Artist Category: Acoustic

Davis & Haleigh

Davis Little & Haleigh Black are an acoustic violin/guitar duo from Birmingham, AL. They’ve been quickly gaining recognition for their beautiful and captivating performances that traverse many genres such as jazz, world, and folk.

Nobody’s Business

Nobody’s Business is Hayden Stern (fiddle), Casey Murray (cello), and Helen Kuhar (guitar).

Brooks Forsyth

Hailing from the mountains of North Carolina, Brooks Forsyth is a musician of Appalachia and beyond. He began busking on street corners in his hometown of Boone, NC and has since become a Nashville recording artist. Encompassing a variety of sounds within Americana, he has a large repertoire of original songs, and a versatile guitar style consisting of both flatpicking and fingerpicking techniques.

Throughout the last seventeen years, Brooks has performed solo and with a variation of musical ensembles across the U.S.A. He has played alongside artists such as Doc Watson and Sierra Ferrell, and opened for Ryan Montbleau, Cristina Vane, Town Mountain, and Willi Carlisle. He has also worked with producer Buzz Cason, and film director Nigel Dick. Additionally, Brooks was the lead songwriter, vocalist, and guitarist for the band The Major Sevens.

Roman Barten-Sherman

Roman Barten-Sherman has been playing and singing the blues since the age of four. Her playing draws from the intricate guitar stylings of Blind Blake and Reverend Gary Davis, and the soulful bottleneck slide of Mississippi Fred McDowell and Charley Patton. Roman has studied with blues elders including Honeyboy Edwards, Robert Belfour, Jimmy “Duck” Holmes, Kenny Brown, and Corey Harris.

Roman spent much of 2020 and 2021 at the home of renowned southwest folklorist and musician Big Jim Griffith. During this time, she learned old-time banjo and facilitated the unearthing and digitization of over 60 reel-to-reel tapes of field recordings made by Griffith in the 70’s and 80’s. Additionally, Roman worked with the Field Recorders Collective to release the music of Bill Hensley, a West Virginia banjo player and ballad singer recorded by Griffith in the 70’s.

Prior to COVID-19, Roman performed regularly at prominent Tucson venues, including a six-year stint at Hotel Congress as well as supporting blues legends like The Blind Boys of Alabama, Bobby Rush, and David Bromberg at the Rialto Theatre. Additionally, Roman has performed locally and nationally at blues festivals in Bisbee, AZ, Silver City, NM, Port Townsend, WA, and Clarksdale, MS. In the Summer of 2019, Roman toured France and Belgium. In April of 2022, Roman played at MerleFest in Wilkesboro NC.

Triton

Triton is Jeremiah McLane (accordion, keys, vocals), Tim Cummings (whistles, small pipes, vocals) and Alex Kehler (fiddle, nykelharpa, vocals). From Vermont and Québec, they play a beguiling and orchestral blend of music rooted in the traditional dance repertoire of Northwestern Europe. In addition to songs in French, their repertoire includes bourrées from central France, triple-time hornpipes from the Scottish Borders, Swedish slängpolska, Breton hanter dro, and compelling originals reflecting these influences. Unified by their zeal and musical craftsmanship, their performances are also punctuated with engaging commentary on the music and instruments.

Red Luck Trio

“An t-adh dearg” in Irish, or “the red luck,” is a way of saying you’ve struck a good thing. An acoustic string trio with roots in Irish and American Traditional Music, Red Luck formed in good fortune in 2022. Devon Gardner (fiddle), Moriah Ozberkmen (mandolin), and Ian Alistair (guitar) are based out of Boston, Massachusetts, and can be heard playing energetic arrangements of traditional and original tunes.

Steve Roy

Steve Roy is a multi-instrumentalist from Eliot, Maine, who plays upright bass, mandolin, fiddle, guitar, and ukulele. He performs with Oldhat String Band and, as a sideman, has toured internationally with many of the acoustic world’s top acts, including Laurie Lewis and Tom Rozum, John Reischman and Eli West, Molly Tuttle, Joe K. Walsh, Frank Solivan and Dirty Kitchen, Joy Kills Sorrow, and many others.

Dead to the Core

Dead to the Core: An Acoustic Celebration of the Grateful Dead
Featuring Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers, Jefferson Hamer, Steve Roy, and Wendy Sassafras Ramsay

Dead to the Core is a collective of singer-songwriters and acoustic musicians, led by musician/author Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers, with a shared love of the Grateful Dead. In intimate concerts, the musicians celebrate the band’s music not through note-for-note re-creations but by playing the songs their own way—letting them grow and evolve collaboratively in the true spirit of the Dead.

