PHIL JAMISON
Founding coordinator of Old-Time Music & Dance Week, Phil is nationally-known as a dance caller, musician, and flatfoot dancer. For more than thirty years he has been calling dances and performing and teaching at music festivals and dance events throughout the U.S. and overseas, including nearly thirty years as a member of the Green Grass Cloggers. His flatfoot dancing was featured in the film, Songcatcher, for which he also served as Traditional Dance consultant. From 1982 through 2004, he toured and played guitar with Ralph Blizard and the New Southern Ramblers. He also plays fiddle and banjo. He has done extensive research in the area of Appalachian dance, and has published many articles on traditional dance in The Old-Time Herald. Phil teaches mathematics and Appalachian music at Warren Wilson College, where he has also hosted Dare to be Square!, an annual weekend workshop for square dance callers. Last year, Phil became the twelfth recipient of the Gathering’s Master Music Maker Award for lifetime achievement.

BRUCE GREENE
Bruce Greene is best known for preserving and playing the fiddle music of Kentucky. As a young man, he traveled throughout the state collecting and learning from the last generation of traditional fiddlers there, some born as far back as the 1880s. Bruce apprenticed with a number of older fiddlers including Hiram Stamper, the family of John Salyer, Manon Campbell, Gusty Wallace, and Jim Bowles, learning their archaic repertoires and bowing techniques. Since the late 1970s, Bruce has lived in western North Carolina with his family, where he has continued to learn from local traditional musicians. He has taught at Swannanoa, Augusta, the Festival of American Fiddle Tunes, and Mars Hill, and he has been invited as a master fiddler to numerous other events. In addition to fiddling, Bruce has studied banjo with the Helton family of eastern Kentucky, and he sings with his partner, Loy McWhirter. www.brucegreene.net

RAYNA GELLERT
Rayna Gellert grew up listening to old-time music and has been particularly influenced by the fiddling of her father, Dan Gellert. After playing violin in her school orchestras, she took up old-time fiddle in 1994 when she moved to North Carolina to attend Warren Wilson College. Since then, she has earned prizes at the Appalachian String Band Music Festival at Clifftop, WV, and recorded two popular and influential CDs of fiddle tunes: Ways of the World and Starch and Iron with Susie Goehring. Rayna has toured extensively throughout the U.S., Europe, and South America, and she has taught fiddle workshops throughout the country and overseas, including Ashokan, Augusta, Mars Hill, the Festival of American Fiddle Tunes, and Sore Fingers in England. In 2003, she was a featured performer at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. Since 2003, she has toured and performed with the stringband Uncle Earl www.uncleearl.net, with whom she has made two critically-acclaimed recordings for Rounder Records, the most recent, Waterloo Tennessee, produced by John Paul Jones. She has also performed with the dance company, Rhythm in Shoes and the West African-influenced rock band, Toubab Krewe. Rayna recently moved from Asheville to her new home in Lexington, KY. www.rayna.utopiandesign.com

MIKE SEEGER
Mike Seeger has devoted his life to singing and playing southern traditional music and producing documentaries and concert presentations of traditional musicians, singers, and dancers. He sings and plays in a variety of traditional styles on banjo, guitar, fiddle, mandolin, jew’s harp, harmonica, quills, lap dulcimer, autoharp, and a few other supporting instruments. He has toured North America and abroad since 1960 as a soloist or with the vanguard old-time music group, the New Lost City Ramblers. He has produced more than 30 documentary recordings and 45 recordings of his own music for the Smithsonian Folkways, Rounder, Vanguard, Arhoolie, County, Homespun, Bear Family, and other record labels. He has received six Grammy nominations as well as grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Smithsonian Institution, the Rex Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Mike makes his home in Rockbridge County, Virginia, and he is a 2003 recipient of the Gathering’s Master Music Maker Award. www.mikeseeger.info

