Grammy award winning guitarist, fiddler, banjoist and vocalist Tim O’Brien has toured extensively in the US, Europe, Japan, South America, Australia, and New Zealand, and has been featured on Austin City Limits, the Grand Ole Opry, and BBC’s Transatlantic Sessions.
He has recorded with many world-renowned artists including The Chieftains, Paul Brady, Steve Martin, Earl Scruggs, and Mark Knopfler; and is also a prolific and celebrated songwriter whose music has been recorded by Garth Brooks, The Dixie Chicks, Kathy Mattea and others.
Drawing from many influences to create a unique blend of bluegrass, honky-tonk, folk and swing with the award-winning band Hot Rize, Tim emerged in the 1980s as a bridge between traditional and modern bluegrass styles. Hot Rize was the International Bluegrass Music Association’s first Entertainer of the Year in 1990; and in 1993, Tim took the IBMA’s Male Vocalist of the Year honors.
Tim’s recording of “Art Stamper” will appear in the 2012 Ken Burns film, Prohibition. Tim O’Brien’s appearance is made possible by the Anne and Dick Schneider Director’s Creative Fund and all who contribute to that fund.
Kelli Jones - Music around a campfire seems to be about as good as it gets. Both the experience and the memory of the experience are downright heart warming, spiriting us away to a place where the blues isn’t such a bad thing.
Born and raised in the Piedmont of North Carolina, Kelli Jones must have spent a lot of time playing and singing around a campfire because her sensual voice evokes that same spiritual peace.
She is a powerful force in the progressive music scene of Southwest Louisiana where she now lives, shining as a songwriter in her own band Jones and the Giants, and playing fiddle and singing in French in her all-girl Cajun trio Jolie Blonde et les Bassettes.
With a repertoire that seems to be made up of the best songs you’ve never heard and that natural musical talent that only comes from being raised in it, not only does this young lady have a future in music, music has a future in Kelli Jones.
Aoife O’Donovan grew up in a musical family, immersed in folk music. She studied contemporary improvisation at the New England Conservatory of Music, and has since performed and recorded with Ollabelle, Karan Casey and Seamus Egan, Jerry Douglas, Jim Lauderdale, Sara Watkins, and Chris Thile of the Punch Brothers.
For the past ten years, Aoife has been fronting the alt-bluegrass/string band Crooked Still, and has toured in ten different countries, performed with the Boston Pops and the Utah Symphony Orchestra, and has appeared on countless radio and television programs.
In addition, Aoife’s husky and instantly-identifiable voice can be heard on HBO’s True Blood, and Private Practice on ABC.
In June 2010, Aoife released her first solo recording, garnering rave reviews from audiophiles worldwide, and plans to record a full length follow up, due for release in 2012.
Pharis Romero is a singer, songwriter, guitarist, teacher, and a respected figure in North American acoustic music circles. She has performed and instructed at many of the major North American festivals and venues, including Wintergrass, the Winnipeg and Calgary Folk Festivals, and the Festival of American Fiddle Tunes. A native of Horsefly, deep in the Cariboo interior of British Columbia, Pharis developed her style through both classical training and older tradition-bearers.
Writing songs about hard living, love and loss, her music has been played around the world. Pharis began performing at an early age with her family band, The Patenaude Family, and is a founding member of the Haints Old Time Stringband. She currently records, performs, and makes banjos with her husband Jason.
Their first album, A Passing Glimpse, reached number one on the North American Folk DJ playlist in 2011.
Mollie O’Brien has a voice the way Groucho Marx had a sense of humor, the way Secretariat had legs, and the way Elizabeth Taylor has eyes (or husbands). Try to imagine one without the other – impossible. Mollie’s voice is a natural extension of herself. Anything she can imagine, she can communicate in song. Refusing to be pigeon-holed to any particular musical genre, the breadth of her music is startling – jazz, R&B, blues, gospel, or a southern mountain ballad. She approaches each with an ease that makes you think she was steeped in the style since the first time a note left her throat, dipping into the songs of Lennon and McCartney, Percy Mayfield, Memphis Minnie, Chuck Berry, and the Subdudes.
She’ll be accompanied at the workshop by her husband Rich Moore, well-known and well-loved in Colorado’s acoustic music family, and the reigning “King of Party Guitar” – he knows the chords and every signature lick to any song you’ll want to sing during the week, and he’ll be there to back you up.
Courtney Granger is the next generation of the Balfa Family, and his inspired fiddling and singing are testament to the power of that bloodline. He recorded his debut CD for Rounder Records at the age of 15.
