BIOGRAPHY “Dirk’s got great subtlety, tremendous feel, and he’s very loose and very modern, in the best sense of the word.” ---T-Bone Burnett Dirk Powell has expanded on the deeply rooted sounds of his Appalachian heritage to become one of the preeminent traditional American musicians of his generation. In addition to acclaimed releases on Rounder Records, he’s recorded and performed with artists such as Loretta Lynn...
Grafting literate, character-driven song craft and Mid-American roots with a post-punk DIY attitude, Chicago-based songwriter, performer and instrumentalist Al Scorch charts a new musical topography with a five-string banjo.
In his new full-length CD release, Tired Ghostly Town, Scorch delivers jubilant anthems and poignant reflections in 10 songs populated with a cast of vibrant characters.
Read more about Al Scorch on Last.fm.
Huddie Ledbetter (23 January 1888-6 December 1949) was a leading American blues singer and guitarist. His songbook contained a large number of standard folk tunes, most adapted from previous sources. Though many of his posthumous releases list him as "Leadbelly," he himself spelled it "Lead Belly." This is also the usage on most of his original records, tombstone, as well as of the Lead Belly Foundation.
Bruce Molsky (b. Manhattan, New York, 1955) is an American fiddler, banjo player, guitarist, and singer. He primarily performs old-time music of the Appalachian region. He was born in 1955 at New York Infirmary in Manhattan, and grew up near St. James Park in The Bronx. His father, Milton, a mechanical engineer, was a first-generation American descendant of Jewish immigrants from Poland. As a young man, Bruce first became interested in blues music, but eventually became absorbed in old-time music while studying engineering at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York beginning in 1972.
Tim O'Brien (b. March 16, 1954 in Wheeling, West Virginia) is an American bluegrass, old time and celtic musician. O'Brien plays guitar, fiddle, mandolin, bouzouki and mandocello and is an accomplished vocalist. He moved to Boulder, Colorado in the 1970s and became part of the music scene there. In 1978 he founded the bluegrass group Hot Rize. Hot Rize had its own offshoot band called Red Knuckles & the Trailblazers.
"The Freight Hoppers high energy performances made a permanent mark on the old-time music scene from the mid to late 90’s. Based in Bryson City , North Carolina , this Rounder Records act topped the bluegrass charts with their first release Where'd You Come From, Where'd You Go. The band took a hiatus when fiddle player David Bass had to have a heart transplant, but that was not before they left lasting impressions on the festival and club circuit along with major media appearances such as A Prairie Home Companion.
Brownbird is an artist based out of NYC who plays what he describes as "acoustic holler blues". While he was strictly a street musician in the past, he is now playing many shows in places from bars, to mexican cathouses. He explodes as a performer and uses the Kazoo in a way that doesn't make him look like an idiot--which is really saying something.