PAUL KOVAC
Singer, multi-instrumentalist, and scholar of American country music, Paul Kovac has been playing old-time and bluegrass music on guitar, mandolin, and banjo since he was a child. Over the years, he has performed with a long list of musicians, including old-time with Dirk Powell and Rick Good, and bluegrass with Bill Monroe and Hazel Dickens. He has accompanied fiddlers Chubby Wise, Art Stamper, and Vassar Clements, and played dance music with Critton Hollow String Band and the Fiddle Puppets. In 1993, Paul wrote and produced the instructional DVD, Learn to Play Guitar with Roy Clark and Paul Kovac. He has been on staff at numerous music and dance camps, and he coordinated the Bluegrass Week at the Augusta Heritage Center from 1996 to 2007. When not playing music, Paul grows Christmas trees and blueberries and makes maple syrup on his farm in Chardon, Ohio.

JOHN HERRMANN
John has been traveling the world playing old-time music for over thirty years. He plays fiddle with the New Southern Ramblers, but he has performed with many bands including the Henrie Brothers (1st place Galax, 1976), Critton Hollow, the Wandering Ramblers, One-Eyed Dog and the Rockinghams. Equally adept on banjo, fiddle, mandolin, guitar, and bass, he is known as the “Father of Old-Time Music” in Japan(!), and the originator of the ‘slow jam.’ John has been on staff at numerous music camps from coast to coast. He lives in Asheville, NC.

TERRI McMURRAY
Terri McMurray started playing ukulele in her hometown of Madison, Wisconsin when she was about eight years old. Later, she took up guitar and old-time banjo. She moved to North Carolina in 1982 to be near some of the great old-time fiddle and banjo players, and spent a lot of time learning banjo from Tommy Jarrell and Dix Freeman. Terri was a founding member of the Old Hollow String Band (with Kirk Sutphin, Riley Baugus, Wayne Sutphin, and Will McIntyre), and currently plays with Paul Brown and John Schwab in the Mostly Mountain Boys. She has been on staff at many music and dance camps across the US. Terri lives in Winston-Salem, NC, where she teaches physics and chemistry at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts.

JOHN HOLLANDSWORTH
A native of Christiansburg in southwest Virginia, John grew up listening to friends and relatives play stringed instruments, and he developed his own autoharp style incorporating both chromatic and diatonic techniques. John has performed and led workshops at the Mountain Laurel Autoharp Gathering, the Willamette Valley Autoharp Gathering, Sore Fingers Summer School, Augusta, the Campbell Folk School, and elsewhere. John has served as editor of the “Interaction Lesson” feature in Autoharp Quarterly magazine, and in 1991, he became the first champion of the prestigious Mountain Laurel Autoharp Gathering Competition. In his native region, where there are many local fiddlers’ conventions, John is well-known for his autoharp playing. He has been named the “Best All-Around Performer” of the Galax Old Fiddlers’ Convention three times, being the only autoharp player ever to win this recognition. www.blueridgeautoharps.com

GREG & JERE CANOTE
The twins happily return to Swannanoa Gathering with their infectious fiddle tunes, nutty novelty numbers, and enthusiastic attitudes. Greg and Jere have been performing together since childhood: from their first-grade role as Christmas elves tap-dancing around the wishing well, to their thirteen-year stint as the affable sidekicks on National Public Radio’s Sandy Bradley’s Potluck, they have played for concerts, dances and musical events in forty-seven states and a few foreign countries. With guitar, fiddle, harmonica, ukulele, banjo, and genetically matched voices, these guys love to share what they do – and it shows. Fiddle tunes are their first love, but they also sing together in the tradition of the famous brother duets and, with a nod to the Vaudeville days, are always eager to dip into their slapstick bag of tricks. For twenty-five years, they have taught a thriving Seattle string band workshop and have been regular teachers at the Festival of American Fiddle Tunes in Port Townsend, Washington, Pinewoods Camps, Portland Uke Fest and many more. www.canote.com