Blue Ridge Old Time Music Week 2024

June 9-15 2024

Instructors

  • Rhythm & Repertoire, Banjo Uke, Bowing through Judy’s Eyes

    Judy and Jeff have a deep and abiding love of Southern traditional fiddle music and have taught at many camps, schools, and festivals throughout the U.S. over many decades.

    They’re co-founding members of the alt-folk-rock band, The Horse Flies (www.thehorseflies.com), about whom the New York Times wrote: “The Horse Flies have figured out how to hold a hoedown in a physics lab.” Rolling Stone said, “They churn out swirling, addictive songs, blending tradition with invention.” The Flies toured extensively in the U.S., Canada, and Europe; recorded 7 albums, including some on Rounder Records and MCA; appeared on a number of national radio and television programs (Prairie Home Companion, All Things Considered, Mountain Stage, eTown, MTV); and played a long list of festivals and concert series, including Central Park Summerstage, Telluride, Vancouver Folk, Winnipeg Folk, Festival of American Fiddle Tunes, and the Smithsonian Festival of American Folk Life.

    Judy and Jeff have also created music for over 25 feature and documentary films (www.j2filmmusic.com), including two with The Horse Flies. And, in 2020, they produced Jake Blount’s album, Spider Tales, which received strong reviews from NPR, Rolling Stone, No Depression, Paste, The Guardian, Billboard, and many more.

    Judy’s been featured in Fiddler Magazine, was selected as one of their top 20 fiddlers in 2013, and was commissioned to create a new waltz to celebrate their 25th anniversary in 2019. She’s honored that a number of prominent players have recorded her original tunes (e.g., Jake Blount, Tatiana Hargreaves and Allison de Groot, George Jackson, Rodney Miller, The Moon Shells). She’s toured and recorded with Natalie Merchant several times and appears on two of her albums. She released an album of her original waltzes, Late Last Summer, with her father, pianist Dick Hyman, and she received an Emmy award for one of her documentary film scores. Critics have described her playing as haunting, gorgeous, sepia-tone, stirring, powerful, rousing, playful, impressive, and beautiful. (www.judyhyman.com)

    Jeff plays backup guitar and banjo ukulele, and is a devoted fan of rhythm, groove, and drone. He also writes songs and sings. He’s been written about in Acoustic Guitar magazine and has had his songs and music used by Natalie Merchant, film director Oliver Stone (in Any Given Sunday), MTV’s Rock the Vote, and the film, Buck. In his film scoring work with Judy he both composes and engineers.

  • Advanced Clawhammer Banjo, Advanced Guitar, Ukulele

  • Youth Coordinator! Flatfooting from the Ground Up

    Sophie is a Boston-based musician who draws inspiration from old time fiddling, percussive dance, and jazz improvisation. Raised in Staunton, VA by concert pianist Lynne Mackey and old time musician and dance caller Bill Wellington, her childhood was steeped in shared music and movement. Contra dances, choirs, music festivals and camps shaped her curiosity and inspired her to pursue music professionally. In 2021, after graduating from Berklee College of Music, she recorded and released her debut solo record Roving Jewel. This collection of fiddle tunes, dancing duets, and vocal jazz standards marks a new phase of her musical career. Improvisation is at the heart of her relationship with sound and space. By using this spontaneous element to interpret rhythm, harmony, and melody, she engages the listener – and the music itself – in a conversation.

  • Rhythm & Repertoire, Singing with the Canotes, C Tunes

    Twin brothers Greg and Jere have spent most of their seventy plus years playing and singing together! Raised in California’s central valley and later the Bay Area, they remember tagging along with their parents to folk and square dances. They have played hundreds of dances over the years with caller and square dance icon Sandy Bradley and joined her for thirteen years as her affable singing sidekicks on NPR’s “Sandy Bradley’s Potluck”. They have taught and performed all over the United States at music festivals and instructional camps and have taught an ongoing stringband workshop in their hometown of Seattle for over forty years! Greg plays fiddle, and Jere plays guitar, banjo, harmonica, and ukulele!

