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...

Like all performers and teaching musicians, Tricia Spencer’s life looks a lot different this year. While she’d typically be in the middle of festival season and travelling to oldtime camps around the country to...

It is a natural human instinct to want to express yourself. To feel that you are heard and will not be forgotten when your time on earth is done. We find many ways to...

"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,...

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...

I once heard a fiddler call John Morgan Salyer “the foremost genius, the Mozart of Old Time”. I can’t really argue with that. Salyer is known for crooked tunes, percussive bowing and a unique...

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...

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...

"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...

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...