Join us for a special triple bill evening of music featuring Sweet Moments of Confusion, The Patty Dukes, and bluegrass fiddle legend Blaine Sprouse!

Sweet Moments of Confusion returns to our favorite house concert series, chez Sue Willard. Joined by Sean Tergis on percussion and Briana Di Mara on violin. We’ll be playing some new(ish) material as well as dusting off all our favorites in this rare concert appearance!

$20 donation goes directly to the musicians
Doors/snacks at 7, music at 8
RSVP to dancegirl@earthlink.net for address.

We hope to see you there!

Here are some highlights from our “Baby Tour”, August 15-18th, 2013. It was our first tour since Myra’s daughter Estela was born. We brought her with us, so we planned for baby-sized drive distances!

We played at the Weller House Inn, Fort Bragg; The Muse, Willits; Studio E, Sebastopol; and culminated at the amazing Cotati Accordion Festival, where the crowd danced to our odd rhythms and then bought all the CDs we had with us! Thanks Cotati!

Here’s us on stage at the Cotati Accordion Festival:

Estela joined us on stage for our last song at the Muse in Willits:

Here’s what rehearsal often looked like:

Here’s another video from our Portland house concert. Joined by Leslie Jackson on percussion. I love the audience response on this one!

Nov 2012
This is from our Portland, Oregon house concert.

Here’s a  photo from our concert at the Mendocino Community Center, where we also shared the bill with and accompanied the lovely Juliet Strong:

Frustrated by iTunes and CDBaby genre lists, cellist Myra Joy and accordionist Diana Strong have decided to describe their music simply as “instrumental” and let people figure out the “genre” on their own.

The duo, dubbed Sweet Moments of Confusion, plays original world music that pulls from Balkan, Celtic and Scandinavian folk traditions.

“We’re not staying in the lines of any traditional sounds,” Strong says. Their unusual, acoustic instrumentation allows for both rich and full — as well as light and melodic — sounds. Strong says the music has an Old World aesthetic as well as a modern component that comes from “reimagining traditional ingredients.”

“Accordion music, in general, brings people back to this 1920s era, somewhere far away and nostalgic,” she says.

Joy, based in Fort Bragg, Calif., and Strong, based in Oakland, Calif., will kick off their six-stop Northwest tour at 8 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 17, at The Playwright Public House, 258 A St., Ashland. The pair landed the gig with help from longtime friend and Ashland musician Daniel Carr.

Joy and Strong started playing together about eight years ago in the folk-fusion band Babes in the Woods. When that band ran its course, they continued to play together and write new material.

But the name didn’t come until summer 2011.

“We were playing together on this porch at a music camp, Lark in the Morning, and there was a group of about three people sitting and listening,” Strong says. “And our friend, Rick, responded with, ‘There are these sweet moments of confusion where I can’t tell which instrument is producing the sound I’m hearing.’

“The name captured the artistic process for me.”

This summer, the duo released its self-titled, 12-track debut, featuring six guest musicians on violins, hammered dulcimer, flute and an assortment of percussion instruments, including cajon, dumbek, tapan (a large Balkan drum), tabla and frame drum.

“I’m really proud of how much range we covered (on the album) in mood and emotional tone,” Strong says. “When we started out, it tended toward melancholy and lyrical, and there is that, but it really covers a wide range.

“One thing you won’t find is a straight-up, happy polka.”

The cover to the show at The Playwright is $5. Call 541-488-9128 or seewww.sweetmomentsofconfusion.com.

July, 2012: After many months in production (and years in gestation before that), our debut CD is finally here! Thanks for all your support along the way. We hope to see you at our next show!

You can get the new CD directly from us at a concert, or contact us to order by mail. You can also download the album digitally at Bandcamp, or download/order physical copies through CD baby. Thanks for supporting independent music!