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.
Martha Elenor Maguire is an American musician who is a founding member of both the all-female alternative country band The Chicks that previously went by the name “The Dixie Chicks” and country bluegrass duo Court Yard Hounds. She won awards in national fiddle championships while still a teenager. Maguire is accomplished on several other instruments, including the mandolin, viola, double bass and guitar. She has written and co-written a number of the band's songs, some of which have become chart-topping hits. She also contributes her skills in vocal harmony and backing vocals, as well as orchestrating string arrangements for the band.
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. The genre is considered a precursor to modern country music.
Mark O'Connor is an American fiddle player and composer whose music combines bluegrass, country, jazz and classical. A three-time Grammy Award winner, he has won six Country Music Association Musician Of The Year awards and, was a member of three influential musical ensembles; the David Grisman Quintet, The Dregs, and Strength in Numbers.
Anthony Chabot Regional Park is a regional park in Oakland, Alameda County, California in the United States. It is part of the East Bay Regional Park District system, and covers 5,067 acres (2,051 ha) in the San Leandro Hills adjacent to Oakland, San Leandro and Castro Valley. Popular activities include hiking, cycling and horseback riding. A gun range operated by the Chabot Gun Club was shut down in 2016, following complaints about pollution.
Geoff Bartley is an American acoustic guitarist and singer-songwriter based in Boston, Massachusetts. Since 1994, Bartley has played guitar regularly alongside Tom Paxton.
The Minnesota Bluegrass and Old-Time Music Association (MBOTMA) is a non-profit music organization based out of the U.S. state of Minnesota, founded in 1975. Its mission is to preserve and promote Bluegrass music and Old-Time music in and around Minnesota. The organization presents four annual festivals: Winter Bluegrass Weekend, Homegrown Kickoff, Minnesota Bluegrass & Old-Time Music Festival, and Fall Jam.
The All Good Music Festival and Camp Out was a weekend-long event held annually in July. Since its inception in 1997, it had been held at venues along the Mid-Atlantic, including Trip's Farm Masontown, West Virginia, Brandywine, Maryland and most notably Marvin's Mountaintop. It moved to Legend Valley in Thornville, Ohio in 2012. All Good announced they would be taking a short hiatus in 2014 and not be having a festival. They returned in 2015 in Summit Point, West Virginia. Headlining acts were Primus, moe. and Cake. In 2016, it was announced the festival had been retired and would be replaced by a two-day event at Merriweather Post Pavilion.
Music festivals have a long and chequered history in New Zealand. The first large outdoor rock music festivals were Redwood 70 in 1970 and the Great Ngaruawahia Music Festival in 1973. The largest was the 1979 Nambassa festival, one of several Nambassa festivals held around that time, in Golden Valley, just north of Waihi.
MerleFest is an annual "traditional plus" music festival held in Wilkesboro, North Carolina on the campus of Wilkes Community College. The festival, which is held the last weekend in April, was hosted by Grammy Award winner Doc Watson prior to his death and is named in memory and honor of his son, Eddy Merle Watson, who died in a farm tractor accident in 1985.
Stage 5 is an unofficial stage at the Walnut Valley Festival, an annual bluegrass festival in Winfield, Kansas, United States.
Brenda J. Hunter is an American musician and composer best known as a hammered dulcimer player. She also plays Irish fiddle, Celtic harp, and classical piano, with the latter influence evident in her particular style on the dulcimer and harp. She won the National Championship in 1995 at the Walnut Valley Festival in Winfield, Kansas, receiving as her prize a Masterworks hammered dulcimer built by Russell Cook. She has also played a Rick Thum instrument, and currently uses a Nick Blanton Compact model on stage. She performs and teaches nationally on hammered dulcimer, also performs on solo Celtic harp, plays fiddle and hammered dulcimer with Celtic trio Banshee in the Kitchen, and was previously with Celtic duo Briar Rose.
Robert Bowlin is an American bluegrass and country musician.
The Appalachian String Band Music Festival is a weeklong gathering of thousands of string band musicians and their friends from across the country and around the world, who each year since 1990 have assembled near the New River Gorge in West Virginia in late July/early August to celebrate the evolving tradition of old-time music and the community of people who keep it thriving by preserving and contributing to that tradition.
Spontaneous Combustion was an American music group founded in 1986. They performed what they called "bluerock", a bluegrass/rock music fusion. The band consisted of Roger Eilts, Leo Eilts, Scott Prowell and Marvin Gruenbaum. They were often billed as The Spontaneous Combustion Bluegrass Band or when they performed with former members of Total Strangers as Spontaneous Combustion/Total Strangers. They were a popular act at the Santa Fe Trails Bluegrass Festival and the Walnut Valley Festival. Spontaneous Combustion performed for 21 seasons with the four founding members before disbanding in 2006.
Richard Smith is an English guitarist.
Mike Snider is an American banjo player and humorist. He specialized in "old-time" mountain music which is a stylistic that can be traced back to the core beginnings of country music. He learned to play the banjo at the age of 16. Although he is well known for comedic routine, he is a well respected banjo player. Much of his comedy is based on stories about his wife, Sabrina, referred to as Sweetie.
Joy Kills Sorrow was a Boston-based indie pop, American roots stringband formed in 2005. The band at its last concert in May 2014 consisted of founding member and award-winning flatpicking guitarist Matthew Arcara, vocalist Emma Beaton, Wes Corbett on banjo, Jacob Jolliff on mandolin and Zoe Guigueno on bass.
Matthew Warren Flinner is an American mandolinist, music transcriber, and ensemble leader. Mike Marshall has called him "one of the truly great young mandolinists of our generation."
Jack Lawrence is an American bluegrass guitarist. He was Doc Watson's performing partner since the early 1980s. As major influences, Lawrence cites Doc Watson, Clarence White, and Django Reinhardt.
