Musician Profiles

I met Chris through the kind of serendipity + hospitality that has characterized most all of my experience in the oldtime community. Chris was in Germany touring with The Fugitives, a band he's played...

Can you tell me about your path to oldtime? "The first time I heard clawhammer banjo was Leonard Podolack playing on an album by The Duhks, a band from my hometown of Winnipeg, Canada. I’ll never...

Alan Murphy is one of the greats of Midwest fiddling and one who deserves to be known well beyond the region. Born in Sibley, Iowa in 1945 and raised in Iowa City, Murphy came from...

Co-authored by Mark C. Campbell & Rachel Krause Mark C. Campbell is an oldtime musician based in Richmond, Virginia. Mark grew up in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, where folk music and Shape Note hymns...

Although oldtime guitar is arguably one of the most underrated and overlooked instruments in the tradition, Cameron Knowler is quick to point out that strong, engaging back-up is crucial to the “nutrition” of any...

If you want to hear a living master of the different styles of clawhammer banjo that emerged from the Round Peak community, listen to Kevin Fore.   But Kevin doesn't just play banjos: he makes them....

This personal remembrance of Jon Bekoff was written by his friend Ms. Moonshine on the occasion of his death five years ago today and originally published on the blog Old Time Party. At her...

Here's a video I've been dying to get out there. Rachel and Roger very graciously took time at this year's Clifftop to talk about how they got into playing oldtime. Rachel also shared her...

"In a public setting such as the inter-web, reflecting on my past makes me uncomfortable. Away from my home, I am disinclined to give an out-of-context description of what I’ve done, who I’ve been,...

When I heard that Bruce Molsky was going to be playing with Molsky's Mountain Drifters at the 2019 Fire in the Mountain in rural Wales – a wonderful festival I've visited for several years...