I am a guitarist who works in Folk, Celtic & Greek/Turkish genres having been part of the 1960s -70s folk scene both as a player and as a presenter (Mariposa Folk Festival among others) as well as performing and recording in Greece & Turkey since the 1970s. I presently work with my fiddler daughter Alana Cline and we perform Cape Breton, Scottish and Irish traditional tunes from the 1700s onwards as well as modern traditional style material. We also specialize in performances and workshops comparing different Celtic fiddle musical traditions.
Libraries
Dan Schatz
Traditional and contemporary folksinger, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer
Chris Vallillo
Roots based singer songwriter/folk musician.
Chuck Mitchell
Chuck is a hubert humphrey democrat sensitive new age guy. He started singing in Detroit folk clubs and saloons back in the 1960’s. In Toronto, on his first out of town gig, he met a bony blonde Canadian songwriter named Joni Anderson. They married, and as a duo Chuck and Joni Mitchell played the coffeehouse circuit and gin rummy until she was 48,760 points and 50 home made songs ahead, and then they divorced.
In 2018, Chuck’s fellow FARM (Folk Alliance Regional Midwest) folk gave him the Lantern Bearer Award for “significant contribution to folk music in the Midwest”. He couldn’t have been more grateful, telling his fellow farmers that after fifty-some years glowing next to a floodlight, it was really nice to be recognized.
In his one man show, Mitchell plays 6 and 12 string guitar and sings cabaret songs, animal songs, story songs, and Mitchell songs. He weaves poetry by Sandburg-Frost-Brecht-Hopkins and others into his shows. He has appeared on the Merv Griffin show (once) and A Prairie Home Companion’ (thrice).
His acting credits include ‘The World of Carl Sandburg’ (in the USA and the UK), Harold Hill in ‘The Music Man’, Woody in ‘Woody Guthrie’s American Song’, and Stephen Foster in ‘Mr. Foster & Mr. Twain’. Ask Siri and Alexa and the other streamers to play Chuck’s music. On YouTube, enter “Chuck Mitchell Sings”.
Hey, you say, is Chuck a Renaissance Man? Well, he’s old enough.
Erin Mae Lewis
Mountain Dulcimer Aficionado and Folk Music Educator
Erin Mae is a mountain dulcimer virtuosa who has taken an obscure American folk instrument, and with it has developed a high level of technical proficiency and musical expression. Erin has been playing traditional mountain dulcimer for over twenty years and chromatic mountain dulcimer for over ten years. In that time, she has developed a unique and progressive style. Carrying the rhythm section with her signature percussive chop and flat-picking fiddle tunes with impressive dexterity; audiences nationwide show amazement as they watch her fingers dance over her dulcimer strings.
Erin Mae is also a respected teacher who has taught at hundreds of dulcimer festivals and conferences around the world. She has pioneered online mountain dulcimer instruction and helped numerous festivals pivot to online events during the Covid-19 pandemic. Additionally, Erin Mae teaches kids folk music workshops at schools and libraries, and organizes kids camps at bluegrass and folk festivals.
Andrew Irwin
I am a nationally touring storyteller/singer/songwriter.
And a whistler. I rank in the top dozen in The Global Whistling Championships. (Now, can you guess my placement?)
Bennet Zurofsky
Fred Gosbee
Tall, skinny, play 12-string guitar and 14-string guitar, fiddle, Irish flute (not all at once) Sing historic, humorous, and humorous historic songs. I work with Julia Lane, singer, folklorist and harper extraordinaire. We tour Cape Breton to Cape Canaveral; West Virginia to Kosovo. In 2021 we published a songbook of historical sea songs collected in Maine prior to 1943.
Carolann Solebello
CAROLANN SOLEBELLO is a performing songwriter born and bred in New York City. Best known to folk audiences as a founding member of Americana trio Red Molly, she now tours both solo and with modern folk quartet No Fuss and Feathers. Carolann’s smooth, compelling voice and warm acoustic guitar style surely nod to rural folk traditions, yet her decidedly urban sense of rhythm and sophisticated vocal phrasing bend those traditional forms into more contemporary shapes. She is a proud member of the Jack Hardy Songwriters’ Exchange and has won numerous songwriting awards. Carolann released her fifth solo album, Shiver, in February 2018.
Faith Nolan
Faith Nolan singer/songwriter, plays guitar, harp, banjo, ukelele- songs focus on social justice , kids music, LGBTQI- Enviornment-anti racism, anti-capitalism-ani-sexism, anti-homophobia- pro peace , love and joy Heritage – Black-Mi’kmaq-Irish , born in Nova Scotia -have recorded 16 CD’s, original many world languages used in lyrics and lots of blues folk jazz, reggae
FAITH NOLAN
John O’Connor
John O’Connor
In 1983, while living in Seattle, John O’Connor sent a batch of his songs off to Flying Fish Records cold and–almost unheard of in the music business at that time–landed a contract to make an album of his powerful original songs. Songs For Our Times came out in 1984 and was named one of the best albums of the year by the Washington Post and several folk publications and radio stations.
Geoffrey Himes, in his Washington Post review said of John’s songs, “Mister, Slow It Down,” … is the best hitchhiking song since Kris Kristofferson’s “Me and Bobby McGree.” O’Connor’s “Missy and Me” is the best song about old age since John Prine’s “Hello in There.” “A Cold November,” an a cappella ballad about a poor man harassed by a Chicago cop, echoes Woody Guthrie’s hobo songs.
Almost 40 years later, having traveled the country, touring and working as a union organizer, John has gathered a treasure-trove of songs, stories and poems about the working class, war and peace, love and loss. Craig Harris has said, “…O’Connor has shaped his own acute observations of the working class into songs that beg to be sung along to…” Si Kahn calls his songs “wonderful: direct, simple, singable, powerful.” “Songwriting… right out of the same well that slaked Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger,” commented the St. Paul Pioneer Press Dispatch.
John’s music has always been inseparable from his involvement in working class politics. He began his involvement in the labor movement right out of high school when he went to work in the factories of Waterloo, Iowa. His passion for American folk music led to a career as a folk singer and a cultural educator, performing in concerts, festivals, coffeehouses, schools and colleges, union education programs and political action events.
John recorded three albums with Flying Fish, one of them with the political quartet, ‘Shays Rebellion’, and a CD on the Chroma label. He also recorded a CD produced in conjunction with Collector Records called “We Ain’t Gonna Give It Back”, which is regarded by many as one of the best collections of original songs on the American labor movement. The late Joe Glazer said of John, “He writes the best songs about labor you are likely to hear.” Britain’s Southern Rag has said that “John O’Connor deserves to be numbered with the all-time greats of contemporary folk music.”
In 2017 John released his first CD in more than 20 years. Upon release, Rare Songs was ranked for several weeks in the top 50 albums on the US folk charts. John McCutcheon wrote, “John O’Connor’s wonderful new album, Rare Songs… is a welcome return of one of our best and most humane songwriters.”
Some 50 years after walking through the gates of his first factory job, John is still stalwart in his focus of fighting for the working class and inspiring them with his music and their music. John’s songs have been recorded by numerous singers from around the world. In 2009, the French topical singer, Renaud, adapted and recorded O’Connor’s song of deindustrialization, North by North, which went to number one on the French charts.
Also an accomplished poet, John has seen his poems published in dozens of literary magazines. He has won the Associated Writer’s Program’s Prague Prize and has been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize. His book of poems, Half the Truth, won the Violet Reed Haas Poetry Award in 2015.
Tom Rawson
Folksinger/Storyteller/Songleader