bay area this month that you might be interested in include the SF Irish Fest , the SF Bay Area Celtic Fest, and the 13th annual SF anarchist Bookfaire. check their websites for more info.

have a great month, and happy st. pat’s day -
Beltaine’s Fire

got a few new things this month, the first of it is that we decided to go back to the ‘pay what you want’ thing with the album because, after testing it out the other way, it was pretty clear that most of ya’ll cheapskates aren’t down to pay for albums online and we’d rather have ya hear the music for free then not hear it at all. it’s ok though, we love ya anyway. we’ll love ya even more though if you throw some money in the bucket and come out to a few shows…

second new things is there’s a new review of our album from Free Albums Galore! Check it out.

third new thing is that we’ve confirmed a couple new events for march. on the 15th we’ll be playing at a protest in Richmond against the Chevron Oil refinery there. The Protest is being organized by Direct Action to Stop the War, along with a whole series of other actions around the Bay Area. They chose the refinery as a target because they’re bringing oil directly from Iraq to Richmond to refine it and giving the local residents cancer from the pollution they spew. Ya know it’s funny, if I was to walk down the street and start killing folks with a gun I’d get locked up, but they can do the exact same thing with cancerous pollution and they get tax exemptions and corporate welfare to help them do it. Isn’t capitalism grand? But i digress… You can get the full info on the protest and other events off the DASW website or off our shows page.

The next day after the protest (march 16th) we’ll be in the studio down in emmeryville laying down tracks for our second album, tentatively title “Liberty”. No solid completion date yet, we’ll finish it when it’s finished.

and the following day (march 17th) we’ll be back at Expressions to record - but this time it’ll be a live session with a live audience and a live webcast. So if you’re not in california and you want to see us live this is your best shot for a while. And if you are in the bay area and you want to spend St. Patrick’s day with us and be in that live studio audience i mentioned, send an email through the booking form on this website.

March 29th we’ll be back in Hayward for another free show at the Bistro, our favorite east bay cafe/bar. good times!

Last but not least, Laura’s solo album is DONE and she’s going to post it up on her website by the end of the month. We’ll update this to let you know when it’s up.

that about wraps it up, see ya’ll at the shows,
lynx
for Beltaine’s Fire

on the real though, hope is alive and well in 2008. there are a lot of really beautiful things going on and a lot of beautiful people behind them. And really, 2007 was a good year for us. we got our lineup straightened out and were fortunate enough to add a couple of supremely talented folks, we finished and released our first album, we played a TON of shows, and made a lot of great connections with other musicians (big ups to everyone we played shows with!). So life is good.

Also - check out our photo gallery for pics of the new year’s party!

As far as what you can expect for 2008, here’s a quick rundown:

the good:
- we’ve got about half the songs written for our next album and hope to have this one completed much more quickly then the last one, possibly even before the end of the year… we’ll see.

- Laura’s first solo album is almost finished and should be ready within the next few months. no solid release date yet, but we’ll keep ya posted. it’s called “less the relevance” and is a collection of mostly her older stuff. it’s very very different from the bands stuff…. think electronica meets acoustic art rock with a bit of indie flavor just for kicks. she’s been working on it on and off for a looong time but the pieces have finally come together and it’s almost done.

- we’re looking at a mini-tour in the New York/New Jersey/Pennsylvania area in august. this is a big big maybe - don’t wanna get folks hopes up too high - but Cozy T and K8r are both going to be out there in august anyway so in theory at least it shouldn’t be too hard to get the rest of us out there and do some shows. we’ll post dates as soon as we’ve got ‘em.

- we’re looking for a booker! up till now we’ve done all our booking and promo ourselves, but things are rapidly getting to the point where we need to take it to the next step and get somebody working on it more regularly. So if you’ve got the skills and the contacts to help us make things really happen this year, we want to talk to you. Use the contact form and get at us!

- and, lastly, we’ve been accepted to our first large-ish festival and are set to perform at the Livermore Scottish games in May. it’s a big step for us, we’ll see how people react to the fusion….

other stuff:
- We’re taking january and most of february off from shows since bandmembers are kind of scattered to the four winds right now. no worries though, we’re still practicing as best we can with our hectic schedules and we’ve got a couple new songs in the works. Right now we’re booking for march-april-may and trying hard to get shows outside the SF/Oakland/Berkeley area. Hopefully we’ll find a good booker sooner rather then later and be able to put that all together…

- the february tour down to LA is off due to a bunch of different issues. sorry folks, we’ll get down south sooner or later, it’s just a matter of time.

That pretty much wraps it up, hope ya’ll have a great new year and we’ll see ya at the shows!

Beltaine’s Fire

The Potluck House
1229 Carrison St. Berkeley
December 31

If you absolutely can’t afford $10 or don’t have any access to a credit card you can look for the album on Jamendo or the various file-sharing networks.  AmieStreet also has it on a track-by-track basis.   We’re probably going to put it up on iTunes too, though we’d prefer to sell the bulk of the mp3 downloads directly since iTunes and most other sites take 30%-40% of the sale price right off the top, whereas when you buy the album directly from us all the money goes to the band.

anyway, hope ya’ll had/have a good solstice / christmas / hanukkah / athiest-gift-exchange-day,

lynx,
for Beltaine’s Fire

A big THANK YOU to everyone who came out to our album release party at the Bistro in Hayward tonight! we had a great turn out, filled the venue to capacity, played 2 full sets, and had a lot of fun. good times! hit up the photo gallery to check the pics.

also - you might have noticed that our ‘upcoming shows’ calender is kind of empty. We’re taking January and the first half of february off from shows because people will be travelling, but we’re working on a tour down to LA and back for the end of february. our current dates are:

thurs, Feb. 21st - santa cruz
fri 22nd - Oxnard or Santa Barbara
sat 23th - LA show 1
sun 24th - LA show 2
mon 25th promo / day off
tues 26th - San Diego
weds 27th - LA suburbs. either Orange County or Antelope Valley.
thurs. 28th - Fresno

If you’re in any of those cities and want to help us with promo and/or finding venues we’d love any help we can get. we’ve had good luck lately doing free shows where instead getting paid off the door we get a percentage of the bar, so venues that’d be down for that kind of arrangement would be ideal; especially since this will be our first time down to LA.

and, for all you lucky folks in the east bay, Kater’s throwing an open-invitation house party at his place for new years eve / hogmanay! we’ll be playing a 45 minute-or-so set. send an email ef you want to come on out and we’ll send you the address!

 well, what are you waiting for?  go get it!