    Filmmaker Larry Edelman has just released a full length documentary film “The Canote Twins” and they continue to spread joy and musical fun wherever they go!

  • Singing in the tradition, songwriting

    Vivian Leva was born and raised in Lexington, Virginia by respected old-time musicians James Leva and Carol Elizabeth Jones. She spent all of her summers at regional fiddlers conventions and camps developing her singing, songwriting, and guitar playing from a young age. Since 2016, she has toured across the U.S. with her old time stringband, The Onlies, and has performed across the U.S., Canada, and U.K. with her duo Viv & Riley. She has also released three albums of original music to critical acclaim. Along the way, Vivian has taught at camps across North America including Nimblefingers, The Swannanoa Gathering,The Festival of American Fiddle Tunes, and Big Sur Fiddle Camp. She currently resides in Durham, NC.

  • Mountain Dulcimer, Shape Note Singing

    Margaret Wright became acquainted with the Mountain Dulcimer in 1994 while on a Divinely ordained trip to Mt. View, Arkansas and the McSpadden Dulcimer Shoppe. After meeting Don Pedi in 1995, she embraced Old Time Music and began a continuing quest to play those fiddle and banjo tunes on the dulcimer. Margaret has produced many tablature books and recordings and in 2002, founded the Palestine Old Time Music and Dulcimer Festival with her late husband, Jerry.

  • Mandolin

    In 1973 Bob Buckingham started playing mandolin when he realized that it would be a natural fit for someone who already played guitar and fiddle. He went on to play bluegrass, blues, old time and in jam bands over the years. He has taught mandolin (and many other instruments!) for decades and is perpetually enthralled with the instrument’s potential.

  • Advanced Fiddle, Art for the Untrained Artist

    Howard Rains is an artist, fiddler, singer, and guitar player from Texas now living in Kansas. His two obsessions are music and painting. He is the fourth generation to play on the same fiddle that was made for his great-grandfather and learned to play the guitar from his dad. The New York Times has said, “Rains has established himself as an authority on old Texas-style fiddling.” Howard has learned his music from friends, family, mentors, old recordings and rare manuscripts. As much known for his painting as his fiddling, Howard has focused much of his work on his unique watercolor style.

  • Advanced Fiddle, Grandma’s Cheats

    Tricia Spencer is a Kansas fiddler who grew up on her family’s farm learning the tradition of old-time fiddling knee to knee from her grandpa and grandma, Vernon and Iona Spencer. In her youth, she and her family traveled to fiddler’s conventions throughout the midwest where she learned from master fiddlers like Pete McMahan, Cyril Stinnett, Violet Hensley, Vesta Johnson, Lyman Enloe, Dwight Lamb, Amos Chase and Lucy Pierce. Tricia is known for her unique approach to seconding on the fiddle and is a teacher, artist, composer and multi-instrumentalist.

  • Intermediate Guitar

    While Karen Mueller is best known for her solo work on the autoharp and mountain dulcimer, she also has several decades of professional experience performing and teaching guitar. Her solid, driving rhythm has been featured in old-time, Celtic, French Canadian, and contradance bands based in Kansas and Minnesota, and she is in demand to accompany her fellow performers at festivals around the country. Karen grew up in Winfield, Kansas, home of the acclaimed Walnut Valley Festival, which greatly influenced her involvement in, and love of, traditional music since her teens. She began playing guitar while in high school, and soon started giving lessons at a local music store- and has been teaching ever since. Karen is fluent in melodic fingerpicking and flatpicking as well as rhythm playing, and enjoys teaching students of all levels in whatever styles they choose. One workshop student wrote that “Karen is a skilled, articulate teacher who is both focused and goal oriented. She has the ability to help students achieve a high level of competence in a short time frame.” Karen won the 1986 International Autoharp Championship and was a National Dulcimer finalist in 1985, both at the Walnut Valley Festival. In 2006 she was inducted into the Autoharp Hall of Fame. She has performed and taught at festivals from coast to coast as well as in England, including: the Walnut Valley Festival, Augusta Heritage Center, Swannanoa Gathering, Kentucky Music Week, the Ozark Folk Center, John C. Campbell Folk School, Old Town School of Folk Music, and more. Karen has released six solo recordings and authored three music books, and contributed to numerous anthology recordings. Her website is karenmueller.com.

