Arthel Lane "Doc" Watson was an American guitarist, songwriter, and singer of bluegrass, folk, country, blues, and gospel music. He won seven Grammy awards as well as a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. His fingerpicking and flatpicking skills, as well as his knowledge of traditional American music, were highly regarded. Blind from a young age, he performed publicly both in a dance band and solo, as well as for over 15 years with his son, guitarist Merle Watson, until Merle's death in 1985 in an accident on the family farm.
Brian Robert Setzer is an American guitarist, singer, and songwriter. He found widespread success in the early 1980s with the 1950s-style rockabilly group Stray Cats, and returned to the music scene in the early 1990s with his swing revival band, the Brian Setzer Orchestra. In 1987, he made a cameo appearance as Eddie Cochran in the film La Bamba.
Lester William Polsfuss, known as Les Paul, was an American jazz, country, and blues guitarist, songwriter, luthier, and inventor. He was one of the pioneers of the solid-body electric guitar, and his prototype, called the Log, served as inspiration for the Gibson Les Paul. Paul taught himself how to play guitar, and while he is mainly known for jazz and popular music, he had an early career in country music. In the 1950s, he and his wife, singer and guitarist Mary Ford, recorded numerous records, selling millions of copies.
Aaron Thibeaux "T-Bone" Walker was an American blues musician, composer, songwriter and bandleader, who was a pioneer and innovator of the jump blues, West Coast blues, and electric blues sounds. In 2018 Rolling Stone magazine ranked him number 67 on its list of "The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time".
Old-time music is a genre of North American folk music. It developed along with various North American folk dances, such as square dancing, clogging, and buck dancing. It is played on acoustic instruments, generally centering on a combination of fiddle and plucked string instruments, most often the banjo, guitar, and mandolin. Together, they form an ensemble called the string band, which has historically been the most common configuration to play old-time music. The genre is considered a precursor to modern country music.
The Appalachian dulcimer is a fretted string instrument of the zither family, typically with three or four strings, originally played in the Appalachian region of the United States. The body extends the length of the fingerboard, and its fretting is generally diatonic.
Charlie Hunter is an American guitarist, composer, producer and bandleader. First coming to prominence in the early 1990s, Hunter plays custom-made seven- and eight-string guitars on which he simultaneously plays bass lines, chords, and melodies. Critic Sean Westergaard described Hunter's technique as "mind-boggling...he's an agile improviser with an ear for great tone, and always has excellent players alongside him in order to make great music, not to show off." Hunter's technique is rooted in the styles of jazz guitarists Joe Pass and Tuck Andress, two of his biggest influences, who blended bass notes with melody in a way that created the illusion of two guitars.
The Strawbs are an English rock band founded in 1964 as the Strawberry Hill Boys. The band started out as a bluegrass group, but eventually moved on to other styles such as folk rock and progressive rock.
Jean Ruth Ritchie was an American folk singer, songwriter, and Appalachian dulcimer player, called by some the "Mother of Folk". In her youth she learned hundreds of folk songs in the traditional way, many of which were Appalachian variants of centuries old British and Irish songs, including dozens of Child Ballads. In adulthood, she shared these songs with wide audiences, as well as writing some of her own songs using traditional foundations.
The Albion Band, also known as The Albion Country Band, The Albion Dance Band, and The Albion Christmas Band, is a British folk rock band, originally brought together and led by musician Ashley Hutchings. An important grouping in the genre, it has contained or been associated with a large proportion of major English folk performers in its long and fluid history.
Appalachian music is the music of the region of Appalachia in the Eastern United States. Traditional Appalachian music is derived from various influences, including the ballads, hymns and fiddle music of the British Isles, the African music and blues of early African Americans, and to a lesser extent the music of Continental Europe.
John Pearse was a British guitarist, folk singer and music educator, who came to prominence in the 1960s presenting the popular BBC2 television guitar tuition series, Hold Down a Chord.
Sons of Maxwell is a Canadian music duo who perform both traditional Celtic folk music and original compositions with a pop-folk sound. The duo consists of brothers Don Carroll and Dave Carroll, originally from Timmins, Ontario, residing in Halifax, Nova Scotia since 1994. They began singing together while studying at Carleton University in Ottawa under the band name "The Don and Dave Show" in 1989. One recording was released under that name. They re-christened themselves S.O.M. in 1993, in honour of their father.
Phish is a demo album released by the American rock band Phish on cassette in 1986. Often cited as the first Phish "album", The White Tape was originally a collection of original material that the band used as a demo/sample tape for venues, and was sometimes labelled "Phish" or simply "Demo". The album was widely circulated among Phish fans for more than a decade before being officially released in 1998.
Pickin' the Blues is the title of a recording by American folk music artists Doc Watson and Merle Watson, released in 1985. In 2006, it was re-issued on a limited edition, 180 gram all-analog virgin vinyl record from Analogue Productions.
Sittin' Here Pickin' the Blues is the title of a recording by American folk music and country blues artists Doc Watson and Merle Watson, released in 2004. It contains songs taken from albums that Doc and Merle recorded on the Flying Fish label in the 1980s. It contains all the songs from Pickin' the Blues, three from Doc and Merle Watson's Guitar Album, three from Red Rocking Chair and a live version of "Deep River Blues".
"United Breaks Guitars" is a trio of protest songs by Canadian musician Dave Carroll and his band, Sons of Maxwell. It chronicles a real-life experience of how his guitar was broken during a trip on United Airlines in 2008 and the obstructively uncooperative reaction from the airline. The song became an immediate YouTube and iTunes hit upon its release in July 2009 and a public-relations embarrassment for the airline.
The Rolling Stones, an English rock band, have been active since 1962. Originally a counterpoint to The Beatles, the group took influences from the Blues, rock'n'roll and R&B. Most of their recordings feature a core of drums, bass, two guitars and a lead vocal, though there have been numerous variations on this in the studio.
Dovydas Maščinskas, better known as Døvydas, is a Lithuanian-born musician, composer, singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. He was born and raised in Lithuania, and moved to the United States in 2012. He has appeared on national television in Lithuania, such as Lithuania's Got Talent 2009, Ring of Young Talents 2010, Lithuania's Pick for Eurovision 2011, and he was also featured in a book about Lithuanian rock music titled Lietuvos Roko Istorija – written by the national-award-winning Lithuanian author Mindaugas Paleckis.
