September 11-13, 2009
Staff Biographies

Danny Barnes was a founding member of the Bad Livers -- an Austin, Texas-based trio who combined elements of bluegrass, hard country and old time music with the energy of punk. During the 90s, the Bad Livers recorded six critically acclaimed albums of predominately original music, most of which was composed by Barnes, and performed over 1,000 shows worldwide. Barnes left his native Texas for the Seattle area in 1997, and has since teamed up with a variety of stellar musicians to record a number of innovative CDs, including Things I Done Wrong, The Willies, and Dirt on the Angel.

Janet Beazley plays banjo and sings with the California band, Chris Stuart & Backcountry. She also co-produced and engineered both CSB band albums as well as solo projects by Chris Stuart and guitarist Eric Uglum. Janet's solo CD, 5 South, is just out on the Backcountry Records label and is the focus of the profile article in the August 2005 issue of Banjo Newsletter. Janet has taught banjo, music theory, and harmony singing classes at the British Columbia Bluegrass Workshop in B.C., Canada, the Northern Bluegrass Circle Music Society Workshop in Edmonton, Alberta, the California Bluegrass Association Music Camp in Grass Valley, CA, and will be teaching at the Midwest Banjo Camp in East Lansing, MI this June. She holds a doctorate in early music performance and when not on the road with the band she teaches at the University of Southern California, University of California at Riverside, and Claremont Graduate University.

Mac Benford has been playing the 5-string banjo for 40 years. He was fortunate enough in his formative years to have direct contact with great players like Wade Ward, Kyle Creed, Tom Ashley, and Roscoe Holcomb, all of whom strongly influenced his playing. He came to prominence during the 70s as a member of the legendary Highwoods String Band. Later on, while performing and recording with the Backwoods Band and the Woodshed Allstars, Mac expanded on the traditional role of the clawhammer banjo as a lead and backup instrument. His recently released Kentucky Favorites showcases his ability to capture the melodic subtlety of complex fiddle tunes without sacrificing the ring and drive of the best traditional playing.

Greg Canote and Jere Canote The Canote Brothers from Seattle, WA, are as renowned for their affable attitudes and humor as they are for their music. Greg on fiddle, and Jere on guitar, and both on banjo ukes, perform zany concerts, play for dances, lead songs, and promote a good time! The twin brothers started singing soon after they were born and haven't closed their mouths since. They spent their early years in California's Sacramento Valley, inventing songs with their father at the piano and tagging along with their parents' folk and square dance group. They honed their skills performing in many bands and discovered old-time music in the mid 1970s. In 1978 they attended the Festival of American Fiddle Tunes in Port Townsend, WA, and eventually became frequent teachers there. After touring the country with dance caller and singer Sandy Bradley for four years, they returned to the Northwest for a thirteen year stint on Seattle's National Public Radio show, "Sandy Bradley's Potluck," as Sandy's affable side-kicks. The rigors of finding new material for a weekly radio show kept the twins on their toes, mining and performing gems of American music of the past as well as writing new songs in those styles.

Pat Cloud was born in Los Angeles, California in 1950 and discovered the five-string banjo by chance at age thirteen. By age sixteen, he was playing professionally and toured with the USO Bob Hope Oriental Command tours of 1967 and 1970. He is included in the 1988 Oak publication, Masters of the Five-String Banjo, in which Tony Trishka says: "He is the first five-string player to achieve a wide-reaching command of the jazz vocabulary, and as such inhabits a rarefied world which he now shares with a select few. To hear him play is amazing, but to watch him elicit those streams of 'boppish' notes from a predominantly bluegrass instrument is other-wordly." Pat Cloud makes his home in the Eastern Sierra region of central California.

Paul Elliott Paul Elliott has been playing fiddle professionally for over 25 years and is at home in a range of styles from old timey to be-bop. Paul has toured and performed with a variety of artists including Michelle Shocked, Buell Neidlinger, The Good Old Persons, and John Reischman. He has recorded extensively for radio, television, and film as well as an impressive list of CDs that includes Scott Nygard's "No Hurry" on the Rounder label.

Deemed a "banjo virtuoso" by the Washington Post, Adam Hurt draws on diverse musical influences from the North Carolina piedmont, the mountains of central West Virginia, the Ohio River Valley, and beyond to create his own elegantly innovative clawhammer banjo playing. At age 24, Adam has already placed in or won most of the major old-time banjo competitions including Clifftop, Mount Airy, and Galax, and won the state banjo championships of Virginia, West Virginia, and Ohio, as well as the state fiddle championships of Virginia and Maryland. A gifted and respected teacher, Adam has conducted banjo workshops at the Swannanoa Gathering, the Augusta Heritage Center, and Appalshop, among other venues around the country.

Bill Keith: A renowned explorer of the frontiers of banjo picking and of the instrument's harmonic potentialities, Bill Keith largely invented the three-finger picking style known as "melodic" banjo. He first came to international attention in the early 60s when he played and recorded with Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys. He co-authored the original Earl Scruggs banjo instruction book and record, and has also written several other banjo instruction books, including the first ones ever published in French and Italian. He has recorded several albums for Rounder, Green Linnet, and Hexagon, and has toured widely throughout North America, Western Europe, Japan, and Australia. He devised and, through the Beacon Banjo Company, still markets the famous tuning pegs that bear his name.