  • Intermediate Banjo, Old Time Guitar

    Riley Baugus is a North Carolina native, and has been playing banjo since age 11. He learned from many masters of the mountain music tradition, including Kirk Sutphin and Tommy Jarrell. Riley has played banjo and guitar with The Red Hots, the Old Hollow Stringband, Dirk Powell & Tim O’Brian, and released two solo records. His singing was featured in the film Cold Mountain, for which he also built the antebellum-style banjos.

    Riley finds the greatest joy in playing music with friends, and spreading his love of Blue Ridge Mountain music and culture wherever he goes.

  • Early Intermediate Ensemble

    Rachel Eddy is a native of West Virginia who grew up in a musical family steeped in the traditions of Appalachian music and dance. Rachel is known throughout the world as both a dynamic, emotionally powerful performer and an engaging, thoughtful teacher. Rachel’s soulful singing and multi-instrumental finesse—including fiddle, banjo, guitar, and mandolin—may be heard on numerous solo and collaborative recordings as well as at dances and jam sessions, where they are dedicated to fostering community and sharing a love of music with others.

  • Lloyd Wright has been in the old time scene for over 25 years. This native Texan has roots that stretch to Madison County NC, getting his start right here in Mars Hill. Comfortable on dulcimer, fiddle, banjo and guitar, Lloyd Will be teaching the mandolin. His overall knowledge of old time music gives insight to his mandolin playing, and how to make it fit into the old time genre.

    Lloyd puts on The Old Mill Music Festival in Kennard, Texas, where he hosts a wide array of artists every November. He and his wife April and son Elijah are enthusiastic and well-loved performers in East Texas and beyond.

  • Intermediate Fiddle, Wade Ward Banjo

    Riley Calcagno is a fiddle, banjo, and guitar player, originally from Seattle, Washington. He grew up going to fiddle festivals and camps on the west coast, where he soaked up old-time music as he ran amongst jams and learned from older masters of the style. At age 7, he co-founded The Onlies, a stringband that is somehow still playing and performing together. In 2018, the band released a collaborative record with mentors and friends John Herrmann and Meredith McIntosh as the band The Ruglifters. Riley also plays in the duo Viv & Riley with guitar player and singer Vivian Leva. They have released albums of original songs on Free Dirt Records in 2021 and 2023 that were featured by NPR, Rolling Stone, and No Depression. Riley is an experienced teacher and has a passion and patience for passing along tradition and technique. Along with the members of The Onlies, he is a co-artistic director of The Festival of American Fiddle Tunes. He currently resides in Durham, North Carolina.

  • Beginning Bass

    Amy Buckingham says she is living proof that life begins at 40. That’s when she received a fiddle as a birthday present, and nothing has been the same since then. Her deep love and appreciation for old time music also began at 40, and she has never looked back. Amy learned fiddle and banjo from Dwight Diller, Marvin Gaster and her husband, Bob Buckingham. She now teaches bass, fiddle, banjo, guitar and mandolin in JAM programs and privately. Bob and Amy play folk music, blues and old time together as The Blue Ridge Rounders, and Amy sings and plays fiddle, guitar and mandolin in the all-female, old time BattleAxe Band, based in the Upstate of South Carolina. Amy first attended Blue Ridge Old Time Music Week as a student in 1999 and has been on staff as assistant/program director since 2005.