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August 2 - 3
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The 8th Annual Sugar Maple Traditional Music Festival is in the works and wecould use your help. The FLTMC board is meeting now to plan the next festival and we need you! The festival is put on soley by volunteers who generously donate their time and right now is the perfect time to join us. Email us to join a committee and help us get the 8th annual fest rolling!
Jim Hurst, two-time IBMA Guitar Player of the Year and former member of the Claire Lynch Band, comes to Madison November 13 for a guitar workshop and house concert at the home of Jim and Nancy Nikora.
Jim’s skill as a vocal and guitar instructor makes him highly sought-after. He teaches at guitar workshops, clinics, and music camps around the country.
“Jim is one of the most under-rated musicians on today’s acoustic scene. He always mines a deep groove and heats things up to a rolling boil. Combining strong country and bluegrass roots, subtle invention, and a big beautiful sound. Jim’s music is consistently fresh and friendly.” ~ Tim O’Brien
For concert information, contact Jim or Nancy Nikora at 608-233-0150, or email nancy [at] blue-note [dot] com. For workshop information, contact Julie Cherney at 608-244-2184 or email cherney [at] uwalumni [dot] com.
The Four Lakes Traditional Music Collective would like to thank everyone for making 2010 the most attended year ever. We officially sold out for the first time in our seven years!
Special thanks to our volunteers who we literally could not do the fest without. Thanks to all the bands for their fantastic performances. Thanks to our sponsors for their kind contributions. Thanks to the park staff for their hospitality. Thanks to our vendors for keeping us fat with food. Thanks to my fellow board members (and über volunteers) for their tireless efforts (which includes putting up with yours truly). And last but certainly not least, thanks to our patrons, who share our love of the music.
Oh, and thanks to the weather gods for their mercy and to the inventors of deet.
Singer-songwriter Tim O’Brien has an uncanny intersection of traditional and contemporary elements in his music, as well as the array of instruments he utilizes, and the diversity of the artists who preform his songs, such as the Dixie Chicks, Nickel Creek, and Seldom Scene. O’Brien, in addition to collaborating with Steve Martin and the Chieftains, among others, has most recently been performing with Mark Knopfler’s band. Knopfler describes O’Brien as “a master of American folk music, Irish music, Scottish music….”
O’Brien’s musical journey began in his native West Virginia, where he was surrounded by classic country and bluegrass, by taking up the guitar and banjo, adding fiddle and mandolin to his repertoire later on. By 1990, after several bands, such as Hot Rize and Ophelia Swing Band, O’Brien established himself as a solo artist and recently released his 13th album, Chicken & Egg. Mixing O’Brien originals, collaborations, and a handful of outside compositions, Chicken & Egg is an illuminating, engaging, and ultimately life-affirming meditation on the art of living. “This stuff reflects what goes on in the life of someone my age,” O’Brien reflects. “I’m 56 years old. I’m not the young kid on the scene – and I’m happy about that. I’m at a strange point in my life: my kids are growing up, while my parents and teachers are passing on. There’s a lot happening – but it’s just life, and that’s what this album is about. There’s a little love song action here and there, but mostly it’s about living life.” O’Brien listens to bluegrass and hears the music’s roots in modal Irish ballads and vintage swing. He insightfully re-examines and reconstructs those styles, and many others, in his own music, throwing off new sparks by reawakening the tension and interplay of the colliding components at the heart of American music. “Over the years,” he explains, “my music has become a certain thing. Each time I go into the studio to make a new album, I could make an Irish record, or a bluegrass record, or a country record…but it seems artificial to sift anything out. I feel like I’d be leaving out something important. In the end, I just try to make it round…” Tim plays two sets at 2pm and 7:30pm on Saturday. He will also take part in the Fiddlers In The Round workshop at 3pm, Saturday.Sugar Maple alumni Chirps Smith and Dot Kent will be back again this year to play and call for the Friday night Old-Time Dance. This year, they will be joined by Tracy Schwarz.
Schwarz first came to love country music from radio broadcasts of the late ’40s, which inspired him to learn the banjo and guitar. While in college, Schwarz also mastered the mandolin and the bass fiddle. He soon began playing in assorted bluegrass bands around Washington, D.C. During the early ’60s, Schwarz enlisted in the Army for two years and during that time learned to play the fiddle. He began working with the New Lost City Ramblers as a replacement for Tom Paley in 1962, and eventually became a full-time member for ten years; his involvement in the band later tapered off as he became more interested in spending time on his Pennsylvania farm. He continued to appear with other bands, most notably the Strange Creek Singers through the 1970s. He continues to perform and explore new areas of traditional music, most notably with Ginny Hawker. Chirps Smith is a veteran of fiddle contests and playing for dances, at which he frequently plays backup to the fiddle on the mandolin and related mandolin family instruments, as well as four and five string banjos. While a part of the band Indian Creek Delta Boys, named after a stream in his native Illinois, Smith earned the nickname “Chirps” due to the “chirping” quality to his mandolin style. Chirps enjoys playing many types of tunes, from hoedowns/reels and waltzes to schottisches, polkas, two-steps, and perhaps one or two mazurkas or hambos. At dances, he is commonly joined by his wife and clog-dancer Dot Kent, also a veteran dance caller.