On May Fifth  & Sixth downtown will be in full swing with the 29^th annual Athens Human Rights Festival on College Square. The festival is an annual springtime political and cultural event for the people and by the people. I am in charge of the children’s area and the family entertainment. This is my tenth year as a volunteer, and I am so proud of the growth of our program. What was not much more than sidewalk chalk is now a fun-filled and family-friendly centerpiece of each year’s Athens Human Rights Festival. Children hang out all day in the children’s area which hosts instrument making, jewelry making, face-painting , sidewalk chalk art, sandboxes and free snacks and water.Below is the schedule of entertainment for youth of all ages. I hope to see you downtown!Pam

YOUTH PROGRAM: Saturday, May 5, 2007 Athens Human Rights Festival
10:00 - SPEAKER:Center for Development in Central America
10:10 - Pam Blanchard & The Sunny-Side Up Band
11:10 - George the Story-Teller
11:30 - Dr. Arvin Scott & Drumming for Success
12:20 - Maggie Hunter & The Montessori Singers
12:55 - Rites of Passage1:30 - Youth Speaker: Ian Dunne
1:35 - Girls With Guitars

Hi Sunny-Side friends!

Our last show was at Whit Davis Elementary School and we performed for the entire after-school program. To tell you the truth, we don’t usually play for children over the age of seven often so the audience is usually shorter then me. That’s what I’m used to. But the Fourth  and Fifth  graders were sooooo big!   “Are they going to like us?”…  I wondered… “Will they have fun?”… I wondered and hoped… “Don’t be scared Pam”…

Since we played there last year for the whole school I kind of knew what to expect. As soon as the pack of fifth grade boys came in with their arms raised and fists clenched above their heads and said , “You guys ROCK!!!”, I quickly remembered that we weren’t fish out of water – just in a different pond. Children of all ages love music when they are asked to participate, and when the music doesn’t speak down to them.

From Pre-K – 5, the children hopped, danced, listened to the story of the pretty, pretty butterfly, squirmed like snakes, and moved their bodies without using their hips, knees or feet.  I remember at one point seeing a teacher cover her eyes when all of the children were hopping around …but, as I knew would be the case, everyone controlled their bodies and the song ended with everyone asleep on the floor. WAY TO GO KIDS!! Give them boundaries and the freedom to move and they never disappoint. 

 Thank you Miss Bliss (that’s really her name!!) for inviting us again. WE HAD A BALL!

Hope to see you next year, too!

All my best-Pam    

We would like to thank everyone who was able to come to our show on Valentine’s Day. It was a lot of fun! We would also like to thank Gwyneth Butera and her daughters (Camille and Chloe) for coming to the show and bringing their camera. Unfortunately, my camera didn’t work very well, but they got some great pictures. You can click on the picture below to link to those photos.

We are very excited to announce the release of our music video for the song “Wigglin’ Blues”!

The video has been posted on youtube.com, where you can rate it and leave comments, but it is also on our Myspace.com page and in the movie theatre at our website. Please check it out, and please let other folks know about it, as well. We hope you enjoy it.

We had a great time making the video and would like to thank Anthony Barkdoll and the guys from Athens Video and David Duncan, Alex and the staff at the Oconee County Civic Center for working with us on it. Also, we would like to give a special thanks to the principal (Ms Nowell), the teachers, the parents and, especially, the students of Timothy Road Elementary School for making our video so special.

We had a great time on “It’s Friday!” with Robb Holmes. It was a fun show. Thanks to Robb for inviting us, everyone who listened and everyone who called in to request a song. We are sorry if we didn’t get to play the song that you requested. It was a shorter hour than we thought it would be. The following is a photo from the radio studio.

Hello Everyone,

I just wanted to remind everyone that we will be playing live on WUGA’s “It’s Friday” show at 4:00PM this coming Friday. We will be taking requests by phone, so please give us a call. Also, if you can’t be near a radio, you can listen online at www.wuga.org. 

In addition to this, we are excited about our new video coming out this week for the song Wigglin’ Blues. Keep an eye out for it on our website and www.youtube.com. 

And lastly, we do have some tickets still available for our Valentine’s Day Show on Wednesday, February 14^th at the Oconee Civic Center, so if you can come, we would love to see you there. 

Thanks for reading, 

Danny

Welcome to our the SSUB blog. The following is the text of the email that I sent out to our email list letting people know about our “Grand Opening”. If you haven’t read it already, it has some information about what is going on right now with the band.

….

Hello everyone, 

It has been a while since we played, so we haven’t had much to report in the way of shows, but we do have several things going on besides shows. So, I apologize for the long email, but this should catch us up. Here is what we have going on: we have made some changes to the Sunny-Side Up Band website; we have a new Myspace page; one of our songs is available on a podcast; we have a video in the works; and some upcoming shows.  

For the website, we have added a links page and a weblog. The links page has a list of various sites to buy our CD, links to our friend’s pages and also other sites we like. We will update these periodically and add new things, so please check back on the links page. We have also added a blog, where we plan to post the latest news on the band, tell about upcoming concerts, comment on our recent concerts, post pictures and even include some of our random thoughts and opinions on life and music (for children and everybody). 

www.sunnysideupband.com 

We have created a new Myspace.com page. This “world of Myspace” is not really a place for children, and we realize that, so we are not encouraging children to go to that site. In fact, we believe that children shouldn’t be on the internet without parental supervision. That said, Myspace is a great place for bands to network with other bands (even children’s music groups). Also, there are many parents who are on Myspace and using it to keep up with bands they like. So if you are a “Myspacer”, please stop by our page and sign up to be our friend. We would really love to have you. We will post upcoming shows on that site, and the blog on that site will mirror our SSUB blog. 

http://www.myspace.com/pamblanchardandthesunnysideupband 

Our song, “Ants In My Pants” was included on an October/November Rockin’ Moms podcast. This podcast is hosted by Tiffany Petrossi and Jamie Baughman out of California. Tiffany has a great website called Rockinmoms.com that features bands with Moms in them (like SSUB). If you are interested, the link to the podcast is below. 

http://www.rockinmoms.com/podcast.htm 

We have a video of the song “Wigglin’ Blues” that is in the final stages of production, and should be out by the end of the month. So look for it on local TV, our website or Youtube.com. It features the band and the wonderful kids of Timothy Road Pre-K and Kindergarten classes wigglin’ to the music. 

Lastly, the reason we do this is to play live, and we have a couple of shows coming up in February. 

It’s Friday!
Friday, February 9th, 2007, 4:00PM

WUGA 91.7 FM
Athens, Georgia 

This is a live in-studio show. Please tune in and listen. 

And 

Valentine’s Day Show
Wednesday, February 14th, 2007, 9:00AM

Oconee County Civic Center
Watkinsville, Georgia 

This is a show that is open to all. Tickets will be sold at the door, but does require reservations for daycare & school groups. 

Okay, if you made it to this point, thanks for reading. I know it was a long email, but we are very excited about all of these new things and look forward to an exciting new year. 

Danny