MATT WATROBA
There are few that can boast a first-name-basis relationship with almost all of the major folk musicians in the North American continent, as well as a comprehensive grasp of the folk music genre both past and present. One who can is teacher, writer and performer, Matt Watroba. His love of folk, roots and traditional music led him to his position as the host of the Folks Like Us program on Detroit Public Radio, a position he has held for over 22 years. In 2007, he partnered with Sing Out! magazine to create the Sing Out! Radio Magazine, an hour long syndicated radio show heard across the country and on XM Satellite Radio. He was awarded “Best Overall Folk Performer” by the Detroit Music Awards for the year 2000, and his long list of credits include the prestigious Ann Arbor Folk Festival, The Old Songs Festival, the New Jersey Folk Weekend, Louisville’s Kentucky Music Weekend, The Fox Valley Festival and hundreds of school and community presentations throughout the Great Lakes Region. He has interviewed and performed with hundreds of performers including Pete Seeger, Odetta, Charlie Louvin, and Jean Ritchie. In addition, Matt’s musical partnership with the Rev. Robert Jones has created one of the most sought-after and unique educational experiences available in the country today. www.folkslikeus.org

REV. ROBERT & BERNICE JONES
Rev. Robert B. Jones has more than twenty years of experience as a performer, musician, storyteller, radio producer/host and music educator. He has opened for and played with some of the finest musicians in the world, including BB King, Bonnie Raitt, Pinetop Perkins, Willie Dixon, John Hammond, Keb Mo’, Jorma Kaukonen, Howard Armstrong, Chris Smither, Guy Davis and many more. Born in Detroit, of a father from West Pointe, Mississippi and a mother from Conecuh County, Alabama, Robert grew up in a very Southern household. By age 17, Robert had already amassed a record collection of early blues and begun to teach himself guitar and harmonica, and by his mid-twenties Robert was hosting an award-winning radio show on WDET-FM, Detroit called Blues From The Lowlands. Influenced by legendary bluesman Willie Dixon, Robert developed an educational program called Blues For Schools, which took him into classrooms all over the country, and for the next 15 years Robert polished his craft as a performer and a music educator. Answering a call to the ministry, Robert began to study under Rev. James Robinson, Sr. at the Sweet Kingdom Missionary Baptist Church in Detroit, and upon Robinson’s death, Robert was called by the church to become its next pastor. It was there he met his future wife, Bernice Jones, a powerful, gifted singer, teacher and motivational speaker. Robert reshaped his Blues For Schools program into American Roots Music In Education (ARMIE), a program that could encompass a wider variety of music including spirituals, gospel and folk songs, and returned to performing in 2006. He also returned to radio as the host and producer of Deep River, a program of spirituals and gospel, which airs Sundays on WDET in Detroit. In the past few years, Bernice and Robert have performed together in a variety of venues and festivals including MerleFest, the National Storytelling Festival, the Just Stories Festival and with actor/performer Jeff Daniels’ Jeff Daniels and Friends. In 2010, Robert and Bernice released their first joint recording entitled, Guitar Evangelists.

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.

CLAUDINE LANGILLE
Claudine is best known for her banjo, mandolin and vocal work with Touchstone, the highly acclaimed Irish-Appalachian fusion band based in Chapel Hill, NC, and featuring the Bothy Band’s Tríona Ní Dhomhnaill. Touchstone recorded two award-winning albums on Green Linnet records, The New Land and Jealousy. Claudine has spent time in Galway, Ireland, Cape Breton and Lunenburg, Nova Scotia learning the local music, and she currently performs with Gypsy Reel, who have recorded six CDs in Claudine’s Mount Hollywood Studio in Vermont and have been recipients of a National Endowment for the Arts award for touring artists. Claudine maintains a musical connection with the traditional music of the maritime provinces of Canada, especially her father’s native Nova Scotia. She has been a guest singer at the Celtic Colours Festival in Cape Breton, and was featured on Brian O’Donovan’s Celtic Sojourns radio show in Boston. Claudine has led workshops at folk festivals in the US, Canada, and England, including the Gathering’s Celtic Week. She founded the Mount Holly Folk Club, a weekly gathering of singers and players in her Vermont community. www.myspace.com/claudinelangille

PETER SIEGEL
Peter Siegel’s “radical roots” music is a melting pot of roots Americana. Raised in the old-time square dance community around the suburbs of NYC, and the scene surrounding the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, Peter has been fusing tradition and pop culture for as long as he’s been playing music. As a kid surrounded by New York jazz and folk, Peter evolved into a swing-playing, traditional song-singing, finger- and flat-picking, mostly un-categorizable performer. Over the years he’s appeared on a dozen or so CDs including three solo recordings of his own. Peter is at once a traditionalist who pushes the boundaries of the folk genre, an interpreter of traditional songs and a masterful songwriter, as well as a regular on the contra, square, and swing dance circuit in western Massachusetts, and southern Vermont. He has toured for the last 15 years sharing the stage with such artists as Pete Seeger, Judy Collins, Peggy Seeger, Jay Unger and Molly Mason, John Cohen, Noel “Paul” Stookey, The Mammals, and Crooked Still. As a teacher in the public schools, Peter has fostered a love of the great traditions of song in a generation of grade school kids and has conducted arrangements of traditional songs from around the world for his kids’ choruses for the last five years. He’s led workshops at dozens of festivals and camps around the country including The John C. Campbell Folk School, Northern Week at Ashokan, and Pinewoods dance music and family weeks. www.petersiegel.com

PETE SUTHERLAND
Raised on a diet of Broadway show tunes, operatic arias and British invasion melodies, native Vermonter Pete Sutherland discovered both traditional music and songwriting in college and like Huck Finn, “lit out for the territories.” An accomplished multi-instrumentalist and singer known equally for his fiery fiddle tunes, potent originals and intense recreations of age-old ballads, his music covers the folk map. Pete has toured nationally and internationally with the likes of Metamora, Rhythm In Shoes, Ira Bernstein and the Clayfoot Strutters, and is also a sought-after record producer. The old-time music of his diverse but always tradition-hugging fiddling life layers all of these influences on top of a groove both rocking and lyrical. www.epactmusic.com

TOM ROZUM
Tom Rozum plays primarily mandolin with the renowned Laurie Lewis and the Right Hands, but is also an accomplished fiddle, mandola, and guitar player, whose style encompasses bluegrass, folk, swing, country and rock. His rhythmic approach to mandolin especially punctuates the band’s repertoire, adding a verve and excitement to their on-stage shows, which has become a distinctive feature of their performances. Having played mandolin for 36 years, Tom has been recording and touring internationally for the past 25, with frequent appearances on the Grand Ole Opry and A Praire Home Companion. He is featured on over fifteen of Laurie’s recordings, including the most famous of their duet collaborations, The Oak and the Laurel which was a Grammy nominee for “Best Traditional Folk Album. www.tomrozum.com