Musician Profiles

I grew up about as far away geographically from the regions where old-time music originated as you could imagine, but American culture was all around me in my home country of New Zealand, in...

Most every moment playing oldtime is lost to eternity, and that, perhaps, is a great part of its joy. As we sit with friends old and new, we dig into the now, riding the...

"I'm a harmonica player with a focus on pre-war styles of harmonica from old-time, country blues, early blues, and jug band music. I come from a broken line of harmonica players including his grandfather and...

Cameron DeWhitt is a clawhammer banjoist and Old Time musician living in Portland, Oregon. He hosts the weekly podcast Get Up in the Cool: Old Time Music with Cameron DeWhitt and Friends, which features...

Rhona Dalling is a fiddle player and songwriter from Newcastle Upon Tyne. She was early introduced to the folk scene by her musician father: an accordionist, songwriter and performer. With Scottish and Northumbran heritage as...

Tom Turino was a professor of ethnomusicology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from 1987 to 2014. He has been playing old-time banjo since 1974, as well as a number of other instruments...

My first exposure to old-time music was probably when Hobart Smith came to perform at my high school outside of Chicago. Within a few weeks, I had gone down to The Old Town folk school...

At a tender age, Hunter was recognized as a mountain dulcimer whiz. His love and pursuit for Old-Time Music has garnered him several prestigious titles, including five-time WV dulcimer champion, WV banjo champion, as...

"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,...

I began playing mandolin when I was six.  My dad and his brothers had formed a bluegrass band when they were in high school in Ava, Missouri, in the 1950s.   My dad had evidently played...