Joel Simpson has been a self-employed musician since 2001. Growing up in a musical family, Joel started playing guitar as well as singing/songwriting at a young age. His passion for music led him to earn a music business degree from Elmhurst University, and found Randomosity Records in Downers Grove, Illinois. He splits his time between private instruction, music production, and music performance. Joel is proficient on voice and many string instruments. His production work focuses on folk and jazz. Joel has recorded with Lee Murdock, Ashley & Simpson, The Chancey Brothers and many more.
Bass
Joel Simpson
Sharon Abreu
Sharon Abreu (“Ah-BRAY’oo”)
Sharon Abreu is a singer, songwriter, instrumentalist, teacher, and student of life. She was singing harmony with her family around the dinner table by the age of 3. Sharon grew up with many musical influences, from classical and opera to Broadway to folk, pop and rock, and she enjoys mixing those up in her concerts. She performs as a solo artist and also as half of the acoustic Irthlingz Duo with her partner Michael Hurwicz. She has performed at venues as diverse as the Northwest Folklife Festival, the Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival, and the United Nations.
Sharon was studying classical singing in New York City when she attended a pumpkin festival in the West Village and ended up joining the sponsoring organization, Hudson River Sloop Clearwater. Through her work with Clearwater, she started using her voice and songs for environmental education and ended up singing in concert with legendary folksinger Pete Seeger.
Sharon has sung lead roles in operas including The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni and The Magic Flute. She’s been a soloist in performances of major choral works including Bach’s Magnificat and B Minor Mass and Mozart’s Requiem and Vespers. Sharon starred in a sold-out run of the musical The Taffetas at the Orcas Center and in summer stock at the Ferry Terminal in Bellingham, Washington. Sharon has provided music for major international Earth summits at the United Nations in New York and the World Summit on Sustainable Development in South Africa. And she was honored to sing for Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai in Berkeley, California in 2006.
In 2007, she prepared New York City high school students to perform her climate change musical revue Penguins on Thin Ice for the U.N. Commission on Sustainable Development, receiving a standing ovation from a full auditorium of international delegates.
In 2016, Sharon performed her one-woman musical show The Climate Monologues in the Los Angeles Women’s Theatre Festival, the United Solo Theatre Festival in New York, and for The MarshStream Theatre Festival online in 2021. She received the “Spirit of Nature, Ecology & Society” Environmental Justice Award for her performance of The Climate Monologues, at the Culture of Climate Change Colloquium at the City University of New York in 2011. Sharon composed and recorded the songs for Zero Waste Washington’s public school education program.
Sharon teaches voice, violin and piano, and she has been the vocal coach for musicals including Billy Elliot and Mamma Mia. For 2-1/2 years, she was a Musician-in-Residence with the Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival, bringing music and singing to local preschools. She is featured in Professor Mark Pedelty’s books, Ecomusicology (2012) and A Song to Save the Salish Sea: Environmentalist Musicians in the Pacific Northwest (2016).
Sharon has been a member of the Local 1000 North American Traveling Musicians Union, American Federation of Musicians, AFL-CIO since 1997.
SIRLATOUR
Born and raised in Oklahoma, I started learning guitar at age 12, and teaching and performing at age 16. The guitar has been a wonderful journey throughout my entire life, and I hope that it will never end.
Erin McKeown
Erin McKeown is a musician, writer, and producer known internationally for her prolific disregard of stylistic boundaries. Her brash and clever electric guitar playing is something to see. Her singing voice is truly unique —clear, cool, and collected. Over the last 20 years, she has performed around the world, released 11 full length albums, and written for film, television, and theater, all the while refining her distinctive and challenging mix of American musical forms.
Her first musical, Miss You Like Hell, written with Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Quiara Alegría Hudes, opened Off-Broadway at The Public Theater in 2018. It was nominated for 5 Drama Desk Awards, including Best Lyrics, Best Music and Best Orchestrations, and The Wall Street Journal named it Best Musical of 2018.
Leading her own band, she has performed at Bonnaroo, Glastonbury, and the Newport Folk Festivals. A familiar presence on NPR and the BBC, McKeown’s songs have also appeared in numerous commercials and television shows.
While a student at Brown University, Erin was a resident artist at Providence, RI’s revolutionary community arts organization AS220. A 2011-2012 fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center For Internet & Society, she is also the recipient of a 2016 writing fellowship from The Studios of Key West and a 2018 residency at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. McKeown is currently a 2020-21 Professor of the Practice at Brown University.
Her latest album KISS OFF KISS is out now.
Richard May
Drums, Bass, Guitar, Vocal, basic Piano-Keys (if zero on-the-fly sight reading is needed). Great for last minute work, best if reference recording available. Can be music director to assemble backing group for performance, film, tv, or recording. Can consult for tv, film, to ensure actors can credibly portray musicians. Willing to travel if travel cost covered from Seattle, WA.
Robb Johannes
For over ten years, Robb Johannes fronted the Toronto/Vancouver rock band Paint (www.paintband.com). Over the course of four albums, two feature films, and over 300 performances from Pacific to Atlantic, Paint came to be referred to as “Picture perfect” (102.1 The Edge), “Best live act in the city” (Musica Mas), “One of the top acts of the year” (The Toronto Star), and “Intelligent people making incredible music” (The Examiner), bedazzling audiences with their multisensory stage show while delivering insightful social commentary through their music, art, and relationship with its dedicated fanbase; “rockstars with a sincere change-the-world-with-heart attitude… the next U2?” (Midnight Matinee). Robb is currently expanding the use of his 3 1/2-octave countertenor voice, composition, songwriting, and multi-media skills into a new project that is…. a question of when.
Joe Stanton
Singer/songwriter/fingerstyle Guitarist from the Canadian West Coast.
Joe’s philosophy of “playing wherever they’ll listen” has taken him and his Martin D28, on a 40 year
journey from his favorites haunts in his home on the Canadian Sunshine coast, to a concert in a hot air
balloon over the Swiss Alps, to the Kerrville Folk festival in the hill country of Texas, to the world
fingerpicking championships in Winfield Kansas, and aboard the historic “Canadian” VIA Rail train from
Vancouver to Toronto.
Joe’s acoustic guitar style has been likened to his heroes, Leo Kottke, Chet Atkins, Bruce Cockburn, and
his songwriting has resulted in 5 cd’s, styles ranging from Bluegrass, to contemporary folk, to alt country,
Over the years Joe has performed all over Canada, The U.S. and Europe. Highlights include performing
for the Olympic Torch Relay at the Vancouver Winter Olympics, The Kerrville Folk festival in Texas, as
well as the prestigious Vancouver Island Music festival in 2012.
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
Primary Song Genres:
Culture (language, religion, ethnicity, etc.):
Nadine Landry
Rick Goldin
Hello. When I was a kid being a songwriter seemed like a cool thing to do. Now, 500 songs later the world has really changed, but there’s a lot about the music that’s still the same.
Trying to write songs that have heart is a worthwhile destination. It’s hard to know when you’re there, or if you’ve ever been there, but I’m still trying.
My latest recording for adults is called “Crazy In The Heart”, released in 2019.
I also write and perform music for children, and my most “recent” children’s album, “I Like To Read” (1997) features my most popular song “The Sit Down, Stand Up, Sit Down, Stand Up, Sit Down, Stand Up, Sit Down Song”.
When a new LP record cost $2.49 I had twenty, then thirty, then fifty albums, and I listened to them from start to finish with headphones, late into the night. I read the lyrics on the album covers, I fell in love with the musicians, and I went wherever the songs would take me, again and again, and even now the music still takes me there. I’m still listening.