Please support Kentucky Music Weekend and our performing artists by visiting the Artist Sales Table
and purchasing their books and CDs. Performers are always available for autographs.

Times listed are approximate. Please see Concert Schedule for order of appearance. Enjoy!
 

Though La Grange is a lovely town in Oldham County, there’s little that is rough, rugged or manly about the Barefoot Best Friends. Louisville’s youngest group plays a lively, mostly instrumental strain of the music which reveals its role as a progenitor of Bluegrass music. The all-female members – Christina, Isabelle, Emmaly, Ellie, Lily and Jessie - range in age from 10 to 17.

Friday: Stage 2, 1:00 pm & 2:30pm
Sunday: Stage 2 - 12:45 pm & 3:15 pm

Cathy Barton and Dave Para have created dynamic performances acclaimed for 25 years for their variety and expertise in vocal and instrumental music. They have celebrated the musical traditions and folklife of Missouri and the Ozarks in festivals, clubs, concert halls, schools and studios across the U.S. and Europe. Their audiences are as diverse as their repertoire.

A versatile duo, Dave and Cathy play several stringed instruments including hammered and fretted dulcimers, banjo, guitar and Autoharp, as well as "found" instruments like bones, spoons, mouthbow and leaf. Their concerts present a range of music from the lively dance tunes they have collected in their home region to old ballads to new songs. They have conducted several instrumental workshops as well as those about songs from the Civil War, from American rivers, old gospel songs, children's songs and Christmas music.

Saturday afternoon: Stage 2 - Guitar Styles Workshop (Para), 11:30 am,
                                      Stage 2 - Songs of the Civil War, 3:00 pm
Friday evening: Main Stage
 

evening Rose is a trio of women who share a passion for traditional folk and Celtic music

Sunday: Stage 2, 12:00 Noon

February Sky is a Chicago-based duo who travels the country bringing their unique style of music to coffee houses and Unitarian Churches.  This will not be your typical coffee house music. You will hear incredible music that you will not hear anywhere else, guaranteed.  I have known these folks for many years and have enjoyed every performance.  Susan Urban is a Chicago songwriter, and Phil plays the guitar in an outstanding open tuning style.  Don’t miss this concert.
 

Friday evening: Main Stage
Sunday afternoon: Stage 3, 2:00 pm

Fresh Cut Grass is a Louisville, Kentucky- based bluegrass group made up of guitar, mandolin, banjo, fiddle and upright bass. With one foot planted firmly in the past and the other looking toward the future, Fresh Cut Grass has been entertaining audiences since 1995. The group specializes in hard- driving traditional music, slow pretty ballads and, most of all, gospel (Fresh Cut Grass offers an all- gospel  program for churches). Known for tight vocal harmonies, from solo vocals to rich four-part gospel quartets, these musicians spend many hours getting their harmonies just right.

Friday evening: Main Stage

John Gage is an established folk singer/songwriter who has made a career of entertaining audiences with his resonant tenor voice and flat-picking guitar. His music is solid listening. It draws on the alchemy of ancient balladeers and poets, transporting listeners inwardly for reflection and intimacy with others in the room. John performs on arts and festival stages throughout Kentucky and the region, and in churches, libraries, schools, or anyplace where there might be a potential audience just wanting to sing along. John has extensive experience planning collaboratively with classroom teachers for arts education programs and participating in curriculum planning. In addition, he conducts interactive workshops and motivational speeches throughout the southeast region in an effort to help educators and parents understand how personal involvement with music and other performing arts contribute to improved academic learning and overall personal well being. In addition, John is a veteran stage emcee at major festivals across Kentucky, and is host and emcee of Kentucky Homefront, a radio show that preserves Kentucky’s cultural heritage through storytelling and traditional music. John is available for booking through the Kentucky Theater Project.
 

Gary Gallier has been a cutting-edge innovator on the mountain dulcimer for fifteen years. He pioneered a progressive style of melodic flatpicking that offers improved levels of clarity, speed, dynamic range and creative potential and was the 1987 National Mountain Dulcimer Champion. Gary has taught and performed extensively throughout America's heartland, is a prolific composer of new music for the dulcimer, and has three albums to his credit, all primarily original music. His most recent "On the Wing" has been called a "landmark" dulcimer album. 

David Wilson, guitar, mandolin, fiddle, bass, cello and more, is a founder of the Undergrass Boys, a long running acoustic, fusion jam band and is also a founding member of Radio Flyer, who won the KFC/City of Louisville competition for the best new bluegrass band in 1985 (runner up was 14 year old Alison Krauss with her group Union Station). David has been seen for decades at folk and bluegrass festivals all over the U.S. and Canada. He also appears in the Billy Bob Thornton movie Crystal and is part of the soundtrack.

Friday evening: Main Stage
Saturday afternoon: Main Stage, 3:00 pm

One of the achievements Stephen Hollen is proudest of is the Heritage Award presented to him in 2005 at the Appalachian Festival in Cincinnati, Ohio. He was chosen "Man of the Year" in 2007 and was elected to Who's Who in America in 2000, 2001 and 2003. His poetry - known by him as "ragged verse" has been selected to appear on a number of websites and his poem remembering 9/11 traveled around the world and appeared in German and Russian websites!

