Hey there!!

Your old pal Bill Berends here. Summer is about halfway thru and I hope you are having a good one! Early July was a scorcher, so I need to sell some more In My Dreams CD's to pay the electric bill! lol.. seriously, yo.

First up, a couple Berends Bros Band gigs this weekend: Saturday Aug. 10th we're playing a set at the Cosmic Hoedown 13 in Rocky Hill, NJ. A semi-private outdoor party with bands on a nice big wooded lot. You are invited to come hang. Yes, you! Free admission, BYOB & BYO food (I think). Just south of the intersection of RT27 & RT518, parking in the adjacent shopping center. We're on at 6PM-7PM. There's a map link on my schedule page. GPS Coordinates are 40.4155 -74.58654. Check the Facebook event link for more detailed info.

Sunday Aug. 11th we're back at good ol' John & Peter's in New Hope PA for 3 full sets doing pretty much whatever we feel like. Come on out! Sunday's are less crowded in New Hope (which is insane with people during the summer for some reason). Always a good time at J&P's, we hope to see YOU there!

Thus. Aug. 22nd I'm kicking it Mahavishnu style again with G.Calvin Weston and Treasures of the Spirit at The World Cafe at The Queen (upstairs) in Wilmington, Delaware. Supposed to be a nice venue and we haven't done this for a while - absence makes the heart grow fonder - so it should be a smokin' hot show! I hope some of you in the more southerly direction can make it out! Who knows when we may do it again.
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What else is new... I've added a new photo gallery to the billberends.com website. There's a bunch of stuff on there now and more to come. Lots of photos from Facebook to start off with - especially for those of you not on Facebook! (I know, are there such people? Yes there are! All you old folks, lol.. I love you all! ) so stop by and see what you've been missing. I plan to populate it with various groovy stuff, past & present, music & guitar related mostly. Who knows! You can leave comments, rate photos, the whole ball of wax. I decided it's better to control my own content than leave it all in the hands of mega-data-corp, so go have a look - billberends.com/gallery

(Only problem is, despite using Aksimet anti-spam, some pricks in China keep spamming the comments relentlessly, so if the comment section is down, stop by again later. I turn it off and on to try and shake those commie bastards! Akismet has snagged over 500 spam comments in the past week! Shouldn't they be making iPhones or something?! I mean, how do they even know it is there? Jerks.)

Sorry. Where was this going.. oh, right. If the gallery app works OK there, the plan is to set one up on the Mastermind website and start scanning the room full of paper photos I've collected over the years (decades - before digital everything). If you have any photos you'd like to contribute, we'd love to see them. Get in touch and I will give you some upload info. Thanks!

In the last mailing things were in a bit of a disarray because of the confusion over dates (the gig went well despite the mix up) . I wanted to mention then there are some newly posted vintage Mastermind videos on youtube from our Electric Factory show with Joe Satriani back in '96 or '97. Check out the playlist to watch them all.

Ok, finally, as for MASTERMIND... I think it is time. The time has come to start a rumor... Rich, Tim, and I have been working up a concert length set of classic Mastermind trio material. This is not something we are just going to go out and do haphazardly in bars, and The (fabulous) Berends Brothers Band will continue to play as we work out the details, but we are considering the possibilities that might be available to us at this point in time. We are currently open to suggestions as to venues & repertoire that may interest to you. Please stand by for further details.

Hope to see some of you this weekend. Rock on!!

Stop by billberends.com and check the news for video, links, CD's etc. Thanks!

That's it for now. Happy August to you!!

Bill Berends

In My Dreams I Can Fly available on CD Baby

billberends.com
mastermindband.com
berendsbrosband.com