Peter Langston, a strong and imaginative player, plays anything with strings on it (even the banjo!), and is equally adept at backup and hot improvisation. He has played in bands on both the East Coast (Metropolitan Opry, Wretched Refuse) and the West Coast (Puddle City, Entropy Service, Portland Zoo), and has performed with such notables as Doc Watson, Reverend Gary Davis, Tony Trischka, Peter Rowan, Alison Brown, Johnny Gimble, and Mike Seeger. Peter has led a double life as a musician and a computer whiz and has taught audio recording, computer science, and songwriting at the college level. He is a frequent staff member at music and dance camps such as California Coast Music Camp, Sierra Swing, the Festival of American Fiddle Tunes, the Northeast Heritage Music Camp, Camp Bluegrass, Alta Sierra, and the Puget Sound Guitar Workshop.

Brad Leftwich is the author of the Mel Bay book Round Peak Style Clawhammer Banjo. Best known as a fiddler, Brad has in fact been playing banjo longer. He first took it up more than thirty years ago, inspired by his grandfather, a banjo picker from Carroll County, Va., and by his father, a singer and guitar player in the old-time style. Brad has learned much of his music from traditional musicians in the region formed by Surry County, N.C., and Grayson and Carroll Counties, Va., and in particular from Tommy Jarrell and other banjo players from the Round Peak community of Surry County. He was a member of the Plank Road String Band in the mid-seventies, toured with Leftwich & Higginbotham throughout the eighties and nineties, and now performs with Tom Sauber and Alice Gerrard as Tom, Brad, & Alice. Web site

Alan Munde needs no introduction to long-time Bluegrass fans. From his early creative work with Sam Bush in Poor Richard's Almanac to his traditional bluegrass apprenticeship with Jimmy Martin and the Sunny Mountain Boys to his 21-year stint anchoring the landmark Country Gazette, Alan has blazed a trail as one of the most innovative and influential banjo players of all time. Along the way, Alan also recorded and contributed to numerous instrumental recordings, including the 2001 IBMA Instrumental Album of the Year -- "Knee Deep in Bluegrass." Alan has supplemented his recorded work with several instructional publications for the banjo; from 1986-2006 he taught Bluegrass and Country Music at South Plains College in Levelland, Texas.

Cathy Barton Para has been playing banjo for more than thirty-five years in both the clawhammer and two-finger picking styles. She worked with Grandpa and Ramona Jones in their crafts shop and dinner theater in Mountain View, AR in the 1970s and 1980s, and she toured with Ramona Jones for several years. Her banjo repertoire is influenced by Grandpa and Ramona, and by Missouri fiddlers such as the late Taylor McBaine and Pete McMahan. Her musical interests also include early country music, and music from the Civil War and Lewis-and-Clark eras. She and her husband Dave Para tour the United States, Europe and Canada and are best known for performing songs and tunes collected from traditional singers and fiddlers in their home state of Missouri and the Ozarks region. Cathy won the Tennessee State Banjo Championship two times, she appeared on the "Grand Old Opry," and on the television shows "Hee Haw" and "Nashville Now." She and Dave have made ten duet recordings.

Ken Perlman: Perhaps the best-known exponent of the "melodic" clawhammer style, Ken is known where-ever banjos are played as a master of clawhammer technique and an expert teacher of clawhammer mechanics. He has been a Banjo Newsletter columnist for 20 years; he has written several books on clawhammer instruction including the well known works Melodic Clawhammer Banjo and Clawhammer Style Banjo, he has recorded several series of audio and video banjo instruction, and he has taught at well over a dozen music camps including the Festival of American Fiddle Tunes, the Puget Sound Guitar Workshop, Rocky Mountain Fiddle Camp, Common Ground on the Hill, and the Tennessee Banjo Institute.

Laura Smith was born and raised in Hawaii, surrounded by the music of the islands, her Dad's piano and tenor banjo playing, and the rich harmonies of the church choir. She started playing old time banjo in 1973 when she attended the Sweet's Mill Music Camp in California and was introduced to a wide range of live traditional music. She has been playing and singing ever since. Laura sang with Larry Hanks for many years, and together they toured Great Britain. She has taught classes at the Puget Sound Guitar Workshop for 18 summers. Classes have included banjo, guitar, song repertoire, and hula. She has also taught at the Georgia Strait Guitar Workshop. Laura has been a public school teacher for the last 17 years and uses music daily in her classroom.

Mike Stahlman: is a Portland, Ore. banjo player whose playing style was heavily influenced by Earl Scruggs and Alan Munde. Mike has taught bluegrass banjo at Portland Community College in Portland since 1997, and currently plays banjo and tours with the Oregon-based Lee Highway. He also plays with The Loafers. Mike has recorded two banjo instrumental CD's -- "Bluebonnet," and "First Dance."