Jesse Milnes, fiddle
Gerry Milnes, fiddle, banjo

Gerry Milnes has been collecting and playing old-time music and writing about traditional musicians in West Virginia for over fifty years. He’s a multi-instrumentalist, folklorist, filmmaker, and writer, focusing not only on the music but also where it comes from and the values and stories that go along with it. Gerry has produced 20 audio recordings of West Virginia traditional music on the Augusta Heritage label, including two recordings chosen by the American Folklife Center, Library of Congress, for their “Selected List” of American Folk Music Recordings. He has amassed more than 2,000 hours of film, video, and audio recordings, documenting the talents and folk practices of native West Virginians. A prize-winning fiddle and banjo player, Milnes has won first-place awards at the West Virginia State Folk Festival in Glenville, Vandalia Gathering in Charleston, and the Appalachian String Band Music Festival in Clifftop, WV.

Gerry’s son Jesse Milnes grew up in the world of West Virginia old-time music. Although he is widely known as a fiddle player, Jesse’s first instrument was a guitar, and he has developed a personal style of finger-picking, drawing on influences from blues to bluegrass to country. He has played fiddle and guitar with many country, old-time, and bluegrass bands over the years, including the Sweetback Sisters, a country band for which he was also a main songwriter. Jesse has won many local and regional fiddle contests, including the WV State Folk Festival in Glenville, WV, and the Ed Haley Fiddle Contest in Ashland, KY.