SHEILA KAY ADAMS
Ballad singer, banjo player, and storyteller, Sheila comes from a small mountain community in Madison County, NC. For seven generations, her family has maintained the tradition of passing down the English, Scottish and Irish ballads that came over with her ancestors in the late 1700s. A perennial favorite at Asheville’s Mountain Dance and Folk Festival, Sheila has performed and taught at many major festivals and workshops throughout the country. She served as the ballad-singing coach for the feature film, Songcatcher, and her novel, My Old True Love, published in 2004 by Algonquin Books, was a finalist for the Southeastern Booksellers Association’s Book of the Year Award.

RODNEY SUTTON
Rodney prides himself on his ability to share his love of traditional Appalachian step-dancing with everyone – even those who are not sure that they can learn to dance! He is a traditional dancer, caller, musician, storyteller, a veteran of the early days of the Green Grass Cloggers, and co-founder of the Fiddle Puppets (now known as Footworks). Over the years he has traveled all across the US and in the British Isles, performing and teaching clogging, and calling square and contra dances. As a member of North Carolina’s Visiting Artist Program, he taught traditional dance in dozens of schools throughout western NC. He continues to promote and share his love of old-time music and dance by producing the Bluff Mountain Festival the past 15 years for the Madison County Arts Council and by serving on Asheville’s Folk Heritage Committee, which produces Shindig on the Green and the Mountain Music and Dance Festival. Rodney has been instrumental in organizing the Regional Junior Appalachian Musicians (JAM) program into a certified non-profit group that oversees JAM programs here in our mountain communities.

MEREDITH McINTOSH
With a degree in music education and a great love for old-time music, Meredith is known as a patient and enthusiastic teacher. She plays fiddle, guitar, bass, flute and piano. Over the years she has performed with Ida Red, the Heartbeats, Balfa Toujours, The Rockinghams and the New Southern Ramblers. She lives in Asheville, NC where she is a certified massage therapist and teacher of the Alexander Technique.www.myspace.com/newsouthernramblers

CAROL ELIZABETH JONES
Carol Elizabeth Jones has made her mark as a singer of traditional mountain music and as a writer of new songs in the traditional style. As a member of The Wildcats and the Wandering Ramblers, she made memorable recordings that combined well-honed vocals with sharp-edged string band music. She has also recorded with James Leva, Ginny Hawker, Hazel Dickens, and Laurel Bliss. Carol Elizabeth has been a member of the Hopeful Gospel Quartet with Garrison Keillor and Robin and Linda Williams on A Prairie Home Companion. Originally from Berea, Kentucky, she now lives in Lexington, Virginia where she is the Children’s Librarian at the Public Library.

WAYNE ERBSEN
Wayne has been teaching people to play stringed instruments for over forty years. Since his first book, Banjo for the Complete Ignoramus!, Wayne has written twenty-eight instruction and songbooks on Southern Appalachian music, folklore, and humor, and since 1988 he has recorded eighteen solo CDs. In addition to teaching Appalachian music at Warren Wilson College and at the Log Cabin Cooking & Music Center, Wayne runs a publishing company and old-time record label, Native Ground Books & Music. www.nativeground.com

TREVOR & TRAVIS STUART
The Stuart brothers are among the best of western North Carolina’s new generation of old-time musicians. From Bethel, in the shadows of Cold Mountain, Trevor and Travis Stuart learned to play some of the oldest and most beloved tunes of the region, from masters like Byard Ray, the Smathers Family, and Red Wilson. Trevor plays fiddle and Travis plays banjo; together, they teach the next generation of players how to keep the art of traditional music alive through the Junior Appalachian Music Program (JAM, funded by the National Endowment for the Arts). Trevor and Travis Stuart have performed together for over 20 years at dances, concerts, festivals, and music camps. In recent years, they have traveled throughout the US as well as in England, Germany, Ireland, and Russia performing and sharing their style of traditional old-time music and culture. The Stuart brothers have two recordings, and were featured on the NC Arts Council’s “Fiddle and Banjo Tour.” They have toured and performed with Riley Baugus, singer and songwriter Martha Scanlon, and dancer Ira Bernstein, and have taught at numerous workshops including the Festival of American Fiddle Tunes, Augusta, Mars Hill, the Alaska Fiddle Camp, and Sore Fingers in England. www.thestuartbrothers.com

SHARON LEAHY
Sharon Leahy is convinced there is nothing a good session of clogging won’t cure. Believing that it holds the secret to the fountain of youth, Sharon has her shoes and a board always at hand. An experienced dance teacher, award-winning choreographer, artistic director and university artist-in-residence, Sharon considers it a joy and honor to help folks bring out their inner dancer. A three-time National Endowment for the Arts Choreography Fellow, Sharon is also a blue ribbon winner of the traditional dance contests at both the Appalachian String Band Festival at Clifftop, West Virginia and the National Folk Festival in Washington, DC. Sharon has worked with her husband and partner Rick Good for 30 years, creating works for theater, dance halls, and day care centers.

