Projects
- reinvent all of their favorite food-lovers recipes
- keep a sense of humor
- work together
- work hard
- eat what you want on Sundays.
Carolina Chocolate Drops Songbook: 12 Songs to Sing and to Play
to be published March 2010 to coincide with the Nonesuch Records launch of Genuine Negro Jig.
The idea for this performance-ready songbook grew out of the Drops' fun sessions with schoolchildren over the past few years. Inside, one will find not only lyrics, music and chords, but also photographs documenting important moments in the band's history (including the day they were the first black string-band to play the Grande Ole Opry, filming The Great Debaters with Denzel Washington, and visiting with Etta Baker) and heartfelt comments and memories from these occasions. And for new or accomplished musicians—notes on tunings and instruments (including the bones and jug).
I worked with band members Rhiannon Giddens, Dom Flemons and Justin Robinson to help form and edit Rhiannon's dream for this book. All song transcriptions were written by Rhiannon. She is happy to have had the chance, she says laughing, to apply her expensive music degree! For with this book, many of the Drops' favorite traditional songs, passed down from generation to generation, through families and communities, have for the first time been written down and published. Songs include "Genuine Negro Jig," "Cornbread and Butter Beans," "Peace Behind the Bridge," "City of Refuge," "Sourwood Mountain," "Black Annie," "Georgie Buck," "Will Adams' Breakdown" and "Don't Get Trouble in Your Mind." There are also originals: Rhiannon's gutsy "Two-Time Loser," Justin's "Kissin and Cussin" (a most haunting song from the new CD) and Dom's masterpiece "Earl King."
Rhiannon, Dom and Justin's hope for this book is that it will convey to younger generations this musical history, born out of the Black Banjo Movement. They have succeeded, as they have with their performances, in making the banjo, jugs, kazoo and bones modern and surprisingly edgy.
ATC/NPR INTERVIEW w/ Melissa Block:http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=3D123652457
FRESH AIR w/ Terry Gross: To come
PURCHASE BOOKS AT THE MUSIC MAKER RELIEF FOUNDATION website: http://www.musicmakerstore.org/flco.html OR DIRECTLY FROM THE DROPS ON TOUR:http://www.carolinachocolatedrops.com/#/tour_date
PDF available upon request. CONTACT: Katharine Walton 919-357-3400 or info@kathararinewaltonrepresents.com
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The James Beard Awards announced chef and cookbook author Bill Smith and Crook's Corner restaurant as finalists for this year's awards.
Bill Smith has been nominated for Best Chef in the Southeast and Crook's Corner for Best Restaurant in the Southeast. The James Beard Awards are given each May in NYC by the James Beard Foundation. Bill Smith is the author of Seasoned in the South, a New York TimesNotable and Food & Wine Best Book. Smith's menu at Crooks in Chapel Hill, NC, features his own alt-Southern, inventive, seasonal classics: Honeysuckle Sorbet, House-cured Corned Hams, I Heart Cheese Pork!, Licorice Ice Cream. He also carries a torch for iconic dishes by his life-long favorite chefs and home cooks: Among them Bill Neal (Persimmon Pudding); Julia Child (Bonne Femme) and Aunt Hi (Oyster Stew). He is at work on a new book, inspired by an interview in the Journal of Southern Cultures: "Taking the Heat and Dishing it Out in a Nuevo-New-South Kitchen."
Contact: Katharine Walton 919-357-4400
info@KatharineWaltonRepresents.com
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BOOKS TO LOOK FORWARD TO:
My Mother Jumping
by Shannon V. Woolfe
My Mother Jumping is Shannon Virginia Woolfe's story of growing up in the elegant and often dangerous Eastern Seaboard horse world from Florida to the Carolinas, Connecticut and New York—from genteel horse farms and after-race dances to the darkside of the backstretch. Opening a box of found photos and letters, Woolfe follows her family's story like Alice down the Rabbit Hole. Though Woolfe grew up with loving grandparents, she likens herself to Rudyard Kipling's Mowgli, and rightly so. For as a kid, with not many clues to the freedoms bestowed her, she must make sense of her steeplechasing, playboy father (the bestselling author of Secretariat) and her beautiful Mom, who as a young divorced woman set off alone, leaving her daughter behind, in order to not just make a living but to live life on her own terms; she became one of the first women to challenge the most masculine world of horseracing. Shannon, like her intrepid mother, finds life to be like the course of a point-to-point race: chances are taken or passed up and what winning means is up to the rider.
