This
Year's (2001) Guest Artists
 Tom, Brad and Alice: (l to r) Tom Sauber-banjo, mandolin, fiddle; Alice Gerrard-guitar, J. Brad Leftwich-fiddle, banjo |
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Tom Sauber, Brad Leftwich, Alice Gerrard
Tom Sauber, Brad Leftwich, & Alice Gerrard have been friends and musical soul mates for a number of years. Individually, each of them is recognized and respected as powerful musicians whose influence has been felt on a generation of younger musicians, and whose effect on the wider world of traditional music and culture has been far reaching. Although they live in different parts of the country (California and North Carolina), they get together often at fiddlers conventions, teaching camps, or in one another's homes to play and sing their favorite music - traditional old-time and bluegrass music. Their musical interests have wound along similar paths in many ways, leading to deep and committed involvements with traditional music and musicians. Brad, Tom, and Alice all have a strong understanding and appreciation of tradition, and in their own music, have absorbed and synthesized their many influences to create a music and sound that is their own, yet is fully rooted in the music they love. Whether they are playing a banjo or fiddle tune, or singing an old, new, or original song, they bring their combined experience and esthetic to the music which is recognizable at some deep level as music of tradition and of the soul. Their well-received CD, Been There Still is on the Copper Creek label. Their second on Copper Creek, Holly Ding, was released at the end of April 2000.
Personnel:
Tom Sauber has long held a reputation as one of the most influential old-time musicians in the westem U.S. With his travels in recent years, fans farther east are learning why as well: he's a master musician in a variety of styles, a multi-instrumentalist banjo, fiddle, guitar, and mandolin) and singer, well grounded in tradition, with a comprehensive grasp of style and an exceptional ability to teach.
In the 30-plus years Tom has devoted to playing traditional music, the cast of characters with whom he has associated reads like a who's who in old-time, bluegrass, and Cajun music. He is particularly known for his long-time partnerships with Oklahoma fiddler Earl Collins (with whom he recorded the classic LP That's Earl) and Round Peak banjo picker Eddie Lowe, both now deceased.
Many old-time fans have heard Tom's music on his recording with Dirk Powell and John Herrmann, One-Eyed Dog, or through his performances with former Fuzzy Mountain String Band members Blanton Owen and Tom Carter. Bluegrassers may know of his work with Byron Berline, John Hickman, and Alan Munde. He has also performed with cowboy musician Skiporman, and Cajun accordion-ists Joe Simien, Wilfred Latour, and Joel Sonnier. He has even appeared on a recent Weird Al Yankowitz recording.
Tom's contributions to traditional music include hosting a radio show for 12 years on station KPFK in Los Angeles. He holds a masters degree in folklore, and contributed musical analyses to the notes for two land-mark recordings: the anthology of Mississippi fiddle music Great Big Yam Potatoes, and Eck Robertson, Famous Cowboy Fiddler. He is also an exceptional teacher who is in demand at the major traditional music workshops across the country. A native of southern California, Tom has helped bring authentic traditional
music to the film industry. In the late 1970s Ry Cooder and David Lindley recruited him for a role as a musician in The Long Riders. He has also appeared in Bound for Glory Geronimo, and Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman.
Brad Leftwich is known for the purity of his sound and his devotion to tradition, Brad Leftwich has been sharing his love of old-time music with audiences for 30 years. His virtuoso fiddling has been acclaimed by critics in magazines as diverse as Billboard and Bluegrass Unlimited. Brad grew up in Oklahoma, in a family with musical roots in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, and his music reflects the traditions of both those areas.
Brad was a founding member of the Plank Road String Band in the midseventies and toured with his wife, Linda, as Leftwich & Higginbotham throughout the 1980s. Brad and Linda formed the core of the Humdingers in the early 1990s.
Today, Brad is among the foremost old-time musicians of his generation. Record-ings of his music appear on respected independent labels such as Rounder, County, Copper Creek, and Marimac. Known best for his fiddling, he is also an accomplished banjo player and singer.
Brad has won the prestigious fiddle contest at the Appalachian String Band Music Festival in Clifftop, W.Va. His bands have won at Clifftop, placed at the big fiddlers convention in Galax, Va., and performed at venues from the White House to the Philadelphia Folk Festival.
