News we’re excited about: Big Tribe at the Smithsonian. (It’s the “unplugged” Big Tribe – Bonnie and Joe and Peter.)

It’s an exotic venue – a scientific conference on Thursday June 23 at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Edgewater, Maryland. It’s the annual Patuxent River Conference, devoted to sharing environmental science – not just communicating scientist-to-scientist, but also sharing environmental awareness with the general public (a mighty important problem, we believe).

We’re doing a fifty-minute program “Songs About The River” at which we’ll perform several of our songs that try to get regular folks to think about such things. We’ll talk about each one – the stories they tell, and the craft of making a song that tells a story in a way that makes people care – and try to spark dialog with the audience. All the while we’ll be trying to encourage creative thinking and collaboration between people with a message (for instance environmental science people) and musicians and other artists, in the name of trying to get people to think and to care.

We’re premiering the music video for “Can’t Work the River” (our waterman song) during the program; filmmaker Jacob Canon will speak of telling this story visually.

That alone would have us excited, but there’s more! When the conference ends at 6 there’s a gathering with drinks and refreshments, and we’re going to play some of our other songs until we’ve closed the place down.

If this interests you, you can go to www.PAXCON.org for the details of the conference; you can even register online to attend. It’s an all-day event; our program is from 4 to 5, and the closing set will be around 6:15.