Contact: Katharine Walton 919-357-4400
info@KatharineWaltonRepresents.com
Fat to Fabulous: An Ed Says, Heba Says Reality Cookbook
by Ed Brantley and Heba Salama
Our favorite Biggest Loser couple, chef Ed Brantley and his beautiful and sassy wife Heba Salama, have completed what we think is the best- reading and best-recipe-filled of all the bestselling cookbooks to have the BIGGEST LOSER burst on the cover.
Ed & Heba's FAT TO FABULOUS: AN ED SAYS, HEBA SAYS REALITY COOKBOOK offers not just Ed's brilliant low-cal versions of their favorite foods, but also Ed's hilarious guy's-guy asides and Heba's heart-rending, one-of-the-gals anecdotes from losing 300 pounds—together. Ed's a homeboy and Heba's a city girl and their rapport, well it just works.
Says Hunter Lewis, director of the test kitchen at Saveur: "This book is an amazing collection of Ed Brantley's best recipes —honest, timeless, soulful, full-of-flavor, and perfect for the home table. Ed's instructions are so easy to follow and the commentary as original and entertaining, as if you were having supper with Ed and Heba in their own kitchen—if you should be so lucky."
Ed & Heba dish on growing up enamored with eating, growing fatter and fatter (or as Ed says, Fat Ass), falling in love, getting picked for Biggest Losers, changing their ways, metamorphosing into a glamorous, fabulous, sought-after couple—then, blam, back at home, with the challenge of keeping that weight off!
Ed & Heba's five step plan:
For the NBC show and commercials for Ed & Heba, "Love Lifts Us Up," played as their theme song, while Ed pulled Heba up a very steep hill. Millions looked on, anticipating failure, hoping for their success. They are at the top now, together and healthy, looking great for all the world to see. With FAT TO FABULOUS, they offer a life line to everyone who loves food and life so much, but is also struggling hard to lose weight—whether it's a full-on 150, 100, 50 or that difficult-to-shed last 10 pounds.
Ed's recipes make low-cal cooking and chowing-down bearable—well, more than that. (I mean, let's face it, we'd all rather have creamy, buttery chocolate mousse, but toward the cause of looking fabulous "Ed's Dark-Chocolate Faux du Creme" is pretty damn good.) During the week, Ed and Heba cut back, choosing the creative low-cal version of their faves, and then on Sunday, well, it's okay that day to roll out your Fat Tuesday philosophy and enjoy—in the case of the chocolate mousse—Our First Love Pot du Creme." Each recipe has a before and an after version, a reason why the skinny version works, a memorable title, and a story to get you psyched up for the weekday version—which really does taste great since, as Ed explains, it's the chocolate that carries the taste and the texture of the low-cal whipped cream is a miracle.
Contact: Katharine Walton 919-357-4400
info@KatharineWaltonRepresents.com
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IN OTHER NEWS:
In the Land of Lost Souls by Cadillac Man
was named at a Best Book of the Year by Publisher's Weekly. Cadillac Man lived homeless on the streets of New York City for 15 years. Today, he lives in an apartment, but commutes to his favorite spot under a viaduct in Queens. He is collaborating with Richard Gere on a movie inspired by his memoir.
The paperback of Land of the Lost Souls will be released in March 2010. He is available for radio interviews. A good sample is posted on WNYC / Leonard Lopate:
http://www.wnyc.org/shows/lopate/episodes/2009/04/21/segments/129341
Contact: Michelle.Blankenship@bloomsburyusa.com
Orange County Literacy Council
raised an unprecedented amount of money this year with its 3rd annual Writers for Readers fundraiser. I served as co-chair, along with Mary Alexion and Hodding Carter. A big thank you to authors who spoke at the luncheon: Wells Tower, Lee Stringer, Dorothy Allison, Charlaine Harris, George Singleton and Daniel Wallace.
And thanks to the cookbook authors who prepared food for the gala reception: Jean Anderson, Moreton Neal, Sara Foster, Bill Smith, Nanci McDermott and Dale and John Shelton Reed. And, the media sponsors: News & Observer and WUNC.
WUNC's Leoneda Inge made a nice report on the literacy council's work for the morning news.
The literacy council provides free one-on-one reading, math, ESL and computer literacy tutoring to adult learners.
OCLC contact: Alice Denson, adenson@orangeliteracy.org