DENISA RULLMOSS
Denisa (“Queen D” to kids everywhere) will once again bring her high-spirited, creative energies to the Swannanoa Gathering. She is a multi-talented and innovative organizer who has managed to retain a child’s viewpoint on the world! Denisa is the Director of the LEAFlet Kids Village at the Lake Eden Arts Festival (LEAF) and the Owner/Director of Owls Nest - After School Care for Francine Delany Charter School. Costume tents, instrument petting zoos, shaving cream play, parachutes, bubbles, squirt guns and a humongous collection of camp songs, are the tools of her trade, as she provides wild & wacky games and activities for families and kids everywhere. Her past accomplishments include creating the Kids Village at LEAF, the newspaper Mothertongue: A Progressive Parenting Source; Panther Paws, a public school newspaper for and by kids (funded by a grant from the Asheville City Schools Foundation), Kindred Kids, the Mothertongue paper for kids, and the newsletter HOME (Homeschooling Opens Minds Everyday). As a kid’s crafts & games specialist Denisa is thrilled to bring her zany songs, awesome crafts and good times to the Gathering for the 18th year, as she teaches and coordinates the Children’s Program during Traditional Song/Fiddle, Celtic and Old-Time Weeks.

GUEST MASTER ARTISTS

BOBBY McMILLON
The youngest recipient of the North Carolina Folk Heritage Award, Bobby McMillon is a walking encyclopedia of all things Appalachian. From his father’s family in Cocke County, TN, he learned Primitive Baptist hymns and traditional stories and ballads. From his mother’s people in Yancy and Mitchell Counties, NC, he heard “booger tales,” “haint tales,” and murder legends. Growing up in Caldwell County, he went to school with relatives of Tom Dula, learned their family stories, and heard ballads, gospel songs, and Carter family recordings. He has performed at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, the A. P. Carter Memorial Festival, and the National Storytelling Festival, and his ballad singing was featured in the film, Songcatcher.

GINNY HAWKER
& TRACY SCHWARZ
Whether in close harmony or soul-stirring solos, Ginny and Tracy know how to create a sound that is authentic to the time and place from which their music springs. Ginny grew up in southern Virginia and has been singing gospel harmony, early bluegrass and the unaccompanied hymns of the Primitive Baptist Church all her life. Tracy has been a traditional music legend for over forty years as a dedicated Cajun musician and as a member of the seminal old-time stringband, The New Lost City Ramblers. Together their singing is strong and energetic and goes straight to the heart of southern Appalachian music and culture. www.ginnyandtracy.com

BENTON FLIPPEN
Born in 1920, and raised in Surry County, North Carolina, Benton started playing two-finger style banjo in his early teens and then fiddle when he was about eighteen. Influenced by local fiddlers Esker Hutchins and Tommy Jarrell, as well as Fiddlin’ Arthur Smith on the radio, Benton developed his own distinctive style which includes unique slides on the fingerboard. Benton and his band, the Smoky Mountain Boys, won numerous ribbons at old-time fiddlers’ conventions from Union Grove to Mt. Airy to Galax throughout the 1970s, 80s, and 90s. Best known for his driving square dance tunes and breakdowns, he continues to play local dances regularly throughout the Mt. Airy region. A recipient of the North Carolina Folk Heritage Award, he has performed at the National Folk Festival, on National Public Radio’s Folkmasters, and at countless music festivals nationwide.

GREEN GRASS CLOGGERS
With feet flying, swirling calico skirts, and high-kicking legs, clogging burst onto the national folk festival scene in the early 1970s, personified by a group from North Carolina known as the Green Grass Cloggers. With respect for the styles and attitudes of older traditional dancers, these young dancers combined the traditions of North Carolina clogging with their own innovations to develop a distinctive style. Since their inception in 1971, they have traveled, performed, and taught their style of clogging throughout the Southeast and beyond. 2011 marks the 40th anniversary of this legendary group, and their influence can be seen at old-time music and dance festivals across the country. Former and current members include Old-Time Week staff, Rodney Sutton, Phil Jamison, Gordy Hinners, and Sharon Leahy. www.greengrasscloggers.org