Interspersed with the music are clips from Rodgers’ own interviews with Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir, in which they reflect on the roots and evolution of the music.

A Dead to the Core show is an experience unlike any other Grateful Dead tribute: a night of deeply personal performances that illuminate the masterful song craft of one of America’s most original bands. Grateful Dead music right down to the core.

“Rodgers doesn’t tap the legion of dedicated Grateful Dead tribute artists for these concerts…. Instead, he seeks out songwriters and musicians who have developed their own voices and styles, though they are very much inspired by—and fans of—Garcia and the Dead.”—Arts Fuse

Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers is a grand prize winner of the John Lennon Songwriting Contest, founding editor of Acoustic Guitar magazine, and author of a best-selling video series teaching his acoustic arrangements of classic Grateful Dead songs.

“Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers sure can play the music—listen to his ‘Stella Blue’ and you’ll know what I mean. Better still, he can teach it.”
—Dennis McNally, author, A Long Strange Trip: The Inside History of the Grateful Dead

Jefferson Hamer is an internationally touring songwriter, guitarist, and traditional musician based in Brooklyn. He performs with the Murphy Beds and Session Americana, and his guitar work and vocals are featured on Sarah Jarosz’s Grammy-nominated Blue Heron Suite. Hamer’s Child Ballads album with Anaïs Mitchell earned a BBC2 Folk Award and was named one of NPR’s top-ten folk releases of the year.

Wendy Sassafras Ramsay, Rodgers’ bandmate and duo partner (as Pepper and Sassafras), is a singer-songwriter and versatile multi-instrumentalist on clarinet, flute, accordion, and guitar. She also plays in the alternative rock band Starting Off Red.

Micah John

Micah A. John is a Boston-based multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, and singer-songwriter. She plays American Roots Music of several types, including Old Time songs and tunes, Bluegrass, Folk, Country, and Americana.

As a 3-year-old, Micah saw Jake Armerding play fiddle at Club Passim and was determined that she was going to learn to play the fiddle someday. She hung on to that desire, and at age 9, after a friend gave her an old student fiddle, she began taking lessons from Bronwyn Keith-Hynes. Across the last 8 years, Micah has been fortunate to study fiddle with several amazing teachers, including Bronwyn, Bobby Britt, and Bruce Molsky. Micah also plays and studies guitar, and she can contribute to a song on mandolin, bass, and clawhammer banjo as well.

Micah was accepted into the Berklee City Music High School Academy as a vocalist, beginning in her freshman year of high school and is now in her third year as a City Music Scholar. Additionally, she received the City Music Scholarship to attend the 2021 Aspire Five-Week Program at Berklee College Of Music, where she studied music theory and string music.

Micah has competed and placed in several competitions. Locally, at the Lowell Banjo & Fiddle Contest she has placed in Twin Fiddle (1st in 2022 with Lillian Chase, and 1st in 2021 with Rosalie Coleman), in Old Time Fiddle (2nd in 2022, and 3rd in 2021), in Bluegrass Fiddle (1st in 2019), and in the Youth Division (Honorable Mention in 2018, and 2nd in 2017). In 2022, at Clifftop, Micah placed 3rd in Youth Fiddle. In 2021, at the virtual Deer Creek Fiddlers Convention Contest, she placed 2nd in the Open Vocal division and 3rd in the Open Bluegrass Fiddle division.

Calum Graham

Born in Fort St. John (BC) Composer Calum Graham has been building a name for himself across the globe for the last 12 years with his passionate solo acoustic guitar prowess and was recently named one of the World’s Top 30 Guitarists under 30 by Acoustic Guitar Magazine. Calum plays the Acoustic, Baritone, and Harp Guitar in his live set and his original melodies embraces elements of folk, world, soul, blues and jazz – all built upon the foundation of the fingerstyle technique.

Graham just recently released his fifth studio album ‘Tabula Rasa’ which was crowd funded by fans across the globe and produced by world renowned Acoustic Guitarist, Antoine Dufour. Adding an extra dimension to his compositions, the album introduces Graham’s soulful vocals to his audience for the first time. The album was released in March 2016 and features a combination of his exemplary instrumental guitar work punctuated throughout with elements of folk, blues, and pop in his vocal songs with guest performances by Antoine Dufour and Bass Guitar Extraordinnaire, Michael Manring.