Brad is especially regarded for his ability to teach traditional fiddle and banjo style. He is a frequent staff member at teaching camps such as the Swannanoa Gathering and the Mars Hill Blue Ridge Mountain Music Week in North Carolina, the Augusta Heritage Arts Workshop in Elkins, West Virginia, the Ashokan Fiddle and Dance camp in upstate New York, and the Festival of American Fiddle Tunes in Port Townsend, Washington. His articles on bowing technique have been featured in the Old-Time Herald magazine. He has a book on Round Peak style clawharnmer banjo published by Mel Bay, and two old-time fiddle teaching videos released by Homespun Tapes.
Alice Gerard simply put, is a talent of legendary status. In a career spanning some 40 years, she has known, learned from, and performed with many of the old-time and bluegrass greats, and has in her turn eamed worldwide respect for her own important contributions to the music.
Alice is particularly known for her groundbreaking collaboration with Appalachian singer Hazel Dickens during the 1960s and '70s. The duo produced four classic LPs (recently reissued by Rounder on CD) and influenced scores of young women singerven the Judds acknowledge Hazel and Alice as an important early inspiration Alice's first solo album, Pieces of My Heart, was released on the Copper Creek label in 1995 to critical acclaim in Billboard, Bluegrass Unlimited, New Country, and other publications. This superb recording showcases Alice's many talents: her compelling, eclectic songwriting; her powerful, hard-edged vocals; and her instrumen-tal mastery on rhythm guitar and banjo.
As a musician, Alice has appeared on more than 20 recordings, including projects with many traditional musi-cians such as Tommy Jarrell, Enoch Rutherford, Otis Burns, and Matokie Slaughter; as an expert with in-depth knowledge of mountain music, she has produced or written liner notes for a dozen more. She also co-produced and appeared in two documentary films.
A tireless advocate of traditional music, Alice has won numerous honors, including a Virginia Arts Commission Award, the North Carolina Folklore Society's Tommy Jarrell Award, and an Indy Award. In 1987, Alice founded the Old-Time Music Group, a non-profit organization that oversees publication of the Old-Time Herald. This magazine, which Alice serves as editor-in-chief, provides an important forum for the encouragement and promotion of old-time music.
Woody
Lane : Dance Caller,
Teacher and Percussive Dancer
Woody calls contra, squares, mixers, and circle dances for all levels of dancers, from weddings and community dances to venues for experienced dancers, such as contramanias and weekend dance camps. He generally calls modern contras, although occasional chestnuts are fun, and he enjoy calling smooth, active contras that dancers really enjoy. He can also call good fast squares, and will call one or more in an evening depending on the crowd and the music. His teaching is clear and precise, and he tries to generate excitement and exhilaration on the dance floor.
Woody has called extensively throughout the Pacific Northwest and West Coast and for the past few years has toured across the United States. He has done dances in Denver, Washington DC (Glen Echo), Baltimore, North Carolina (including Brasstown), Georgia, Wisconsin, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky. New York, Anchorage, and many other places around the US and Canada.
Woody used to live in West Virginia, where he was first exposed to the feeling and rhythms of Appalachian music and dance. There, he danced to old-time string music in small community halls in the mountains. he first learned to call in the early 1980's at the Augusta Heritage Workshops in West Virginia and has been calling dances ever since. Woody has lived and called in Madison, WI and Ithaca, NY. He moved to Oregon in 1990. In the past few years, he has expanded his calling to be on staff at dance and music camps, including Fiddle Tunes, Bear Hug (Montana), and Raincoast Ruckus (Vancouver, BC).
Woody Lane is also an accomplished percussive dancer and will usually do some stepdancing when he calls. He began clogging in the late 1970's in West Virginia. He taught clogging in Ithaca and was one of the founding members of the famous "Limberjacks" clogging team in New York in the early I 980s. In Wisconsin, he was on the "Kickapoo Cloggers" and was founding member of the "Barking Frog Cloggers" - an eclectic dance troupe that specialized in unusual formations and rhythms. Over the past ten years in Oregon, his dancing has evolved into a more complex style of flatfooting that adds a rhythmic accompaniment to the music. In the Pacific Northwest, he is well-known for his percussive dance, and will join bands as a percussive element. At festivals and dances, he often teaches percussive dance workshops that include clogging, flatfooting, rhythms, and waltz clog.
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