9th Annual SK Family BBQ Info Is Here + Season Pass 2019

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The 9th Annual SK Family BBQ Weekend is back June 21-22! 

This years event will all be held at the historic Ross Farm in Basking Ridge, NJ. I played there last year and fell in love with the beautiful location and grounds. I am absolutely thrilled that they are willing to host our weekend this year! We will have many more details as they come together, but here's a little teaser of what to expect...

Friday Night Pre-BBQ Concert in the Barn: This is going to be a very limited engagement 'evening with'. For the first set, we'll be celebrating the 15th anniversary of the self-titled album by playing it in it's entirety. This was my major label debut, and I'm so excited to dive in from "Flower In Rain" to "Keep Me In Your Thoughts"! For the second set, I'll be doing 100% requests. The venue capacity in the barn is extremely limited and we won't be able to fit everyone, so if you'd like to attend this, you'll need a weekend pass and you'll want to buy it early.

Saturday Afternoon: BBQ! Field Day! Plus a short acoustic set for our younger friends. This is all about hanging with your people, no athleticism required, and your tickets to this include lunch, games, and music!

Saturday Night: With any luck, we will be playing under a star filled sky on the first weekend of summer. There is room for the kids to run, a blanket to sit on, and a cooler by your side. It should be an incredible evening, and we'lll have special guest Brooks Hubbard kicking things off that night!

Tickets and More Info: Tickets are on sale NOW! You can either pick up a weekend pass, which will get you into all three events on a discounted rate, or you can pick "a la carte" tickets for the two Saturday events. There are descriptions as well as FAQ answered over at the Family Store. We are also partnering with a wonderful Marriott and have a special rate for weekend goers. Less than an hour from three major airports in one of New Jersey's most beautiful communities. We hope you'll join us for the 9th Annual SK Family BBQ Weekend!

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Also, we are rolling out a Season Pass for 2019! You can go to as many SK shows* as your heart desires, including Kelloggtown VIP for each show as well. This will be valid for the 2019 calendar year- including the full band Spring tour, plus we have summer and fall tours on the books. We'll be visiting many of the cities we haven't gotten to, and returning to some that we have! These are valid for one person, but if you'd like to buy two, the second is half off! 

*Headlining shows only- does not include festival dates

Underwater Sunshine Fest Blog Features SK

"Stephen Kellogg is someone who is talented in so many different ways, who has done so much with his life, and who is still reaching out into new areas— so please, indulge the storyteller in me while I tell you about Kellogg’s wild, open heart.

If you’re a folk or Americana fan, I know that you already know who Stephen Kellogg and the Sixers are. They’ve been a staple of the scene since 2003. (If you aren’t already listening, if you like artists who use clever writing and upbeat styles, like Josh Ritter and Matt Nathanson, Stephen Kellogg is going to be your new favorite songwriter.) And while he performs and records mostly under his own name now, what’s most impressive to me about Kellogg— and maybe about any person I meet (looking forward to it, Stephen!)— he is absolutely, 100% sincere. There isn’t irony or sarcasm in this music. There isn’t bitterness and hatred in this music. Stephen Kellogg is a good man who happens to have connected with a large group of fans, all magically without having to change who he is."

Continue reading on the blog!

 

Album + Book Update

Hello all you fine community of music listeners!

So here is the update. We spent four days in a recording studio called MOXE
in Nashville, TN last week. Quite unbelievably, we are almost done recording the album.
I’ve never had a record happen this fast, but the combination of personalities seems to
have created something that I’m as excited to share with you as anything I’ve ever done
as an artist. We have some back ground vocals to capture and mixing decisions to make
and then we will have a new record. I can tell you this. I know the name of the album now
and I know that it will have 12 songs on it. More for you later. If you have friends who like this
type of music and you think they’d enjoy it, please encourage them to pre-order their records
as we still have to raise 50% of the funds needed to finish the record and book. Speaking of the
book, the chapters and concepts are taking shape and I’ll be spending the lions share of the next month and a half working on that. To the 615 souls who’ve taken us the first 49% of the way and to the fine musicians who’ve helped get the record rolling in grand fashion, my eternal gratitude.

xo,
SK

Song of the Fool: Foreward by Stephen Kellogg

I’ve heard it said that “youth is wasted on the young,” but I’ve never found that to be the case.

Youth is the necessary condition that keeps us going as we stumble our way through the gates of early adulthood, failing miserably and often. Still, in flashes and on good days we can also feel the rush and energy of what we later arrogantly call “accomplishment.” If I had known then what I know now, then what happened then wouldn’t have been what it was, and that would have been a damn shame because what was, was awesome. I’m getting ahead of myself though, so let me take it back a moment.

My grandfather had a great axiom he used to share with me: “Never believe your own propaganda.” Hearing him comment to that effect hundreds of times filled my brain with a healthy skepticism about what others would say of me, on both the positive and negative sides. The press, when they thought of me at all, would often write cutting reviews with the underlying message that “this guy is nothing special.” Sorry mom, but they’ve found me out! As such I tended to think of the press, when I thought of them at all, in much the same way they thought of me. Nothing special.

On the flip side it was also easy to assume that anyone with a positive assessment of my work was probably just friendly and it had nothing to do with my work actually being any good. A little self-destructive and kind of a messed up way to think, right? Nonetheless, these are the murky, narcissistic waters Hunter Sharpless was entering into when he approached us about touring with our virtually unknown band in 2009. Some would call it baggage but I like to think of it as awareness. After all we’d been making a living at it for a decade and who needed any more validation than that?

 I guess I did.

The fact is, I was not at all sure I wanted a young guy around, judging my friends and me. I held fast to Andy Rooney’s assessment that everyone thinks they could write a book “if only they had the time.” Having attempted to write one myself on multiple occasions, I realized it was harder than it looked. All the same, the lead singer in me felt a level of validation even from the whisper that someone had chosen our work to write about. I wanted to believe in Hunter. I just didn’t want to be hurt by being misunderstood or ignored (by the very real possibility that the book would never actually get written), and I didn’t want to be the subject of a “puff piece”—something I know all too well wouldn’t be representative of the man I am.

I needn’t have worried. In the book we all come off, including the author himself, as a little damaged but ultimately decent. Most of ong of the Foo is composed of material I had no idea was being observed. The moments that fit more in the cracks. They weren’t the high highs or even the low lows of the road—this was the everyday stuff. And the everyday stuff is sometimes all we have in life, so we’ve got an obligation to make the most of it. I remembered that while reading this book.

So yeah, Hunter’s a young guy, but that’s what makes his memoir special. No one told him that you don’t write books about underground cult bands that perhaps will only be read by diehard fans. You don’t write memoirs of what it’s like to be a suburban-raised, well loved teenager traveling with a painfully normal bunch of guys who treat their band as their business, guided by an affable girl with a great sense of humor. All the edges that the media and buying public crave are missing. No one told him this or if they did he didn’t listen (also a trademark of youth).

 Thank goodness they didn’t, because what resulted is a snapshot of real stuff. Authentic stuff. The stuff that makes up all of our days. No, youth isn’t wasted on the young. It’s lathered on the young in the hopes that someone will do things that haven’t been done yet and use their superpowers for good. That someone will illuminate the truth. I hope that others can learn from some of our mistakes and enjoy the reading of this story half as much as I enjoyed the living of it.

Stephen Kellogg June 2014