LAURIE LEWIS
Laurie Lewis has long been a key figure in bluegrass, traditional country, and folk music circles. She was a founding member of the west coast bluegrass group the Good Ol’ Persons in the mid ’70s, and of the Grant Street String Band in the ’80s, a member of the bluegrass all-woman supergroup Blue Rose, and sang in The Bluebirds with Linda Ronstadt and Maria Muldaur. Laurie is highly regarded as a singer (twice voted International Bluegrass Music Association’s “Female Vocalist of the Year”), duet partner (she has recorded wonderful duet albums with fellow Good Ol’ Person Kathy Kallick and long-time bandmate Tom Rozum); and instrumentalist (she is a renowned fiddler, and a solid rhythm guitarist and bassist). Her instinctive feel for the lyric content of bluegrass, country, and folk material is a major reason for her popularity among lovers of traditional repertoire. A dedicated and enthusiastic teacher, Laurie was coordinator of Bluegrass Week at the Augusta Heritage Workshops in Elkins, VW for over ten years, teaching fiddle, vocals, harmony singing, and ensemble playing. She has taught at Centrum Foundation’s Voiceworks and the Festival of American Fiddle Tunes in Port Townsend, WA; Telluride Academy; British Columbia Bluegrass Camp, Wintergrass Academy, Camp HeHoHA in Alberta, Canada; Rocky Grass Academy; and for 15 years, she has been the coordinator and an instructor at Bluegrass At The Beach in Nehalem Bay, OR, and for 25 years at numerous other vocal and harmony singing workshops throughout the US and Canada. www.laurielewis.com.

BRÍAN Ó hAIRT
Brían Ó hAirt’s (Brian Hart) voice stands as a testament to the power of tradition. He became the youngest and first ever American to win the coveted Sgiath Uí Dhálaigh shield at the Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann in Listowel, Co. Kerry in 2002—adding his name to a long list of noted All-Ireland Champion singers including Joe Heaney, Frank Harte, Paddy Berry and his current singing partner, Len Graham. His dedication to traditional song and more specifically to the sean-nós style of singing encouraged him to learn the Irish language to an uncanny fluency, and he has taught Irish Gaelic workshops extensively throughout the US and at Washington University in his hometown of Saint Louis. Brían has performed extensively in North America as a solo and with his band, the Chicago-based Bua, and has sung for the President of Ireland, Dr. Mary McAleese. His recordings have been featured on many radio programs in Ireland including Céilí House on RTÉ, several programs on Raidió na Gaeltachta as well as on various NPR programs here in the States. In 2003, Brían established Sean-nós Milwaukee, the first festival in North America to focus on the sean-nós singing tradition. Brían is likewise a noted instrumentalist on accordion, concertina and whistle and an adept sean-nós dancer. Both Brían and Bua were receipients of Irish Music Association awards in 2010, and they continue to reap accolades from reviewers at home and abroad, from Irish Music Magazine, Dirty Linen, Sing Out!, Irish American News and more.

FIONA RITCHIE
Broadcasting each week for two and a half decades, Fiona Ritchie’s radio program, The Thistle & Shamrock has become one of NPR’s most widely heard and best-loved music programs, with millions of weekly listeners across the US. Born in Greenock, Scotland, Fiona spent her childhood in nearby Gourock, a coastal town on the banks of the busy River Clyde on the country’s west coast. In a household where the strains of the BBC’s Home Service soundtracked her early memories, she developed an appreciation for music and a love of radio. In 1977, she entered the University of Stirling to embark upon a course of study in Scottish and English literature, and was later drawn to psychology as her major area of study. A six-month position in the U.S. as a teaching assistant in the psychology department of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte introduced her to the university’s new NPR member station, WFAE-FM. The earliest version of The Thistle & Shamrock aired on WFAE in 1981, and a year later Fiona was appointed WFAE’s Director of Promotion and Development. In 1983, The Thistle & Shamrock began national distribution, and Ritchie became full-time producer and host of the show in 1986. Four years later, Ritchie moved program production to the musical hub of Edinburgh, Scotland, and later to Perthshire, another landscape steeped in traditional music and a destination for travelling musicians from around the world. Fiona has presented numerous programs for BBC Radio Scotland and BBC Radio 2, and has produced and presented many live concert performances and broadcasts, including a musical event for HRH Prince Charles in 2001 at Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh. She has acted in an advisory capacity for arts organizations in the U.S. and U.K., including the Scottish Advisory Committee for the British Council, the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, and the Smithsonian Institution Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. Her awards include four World Medals from the New York Festivals’ International Competition for Radio Programming, a Flora Macdonald Award from St. Andrew’s Presbyterian College and the Gathering’s own Master Music Maker Award for lifetime achievement. www.thistleradio.com

