Cathy & Marcy's Blog

Cathy & Marcy’s HEARTSTRINGS program is a way for us to help you find the musical instrument of your dreams within your budget and to inspire you to give the gift of music to a child who doesn’t otherwise have the opportunity.GUITARS NOT GUNS of the National Capital Area Area is a local nonprofit whose mission is to inspire at-risk and underprivileged youth to succeed by providing them music education opportunities through the use of volunteers and partnerships in our community. They help instill in these youth the confidence and character necessary for them to grow into productive members of society and responsible adults. The program provides free guitar lessons with the belief that the art of music connects the child to higher life goals and ambition. Students are loaned a guitar to use for the beginner’s class; once they complete the class they are awarded that guitar; it is theirs to keep. Read HERE.

Our goal is to raise at least $2500 for GUITARS NOT GUNS this holiday season. By setting the example of us giving our time to you, we hope you will donate some of your $ to this wonderful program. The process is quick and simple.

First: Make a tax deductible contribution of $25 or more to Guitars Not Guns by going to their web site www.gngnca.org – and clicking on the “Donate Now” button in the upper right corner of any page. Specify the amount you want to give and in the “Dedication” section, write:“HEARTSTRINGS”.
Second: You will receive a Thank You from Guitars Not Guns that includes a request form for you to fill out.
Third: Complete the request form and e-mail it to us at info@cathymarcy.com
Fourth: You’ll hear back from us within a few days. We will suggest up to 3 instruments within your budget as well as recommendations of convenient, friendly and reasonably priced places to buy online or near you, depending on where you live.

Then: as you make more music in your life, you’ll enjoy it more knowing that you helped provide that same opportunity to a deserving kid in the metropolitan Washington D.C. area.

We will be helping people find electric & acoustic guitars, banjos of all kinds, ukuleles, mandolins, whistles and folk flutes, dulcimers and more.

We teach Marcy’s song, “SHARING” in sign language. The sign for “sharing” shows that you give some away and you take some for yourself. Click on song to LISTEN.
The song is from the CD, “CHANGING CHANNELS“.
SHARING

PLEASE SPREAD THE WORD. The program will run from November 1- December 20, 2009

Are we movie stars? Not yet, but we have taken the adventure of making our first official “music video” of the song “JUBILATION” from the new BANJO TO BEATBOX EP. Hard to say if we are the stars or if our puppets are the stars. OK, so how’d it happen? Read on!

When we decided to make a music video it began with the planning stage. Our first goal was that every aspect would be fun and that all the people working together would enjoy it. So we started with planning and brought together a great team of people of various ages and skills. Brad Tehaan was a film student that Cathy met in a film editing class. At 22 he is the brightest and best and we fully expect him to be making major movies in the future. We hope he includes us.

Ingrid Crepeau makes puppets that equal the genius of Jim Henson (we don’t take this compliment lightly) and she was excited about making puppets of Cathy, Marcy, Chris and Trevor, our recording engineer. She took photos of each of us and even looked at what clothing we would wear in the video shoot. Then Ingrid disappeared to her puppet making workshop.

Meantime, we created a script following each line in the song, and Brad turned it into a storyboard so that he’d know every camera shot that he needed to cover. We decided to make some of it look like live concert and to shoot some of it on green screen. Our friend Michelle Valeri would create Photoshop backgrounds so whatever we shot on green screen would have a location that could tickle the imagination. We all had a lot to learn and everyone was up for the experiments.

Cathy & Marcy assembled all of the props which included scuba gear, beach ball, clock, glow sticks, fun sunglasses, toy piano, beach hats, lounge chair, raincoat, windup toys, confetti, and more.

During the 2 day video shoot we had puppeteers ranging in age from 11 to 63. We also had a six year old apprentice, an expert at toy trains. The song JUBILATION played constantly as we performed and filmed each scene. Ingrid created shadow puppets for the audience and we started by filming the shadow puppets on the green screen. Then we filmed performance scenes, and then we went through every scene Brad had listed and more that we made up on the spot. The goal was that during the show each of us would meet our puppet with surprise and glee and by the end everyone would be singing JUBILATION. It was a giant team effort that included plenty of jokes, laughter and after hearing the song JUBILATION 1000 times, new rhymes and verses!

Once the filming was done Brad had the job of assembling all of the footage, editing, syncing the music to the film, creating animation, incorporating Photoshop pictures, and even learning about new animation techniques with one of our puppeteers, Barry Gordimer. It took about four week’s of Brad’s free time to pull the video together. He showed it to us every once in a while and we would get to comment and make suggestions.

The JUBILATION MUSIC VIDEO was a jubilant and fun process that brought together friends who love being goofy, creative, artistic and joyful together. When were done, after 100 hours of work between everyone involved (which does not include the making of the puppets) you’ve got almost 5 minutes to look at. We may not be movie stars, but we hope every time you watch it will tickle your funnybone, encourage you to sing-along and enjoy the fun for the sake of fun.

Comment on this blog to let us know your thoughts. Should we star in another movie?

For more on Chrisstylez Bacon visit www.Christylez.com

For more on Ingrid & Michelle’s puppet and song magic visit www.dinorock.com

And for all things Cathy & Marcy you know where to go www.CathyMarcy.com

FOR LYRICS & LINER NOTES TO THE BANJO TO BEATBOX CD TO HERE:

TO ORDER YOUR OWN DIGITAL OR CD COPY OF THE BANJO TO BEATBOX CD,GO HERE

Upcoming shows with Cathy, Marcy & Christylez Bacon:

June 27: Smithsonian Folklife Festival with ELLA JENKNS

July 22-25: Wolf Trap 11:15am

August 15: Blackrock Center for the Arts, Germantown, MD 7:30pm

August 16: Philadelphia Folk Festival

See CALENDAR for more date info.

Thanks for being here!