Guy Davis
Guy Davis is a two-time, back-to-back Grammy nominee for Best Traditional Blues, a musician, Actor, Author, and Songwriter. Guy uses a blend of Roots, Blues, Folk, Rock, Rap, Spoken Word, and World Music to comment on, and address the frustrations of social injustice, touching on historical events, and common life struggles. His background in theater is pronounced through the lyrical storytelling of songs “God’s Gonna Make Things Over” about the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, “Welcome to My World”, and “Got Your Letter In My Pocket”. His storytelling is sometimes painful, deep, and real, an earthy contrast to modern-day commercial music, meant to create thought, underlined by gentle tones from his guitar or banjo fingerpicking.
A self-taught “Renaissance Man”, he first heard the banjo at a summer camp run by John Seeger, the brother of the American Folk Musician, Pete Seeger, and soon after, asked his father for one.
His records, while terse and truthful, are softened by songs like “We All Need More Kindness In This World”, denoting lyrical inspiration from Pete Seeger’s “If I Had A Hammer”, then teased with lyrically strutting works nudged by Hip Hop and Honky Tonk, like “Kokomo Kidd”. The contrast between pieces provides a robust, balanced experience, while giving Guy and his audience a healthy outlet for frustration through song and dance.
When asked about his experience as a performer, Guy has replied, “There is no tale so tall that I cannot tell it, nor song so sweet that I cannot sing it.”
Mary Flower
"a world-class finger-style guitarist and lap slide player.”
-DownBeat
No less an authority than legendary Jefferson Airplane/Hot Tuna guitarist Jorma Kaukonen admiringly described Mary Flower as "a national treasure in your own backyard."
Indeed, the internationally renowned award-winning Portland, Oregon-based singer/guitarist/songwriter is a prodigious talent whose seasoned skills have established her as one of America's foremost roots performers. Flower combines a deep historical knowledge with a restless creativity that keeps her music evolving into new creative territory while echoing influences from Piedmont to the Mississippi Delta, with additional stops at ragtime, swing, folk, and hot jazz.
Midwest native Flower relocated from Denver to the vibrant Portland music scene in 2004. Since then, she's continued to impress crowds and critics at folk festivals in America and abroad, including Merlefest, Waterfront Blues Fest, King Biscuit, A Prairie Home Companion and the Vancouver Folk Festival, while maintaining a parallel career as a renowned guitar teacher. Mary has shared her guitar skills at over 25 guitar “camps” and is about to celebrate 10 years at her own guitar intensive near Portland, Oregon, Blues in the Gorge. Along the way, she's twice been a Finalist in the International Fingerstyle Guitar Championship, as well as being nominated three times for the Blues Foundation's prestigious “Blues Music Award.” Mary is a contributing writer for Acoustic Guitar magazine and has recorded several instructional DVDs for the Homespun label.
Mamie Minch
Mamie’s honest, deep singing voice and old school guitar walloping become a vessel for her toughness and pathos as she delivers timeless performances that can rile, groove, sooth, and understand. If you’ve been lucky enough to see Mamie perform in New York City or somewhere else in the wide world, then you know: there are some things a person is simply meant to do.
These days, you can catch Mamie in her duo with Dean Sharenow (Kill Henry Sugar, Joan Baez) at their residency at Barbes, Brooklyn’s best small club, or solo at Jalopy, NYC’s mainstay of Americana music. Mamie began playing guitar as a teenager in her bedroom listening to reissues of class country blues on repeate. Her job at a local record store gave her first dibs on releases from labels like Yazoo and Document. She would hurry home and try her hand at picking out the songs of legends like Mississippi John Hurt, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Memphis Minnie and Bessie Smith. She loved the steady thumb and percussive right hand of these blues players, but she also devoured lots of different styles of music, from soul to psychobilly and old time to punk rock.
After graduating from art school in non-traditional printmaking techniques, Mamie came to New York City where she fell in with a crowd of 78 record collectors, some of whom had contributed rare recordings to the same reissue labels she loved. It was a mind-expanding time for her and she connected with a crowd who were interested in early American music. Soon, she was playing around the city in small clubs with her first band, Delta Dreambox. She met Meg Reichardt (Les Chauds Lapins, Low Down Payment), another guitarist and singer who could sound like she’d jumped off of an Edison wax cylinder, and they founded the four-piece, all-woman harmony group the Roulette Sisters, who played together for a decade and recorded two full-length albums.
When she’s not making music, Mamie spends her days as a guitar repair luthier at Brooklyn Lutherie, the shop she and her business partner, Chloe Swantner, opened in 2014. It remains one of the few women-owned and -operated shops around. She also teaches, writes articles about luthiery and guitar playing for She Shreds and Acoustic Guitar magazines, and runs the annual Ukulele Building Camp for Girls in Brooklyn, NY.
Kristina Olsen
Kristina Olsen, California USA. A superb multi-instrumentalist as well as an award-winning songwriter with a big bluesy voice, Kristina has audiences around the world coming back for more. Her mix of powerful songs ranging from sassy bottleneck blues to lilting ballads to swing jazz to raunch and roll (as well as her hilarious storytelling) makes for a diverse and satisfying musical experience, on stage and on disc. In 2016 she released her 15th recording, Sweet Stillness. Her songs have been recorded by Eric Bibb, Fairport Convention, Mary Coughlan, Maddy Prior and Mollie O’Brien among others. She has been a session player for Michelle Shocked, Rikki Lee Jones and Mary Coughlan. With a Bachelor’s of Music from Berklee College of Music in guitar and interdisciplinary studies, she loves teaching at music camps and is passionate about unlocking the mysteries of music with her students. Kristina also has released an enhanced ebook with 20 imbedded songs which is also available as an audio book called “They Paid Us In Tub Time”