JULEE GLAUB WEEMS
Julee Glaub Weems, the Coordinator of Traditional Song Week, is a North Carolina native who studied literature and music at Wake Forest University before following her longstanding interest in Irish culture to work with the poor in Dublin. For nearly seven years, she continued her work in Dublin while sitting at the feet of master players and singers, absorbing all she could. She credits the combination of material from older singers and from the Traditional Music Archive, and her experiences in working with poor and working people in Dublin as the major inspirations for her ballad singing. Upon returning home, she became involved in the Irish music scene here in the states and has become recognized as a leading interpreter of Irish songs in America. She lived in the Northeast for seven years in order to be closer to the heartbeat of Irish music in America in the major Irish-American enclaves in Boston and New York, and performed with the band Séad (Brian Conway, Brendan Dolan, and Jerry O’Sullivan) with whom she still performs from time to time, as well as with Pete Sutherland, Dáithí Sproule, and Tony Ellis. Her latest solo release, Blue Waltz, explores her interest in the connections between Irish and Appalachian song and has been featured on Fiona Ritchie’s Thistle and Shamrock. Now based in Durham, NC, she and her husband, Mark Weems, tour as a duo called Little Windows, which blends Irish, Appalachian, and old-time Gospel with a focus on tight harmonies in unaccompanied singing. Julee has been on staff at the Irish Arts Week in N.Y., Alaska Fiddle Camp, Schloss Mittersill Arts Conference in Austria, the Swannanoa Gathering’s Celtic Week, Camp Little Windows and various camps and festivals throughout the US. Julee’s approach to music goes beyond the entertainment aspect of music to focus on the spiritual and emotional wealth that traditional music has to offer to the world. For her, Traditional Song Week is a long awaited dream come true. www.juleeglaub.com

MARK WEEMS
Mark Weems hails from North Carolina and plays guitar, old-time banjo, fiddle, and piano, but is best known as a singer and composer. A well-known figure on the North Carolina traditional country and old-time scene for nearly ten years, he has been singing and studying the nuances of all types of country music for over twenty years as a veteran of the Stillhouse Bottom Band, the Weems-Gerrard Band and his own honky-tonk band, the Cave Dwellers. Sing Out! magazine recently called him “an exceptionally talented interpreter of old-time vocal and instrumental tunes” and “a gifted composer of timeless music.” He now tours internationally with his wife, Julee Glaub, as the duo Little Windows, which creates a mix of Irish, Appalachian, old-time Country and Gospel, and traditionally based originals. Mark’s music has been highlighted on NPR’s The Thistle & Shamrock, and The State of Things, and he has recorded and/or performed with Joe Adams (Johnny Paycheck), Tony Ellis (Bill Monroe), Carl Jones (Norman Blake), Daithi Sproule (Altan), Pete Sutherland (Metamora), and Alice Gerrard (Hazel and Alice). In 2009, he and Julee created the North Carolina School of Traditional Music. Located in Durham, the school facilitates the local dissemination of the Celtic and Appalachian musical traditions of our state by means of private and group lessons, camps, workshops, and a House Concert Series. Mark has taught master classes at the Irish Arts week in New York, at the Alaska Traditional Music Camp, and at his and Julee’s own camp – Camp Little Windows. www.littlewindows.net

SHEILA KAY ADAMS
Ballad singer, banjo player, and storyteller, Sheila comes from a small mountain community in Madison County, North Carolina. 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. She learned the ballads from her relatives, primarily from her great-aunt Dellie Chandler Norton. 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 and been a featured performer in the Southern Arts Federation’s Sisters of the South tour, the National Folk Festival, the North Carolina Folklife Festival, the Kent State Folk Festival, the San Diego Folk Heritage Festival, and the Folkmasters series on National Public Radio. 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. It was released in paperback by Ballantine Books in 2005. www.myspace.com/sheilakayadams

DAVID HOLT
David is a four-time Grammy Award-winning musician, storyteller, historian, and radio and television host. He has been collecting and performing the songs and stories of the Blue Ridge Mountains learned directly from musical greats including Wade Mainer, Tommy Jarrell, Etta Baker, Doc Watson, Grandpa Jones and Roy Acuff. In addition to his numerous critically-acclaimed recordings, David has hosted such popular programs as The Nashville Network’s Fire on the Mountain and American Music Shop. Currently, David hosts both Folkways and Great Scenic Railroad Journeys for PBS as well as Public Radio’s Riverwalk Jazz. David was founder and director of the Appalachian Music Program at Warren Wilson College from 1975-1981, and he performs solo, with Doc Watson, as a duo with Josh Goforth, and with his band, the Lightning Bolts. www.davidholt.com