CHARLIE LOUVIN
Charlie Louvin’s musical career began nearly 70 years ago in rural Alabama where he grew up singing with his older brother Ira. The two were influenced by the Sacred Harp and shape-note singing they heard in church and by the music they heard on the Grand Ole Opry and on the phonograph records on their family Victrola. The brothers were especially drawn to the close harmony singing of the Delmore Brothers, the Monroe Brothers, and the Blue Sky Boys. The Louvin Brothers were primarily a gospel act until 1955, when their first non-gospel song, “When I Stop Dreaming,” made it to No. 8 on the Billboard chart and began a string of country hits for the duo. That same year, the Louvin Brothers joined the Grand Ole Opry giving them even greater exposure as a recording and touring act. In 1963, the brothers decided to go their separate ways, and Charlie’s first solo hit, “I Don’t Love You Anymore” was nominated for a Grammy for Best New Country Artist. Following Ira’s death from an automobile accident in 1965, Charlie went on to score a string of radio hits for Capitol Records. A new appreciation for the music of the Louvin Brothers began to take place among younger artists, including Emmylou Harris, Elvis Costello, and members of alt-country bands like Uncle Tupelo, and a tribute album entitled Livin’, Lovin’, Losing: Songs of the Louvin Brothers, won the Grammy for Best Country Album and Best Country Collaboration With Vocals for a duet featuring Alison Krauss and James Taylor. The Louvin Brothers were inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1979, the Alabama Music Hall of Fame in 1991, and the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2001, but Louvin continues to tour when most artists his age would be happy in retirement. “I played and sang before I got paid to do it” Charlie has been known to say, “and I would continue to play and sing if I didn’t get paid.” www.charlielouvin.com

DÁITHÍ SPROULE
Dáithí Sproule is a native of Derry in the north of Ireland, a renowned traditional singer in both Irish and English, and one of the world’s premier guitarists in the Irish tradition. He’s widely credited with pioneering the use of DADGAD tuning in the accompaniment of Irish music, a style now used around the world. He’s worked with many of the greats in Irish music, and is a member of the famed Donegal group, Altan, as well as the U.S.-based trios, Fingal and Trian. The Rough Guide to Irish Music called him “a seminal figure in Irish music.” Dáithí has also taught Old Irish, Celtic mythology and Irish music at the University of Minnesota, the College of St. Thomas in St. Paul and University College Dublin, and is the author of a volume of short stories in Irish and several academic articles on early Irish poetry and legend. Dáithí currently lives in West Saint Paul, Minnesota. www.daithisproule.com

DON RIGSBY
Don Rigsby comes from a family and community of traditional musicians. He grew up listening to early Ralph Stanley records and to the high lonesome sounds of his cousin, Ricky Skaggs. Proficient on mandolin, guitar, fiddle and dulcimer, he worked his way through Morehead State University playing music with Charlie Sizemore, and emerged onto the national scene as a member of the Bluegrass Cardinals. He’s also played with JD Crowe and the New South and was a member of the award-winning Lonesome River Band. The two-time Grammy nominee and two-time SPBGMA Traditional Male Vocalist of the Year also shared two IBMA Awards while performing with the band Longview, and also appears on a Grammy-winning album by rocker John Fogarty. The first of his three solo albums, A Vision, won the Association of Independent Music’s Gospel Album of the Year award, and “Empty Old Mailbox,” the title track of his third release won SPBGMA’s Song of the Year. He won two more IBMA awards for his role as producer of the Larry Sparks project, 40. Since 2001, Don has been the Director of Morehead State University’s Center for Traditional Music, an innovative program designed to preserve and promote traditional music in all forms, including programs for schools and a minor in Traditional Music at MSU. In this, role Don has taught vocal harmony classes for the Traditional Music minor, and coordinated classes, workshops, concerts, and school tours by new and old stars of traditional music. www.donrigsby.com

JULEE GLAUB
Julee Glaub, 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.” A former UPS driver, 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. He is also a leading proponent of unaccompanied mountain-style singing and his latest solo release, Short Time Here, Long Time Gone explores his interest in traditional North Carolina ballads, particularly those of Dillard Chandler and Doug Wallin. Mark’s music has been highlighted on NPR’s The Thistle & Shamrock, 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). He 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

TIM ERIKSEN
Considered “among the world’s finest folk practitioners” (Toronto Star) for his expertise in traditional song, singing and teaching shape-note music and other American song traditions have been at the heart of Tim Eriksen’s work for over 20 years. He is a founding member of the shape-note quartet, Northampton Harmony, and founder of what is currently the world’s largest Sacred Harp singing convention, in Northampton, MA. In the words of Paste magazine editor Josh Jackson, “no one has done more to help revive Sacred Harp singing among a younger generation.” He has taught hundreds of hour- to week-long workshops and seminars in shape-note harmony singing, American music history and ballad singing at festivals, universities, museums and arts centers, including the Smithsonian Institution, Harvard University, the Society for Ethnomusicology Convention, Colours of Ostrava Festival (Czech Republic), Camp Fasola (Anniston, AL) and the Early Music Festival in Jaroslaw, Poland. Tim made extensive contributions to Anthony Minghella’s Oscar-winning film Cold Mountain, including work on the soundtrack, as well as teaching Nicole Kidman, Elvis Costello and Sting to sing 19th-century American shape-note music and leading a group of forty singers in an Academy Awards ceremony performance. His latest solo album, Northern Roots Live in Námešt, a live album recorded in the Czech Republic, celebrates the power of this music in concert. www.timeriksenmusic.com