Happy December!

Hello! Happy December!

I'll start by letting you know about what we've got coming up this month!

On Saturday December 4th, the Duo (Ashleigh Caudill & Matt Purinton) will be playing at the Mandolin Cafe in Loveland Colorado. We should start around 6pm and we'd love to see you all there! Oh, and the food and drinks, in addition to the owners, staff and patrons, are awesome!

On Thursday December 9th, Matt & I will be opening up for Bonnie & the Clydes at Avos in Fort Collins.

On Friday December 17th, I'll be hosting an open mic in Lyons Colorado at the Stone Cup. If you live in the area, you should come, bring your friends, your instruments, talent, etc. Come play some songs and keep me company!

We're also doing another drawing to win T-shirts, CD's and Tote bags! All you have to do is send us an email with your name, address, and T-shirt size. We'll enter you in the drawing! Names will be drawn at the end of the month and you'll get an exciting belated Christmas present to yourself!


The last three days have been crazy! Matt and I embarked on our journey on Sunday night, patting ourselves on the back for leaving the house in more than enough time to get to our first show (which was this morning in Pueblo). As we were driving down the highway, with Asheville in the rear view mirror and Ruby and Lump sleeping peacefully on the back seat, we were talking about how we could actually take our time driving across the country this trip. We only had about 24 hours to go and three days to get there. We could stop, sleep, eat, see things, etc. Of course this couldn't hold true for long.

By the time we reached Nashville the van started acting up (Matt describes it as "puttering"). Thinking that it could have just been a dirty gas tank or fuel pump or something like that. We put in some fuel injector cleaner and some of that fancy expensive gas and went on our way. No sooner than we got back on the highway the "check engine" light came on, and only 5 hours into our trip we pulled over to stay the night.

The next morning (Monday morning) we drove to the nearest Auto Zone to get them to plug their fancy machine computer thing into the van to find out the problem. Well, luckily for us it wasn't a huge fix. Just needed a new spark plug. Easy enough, right? We decided to fix it ourselves in the Auto Zone parking lot. Thankfully, there was a very knowledgeable employee who was more than willing to help us. She talked us through the whole process, loaned us some tools and even came out on her lunch break to make sure we got everything right! We got out of Nashville later than we had planned, but we didn't have to go to the auto shop, and we learned how to change spark plugs. If it wasn't for the best Auto Zone employee we've ever met, Ashley Caldwell (interestingly enough), we might have been stuck in Tennessee forever!

The rest of the trip went off pretty smoothly and we made it to Pueblo last night, early enough to get to bed at a reasonable hour, eat free hotel breakfast, and get to our gig on time this morning.

Now we are just trying to get caught up on emails, phone calls, and enjoying the Colorado sunshine!

I'll try and keep you updated on the rest of the trip.

Have a wonderful holiday and I hope we see you soon!

Ashleigh