Stephen's storytelling blog - http://www.mountainstories.net enjoys huge popularity and has a large following of readers. Thousands of readers stop monthly to read the humorous stories, bittersweet memories and wonderful word pictures written by this talented author and poet.

Saturday afternoon: Stage 3 - Storytelling, 1:00 pm & 2:30 pm
Sunday afternoon: Stage 3 - Storytelling, 12:45 pm & 2:30 pm

Keltricity reunites some of Louisville's best Celtic and Irish musicians who have played together for over 25 years, and joins them with some of Louisville's newest musicians on the scene. Together you're presented with fresh musical perspectives to a respected tradition. We call it Keltricity.

Friday evening: Main Stage
Saturday afternoon: Main Stage, 2:30 pm

EVIE LADIN: "Elegantly tearing it up on the banjo, she puts the whole of her emotional self into her playing and singing...Engagingly vibrant and energetic, through tales of love lost and won, times squandered and treasured and backwoods observations that tantalize the heart and put a sway in head, shoulders, hips and feet. For every song that's sparse and reflective, there's a stomper that would fill the floor anywhere from Cajun country to Celtic country. It's as blissful as, well, floating downstream. Jump in."
--World Music Central

Saturday afternoon: Stage 2, 4:15 pm
Saturday evening: Main Stage
 

Joe LaMay & Sherri Reese were brought together by their mutual life-long love of the traditional American folk and bluegrass musical heritage. Prior to their meeting in 1998, Joe had been performing solo, as a folk musician, and Sherri had been playing and singing bluegrass and old-timey music, with her father and daughter, in their family band, Oswego Falls Bluegrass.

Friday afternoon: Stage 2, 1:45 pm
Saturday afternoon: Stage 2, 10:00 am

Kentucky Standard Band blends the sounds of the fretted dulcimer, hammered dulcimer, and finger-style guitar with three part vocal harmony into a classical music sound.  Although their instrumentation is based in traditional music, KSB is best known for their intricate original tunes and innovative arrangements.

Saturday evening: Main Stage

DAN LANDRUM'S hammered dulcimer playing has taken him from street performing in Chattanooga, TN to Olympic Ceremonies, Presidential Inaugurations, multiple festivals around the country and major stages in hundreds of cities from the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles to New York's famed Madison Square Gardens. Since 2003, he's been a soloist in the Yanni Live tour, which was recently televised as a PBS special. In 2006, Dan and his wife, Angie, took over publication of the internationally distributed Dulcimer Players News magazine, in print since 1974.

Saturday afternoon: Main Stage, 3:30 pm
Saturday evening: Main Stage
Sunday afternoon: Stage 2, 1:15 pm

Anne MacFie is known to acoustic music fans of the Appalachian area as the creator of such quirky songs as "Andy Pruitt's Honda, "Have a Nice Day" and "The Crack Between the Cupboard and the Stove,"  songwriter/balladeer Anne MacFie has enjoyed a folk singer's career that has spanned three decades. She also has an interesting sideline: She edits the BLUEGRASS BULLETIN, a six page monthly newsletter serving the UFO community of Kentucky & southern Indiana/Ohio.

Saturday afternoon: Stage 2 - Songwriters Workshop, 3:30 pm
Saturday evening: Main Stage

One of the premier autoharpists in the world, Adam Miller is a renowned American folksinger and natural-born storyteller. An accomplished folklorist, historian, and song-collector, he has amassed an impressive repertoire of over 5,000 songs. He accompanies his rich, resonant baritone voice with lively fingerpicking acoustic guitar and stunningly beautiful autoharp melodies. In a contemporary musical landscape peopled with singer/songwriters and their often short-lived offerings, his time-honored traditional folksongs and ballads are a breath of fresh air. A masterful entertainer who never fails to get his audience singing along, he has distinguished himself as one of the great interpreters of American folktales and folksongs, and as a performer who appeals to audiences of all ages.

Friday afternoon: Stage 3 - Storytelling, 1:00 pm & Stage 2 - Adam Miller Family Show, 3:15 pm
Saturday afternoon:  Stage 3 - Storytelling, 12:15 pm
Saturday evening: Main Stage
Sunday afternoon: Stage 2,  3:45 pm & Stage 3-Storytelling, 1:15 pm

Ole Man Mac, a new comer in the ancient art of storytelling, brings his yarns to school age, middle age and the young at heart. He has a twinkle in his eye and a mysterious charm that could only come from being blessed by the Storytelling Princess. With his fingers crossed on both hands behind his back he promises to not tell a lie but also to stretch the truth wherever needed in his time with you. He will fill your minds and hearts with gallantry, love and laughter that you will want to take home to your family and friends.

Saturday afternoon:  Stage 3 - Storytelling, 10:00 pm & 2:00 pm
Sunday afternoon: Stage 3 - Storytelling, 12:00 Noon & 3:15 pm
 

Butch Ross was given a mountain dulcimer for his birthday a few years ago, at the time the regionally touring singer/songwriter had no idea of the impact the instrument would have on his career. "I thought it's be cool to have one around the house, but I found myself playing it more and more. It had made music fun for me in a way that I hadn't felt since I first picked up the guitar."

