Press-Citizen Community Music column September 1, 2018 by Jean Littlejohn The Family Folk Machine has begun rehearsals for our fall program, “Stand by Me: Songs of Friendship.” We’re learning arrangements of well-known songs like Bruce Springsteen’s “No Surrender” and our title song, “Stand by Me,” along with lesser-known songs that

This Saturday, June 2, the FFM kids will take the Family Stage at 2 p.m. They are going to perform several of the songs they wrote this spring, and you won’t want to miss them! FFM Associate Director had the kids divide into groups for songwriting–words, tunes, chords, and everything–and

Press-Citizen article published May 5 about the upcoming Family Folk Machine concert by Jean Littlejohn The Family Folk Machine, Iowa City’s intergenerational choir, is celebrating its fifth anniversary with a concert at the Englert Theatre on Saturday, May 12, at 3 p.m. We are excited to bring back some of

Please join us May 12th at 3:00 PM at the Englert Theatre for a program of old and recent favorites from the past five years, and help us celebrate the Family Folk Machine’s fifth anniversary!

We are very excited to welcome several local organizations to our Calling Me Home concerts. Rather than just singing about our feelings about home, we’re happy to offer our audience a chance to see some of the good work that’s going on in our community to help with issues of

The Family Folk Machine is very excited to present our fall program in two concerts: Friday, November 17 at 7 p.m. at the Senior Center Sunday, November 19 at 3 p.m. at the Old Capitol Senate Chamber Come and sing along with us! The concerts feature songs by contemporary folk

Join us for an all-request sing-along at Uptown Bill’s on Saturday, Nov. 11. We get started about 3 p.m. and sing until 4:30. It’s a fun, low-key way to sing and make connections with neighbors, friends, and acquaintances, and everyone is welcome. We enjoy rediscovering old songs and learning some

The Fall 2017 Family Folk Machine session begins with rehearsal on Sunday, August 20, from 3 to 5 at the Senior Center. Get in touch for more info, or just show up! We will be singing about Home, and our concerts will be November 17 at the Senior Center and

The Family Folk Machine will sing at Arts Fest this June, and we are thrilled and honored to perform with our friends the Awful Purdies. You can catch our joint performance on the Main Stage at 1 p.m. June 3. How do you merge a 60-voice intergenerational choir with a

I ran into these words from Bob Dylan in an article about his Nobel prize in the January 2017 issue of the magazine Sojourners (thanks to my mom). These quotes are taken from a speech Dylan gave when accepting a MusiCares Person of the Year Award in 2015: “I learned