Now in his late twenties, he has matured into one of the most passionate singers and fiddlers in Louisiana. Courtney sheds new light on the ancient traditions left to him by his family, and stakes his own claim as a vibrant young master musician. He sings with a deep soulfulness, fiddles with a seemingly impossible combination of ancient wisdom and youthful vigor, and possesses an endless repertoire of both Cajun and classic country tunes.
Courtney has recorded and performed with the Balfa Toujours, Tim O’Brien, Kevin Wimmer, Dirk Powell, and many others. He currently performs with the Grammy nominated Cajun quintet, the Pine Leaf Boys.
Virtuoso Grammy nominated guitarist, singer and songwriter Bill Kirchen is one of the fortunate few who can step onto any stage and elicit instant recognition for a career that has spanned over 40 years. His diverse résumé includes guitar work with Emmylou Harris, Elvis Costello, and Nick Lowe, and he was the original guitarist with Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen, whose signature blend of rock ‘n’ roll, hard-core country, boogie and rockabilly produced a high-octane mix that propelled them into the stratosphere of San Francisco Bay area bands in the eary 1970s. Named, “A Titan of the Telecaster” by Guitar Player Magazine, Bill champions an American musical tradition where rock ‘n’ roll and country music draw upon their origins in the blues and bluegrass, Western swing, and honky-tonk.
Caleb Klauder’s warm sound, authentic and familiar, feels all at once contemporary and vintage, as though it’s coming from the kitchen next-door. Caleb has been on tour for the last fifteen years, most notably with the Caleb Klauder Country Band, the Foghorn Stringband, and with Dirk Powell.
He’s opened for acts such as JJ Cale, Iris Dement, David Bromberg, and the Del McCoury Band, and has shared the stage with Tim O’Brien, Kevin Burke, The Wilders, Uncle Earl, and Justin Townes Earle. He has toured extensively throughout the US, the UK, Ireland, Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Malaysia, including appearances at the Newport Folk Festival, the New orleans Jazz and heritage Festival, the Chicago Folk and Roots Festival, The Seattle Folk Life Festival, Bumbershoot, and the ROMP Festival.
In 2010 the Caleb Klauder band released their critically acclaimed second album, Western Country. Praised for its classic country vibe, the album reached #2 on the Freeform American Roots Radio Chart. (photo by David Simpson)
Linda and David Lay have performed at the Library of Congress, several National Folk Festivals, the Masters of the Steel String Guitar tour, the Birchmere, the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, Opryland Hotel, and many other prestigious venues and stages.
Raised in Bristol, Virginia, where the Carter Family and Jimmy Rodgers made their first recordings, Linda was singing on stage with her father and uncles by the time she was only six. Later, she and her husband David founded the innovative bluegrass band, Appalachian Trail.
Linda currently sings and plays acoustic bass with David in the popular quartet Springfield Exit. In 2006, Linda was chosen to be a Master Artist for the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities.
David Lay, a native of east Tennessee, is a talented harmony singer, solid rhythm guitar player, and a farmer. Linda and David currently reside in Fairfax County, Virginia, where they run a vegetable farm and country store.
Tony Marcus and Patrice Haan form the group Leftover Dreams, performing standards (and not-so-standards) of the Great American Songbook combined with witty and imaginative vocal arrangements featuring Patrice’s sultry and seductive voice.
Tony, a longtime bastion of the Bay Area music scene, is perhaps best known for his work with R. Crumb & the Cheap Suit Serenaders and Cats & Jammers. He has also toured Japan in 2004 with Geoff Muldaur.
Tony plays guitar and sings as well, and the combination creates an intriguing mix of moody ballads, jumping swingers and unabashedly romantic love songs. Recently Leftover Dreams was featured on NPR’s All Songs Considered, where their rendition of “Teach Me Tonight” won the weekly listeners poll.
Nancy Thorwardson is a singer and songwriter, guitar and ukulele player, egg and leg shaker, and occasional drummer.
She has been a performing musician for many years, playing western and standard swing music, old-timey and Cajun dance music, and folk and bluegrass music. She’s currently in six bands!
Nancy will lead a ukulele workshop each afternoon.
Lauren Sheehan is a contemporary songster, interpreting a wide variety of material learned from some of America’sfinest folk and blues artists. Her repertoire includes unaccompanied ballads, country blues, bluegrass, vintage country, 60′s pop, and modern folk.
She has a special affinity for the traditional music of America, and her passion for learning directly from other musicians has led her into the homes and front porches of the tradition-bearers such as John Cephas, Ginny Hawker, Etta Baker, Carl Rutherford and Howard Armstrong, who passed on much of the material and stylistic qualities she presents today.
“The first thing that strikes me is the beauty and clarity of Lauren’s voice,” says Phil Wiggins. “It’s like discovering some new instrument that combines qualities of fiddle and clarinet, fresh but with deep roots…”