More than "making music fun," this primitive mountain instrument began to open doors for him too. Not long after adopting the dulcimer he met Robert Force a musician, producer, independent label owner and all-around hippy who had once written a best-selling book on the mountain dulcimer. He saw in Butch "a spirit, talent and vision" that he last saw in his own idol; 60's folk-icon Richard Fariña. Almost immediately, he offered to sign him to his Blaine St. Records and produce, for free, his debut CD "the Moonshiner's Atlas."

Saturday evening:  Main Stage
Saturday afternoon:  Stage 2, 3:45 pm

Peter Madcat Ruth is a Grammy Award-winning virtuoso harmonica player based out of Ann Arbor, Michigan. But Madcat doesn't just play blues harp: he also sings and plays ukulele, guitar, high-hat, jaw-harp, penny-whistle, kalimba, banjo and other folk instruments from around the world.

Madcat's repertoire of styles includes Blues, American Roots Music, Folk Music, Jazz, and World Music.

Friday evening: Main Stage
Saturday afternoon: Stage 2, 12:30 pm

Storefront Congregation is a Louisville-based band known for their tight harmonies, fast picking, smooth sounds, and gritty rhythms. They pull inspiration from all types of music. Both standards and original material blend in a unique sound to satisfy any musical appetite.

Saturday evening:  Main Stage
 

The SweetRoots: Michael Grady & Carolyn Rames.

Michael has been a performing singer-songwriter for more than twenty years and has taken the time to discover and develop his own sound. Many years of close listening, attentive playing and sensitive songwriting have brought this performer to the peak of his game.

Carolyn Rames has also been performing for over two decades. Her traditional and contemporary folk style has a bluesy edge that complements Michael’s original songs perfectly. It has been said that Carolyn has a voice that can make one fall in love, and it's true.

Saturday evening:  Main Stage
 

Rick Thum taught himself to play guitar and drums at age twelve and played the trumpet in his high school band. Throughout high school and college (B. S. Industrial Administration) Rick played in rock bands, eventually playing regularly on the upper deck of the Admiral in St. Louis. While raising his family Rick directed his church choir. Rick's interest in traditional music was sparked when he bought a hammered dulcimer on a whim and found himself in a three-piece folk band. In 1991 Rick became co-owner of a large Midwestern acoustic instrument shop. In 1994 he sold his interest in the shop to devote more time to being a traveling musician. He placed first at the 1994 Southwest Regional Dulcimer Contest and third in the 1995 National Championship at Winfield, Kansas. Rick was voted Best Performer and Favorite Teacher for several years running at the prestigious Evart Dulcimer Funfest.

Friday afternoon: Stage 2, 4pm
Friday evening: Main Stage, 7:00 pm
 

Since they began touring in 2000 Wilson and Lewis have shared their music with regional and national audiences at folk concerts, French and Celtic events,  community concert series, historical events and conferences, schools, and colleges.  They are occasionally joined by fiddler Chance Heasty (Denise's son).  The diverse backgrounds and talents of each member contribute to the band's distinctive sound, its ability to play music from many cultural traditions, and to the dynamic and spontaneous character of its live performances. Traveler's Dream has released four CDs which have received positive reviews in SingOut! Magazine and FolkRoots.  The music and lyrics to Lewis' original song "The Essex" was also featured in the fall 2009 issue of SingOut! magazine.

Raised in the heart of the Midwest, Lewis and Wilson feel a deep attachment to the landscape and history of the place they call home.  They have a keen sense of their dual roles as inheritors and purveyors of traditional music and find meaning in making music that preserves the voices and stories of those who came before.  Equally important is writing original songs which tell their own stories, songs which take the beauty, truth, and hardship of everyday living and distill it so that what remains is the raw and deliberate stuff of life.

Saturday evening: Main Stage
Saturday afternoon: Stage 2, 2:00 pm
 

When it comes to old-time music in the Kentuckiana area the band carrying the torch these days is Louisville’s own, Whistlin’ Rufus. Formed in the spring of 2006, this group of young musicians has been tearing on to the music scene with their blend of old-time roots music. The band’s members, Clint Craven and Caleb Olin supply the fiddle and banjo sounds that give this formidable group their driving force. Rounding out the lineup and adding a steady rhythm section for Whistlin’ Rufus are John Dwyer, and Angela Cook. However, not to be pigeon-holed into a single sound, Whistlin’ Rufus also enjoys members that are multi-talented musicians, allowing them to add mandolin, banjo uke, fretless banjo, twin fiddles, and more to their repertoire, and covering everything from duets to trios to full four-piece arrangements. And their youth does nothing to hinder their ability to play a great variety of music. They cover the gamut of American roots music, playing songs from the 1800’s and earlier all the way through music of today and adding some of their own compositions as well. The past year has been a busy one as they burst onto the local music scene including television appearances, radio appearances, and festivals.

Friday evening: Main Stage
 

Contact: Nancy Barker