Art Rosenbaum

Not too many Old-Time players reach Grammy status, but a well-deserved one proudly sits on a shelf in Art Rosenbaum’s home. Art’s life has always been focused on creativity and tradition, clearly demonstrated by his knowledge of Old-Time songs, banjo styles and Southern folklore. He is easily one of the most recognized song collectors in Old-Time music today.

In addition to playing and teaching five-string banjo, Art’s massive collection of field recordings are archived at the Library of Congress; in 2008, he won the Grammy for Best Historical Album for his project Art of Field Recording Volume I: Fifty Years of Traditional American Music, also nominated for best album notes. The exquisite boxed set – produced by Art and wife Margo – contains a 96-page book with over 100 illustrations and photographs, plus four CDs with a total of 110 tracks. Art also hosted a weekly 15 minute radio program called Backroads and Banjos for many years, exposing the roots of Old-Time to Atlanta radio.

Art’s music instruction books:

• Folk Visions and Voices: Traditional / 1983
• The Mary Lomax Ballad Book: America’s Great 21st Century Traditional Singer / 2013
• Art Rosenbaum’s Old-Time Banjo Book / 2014
• The Art of the Mountain Banjo / 2015

Outside the traditional music community, however, Art is best known as a painter, muralist, and illustrator. He taught art at the University of Georgia from 1976 to 2006 (the first Wheatley Professor in Fine Arts), where he painted a famous mural in the Russell Special Collections Building on campus featuring faces of political figures from Georgia’s history. In 2003, he was named the recipient of a Governor of Georgia’s Award in the Humanities.

For more information about Art Rosenbaum, visit:

• http://georgiamusic.org/a-conversation-with-art-rosenbaum/
• https://banjonews.com/1997-11/art_rosenbaum_interview.html
• http://artrosenbaum.org/v2/category/radio-shows/
• http://artrosenbaum.org/v2/about/
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_Rosenbaum
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jg6YIjvztU
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttrUkDxCl3s

Be sure to be with us at BUW 24 to jam with Art, attend his workshops and take a look at his books and numerous recordings.

Rachel Eddy

We are about as lucky as Old-Time players can get. Rachel Eddy has said yes to coming back to BUW for a second year! In 2018, one of her fiddle workshops drew over 50 fiddlers; compliments poured in on Event Evaluation forms. So, by popular demand, Rachel is returning. Oh, yeah!

From the hills of West Virginia, Rachel Eddy teaches old-time fiddle, banjo, guitar and bass at major music schools and camps around the world. Rachel has much to offer old-time players of any skill level, and is a knock-out vocalist and performer. She has an exceptionally comprehensive teaching style; fiddlers love her classes.

For more information on Rachel Eddy, visit

• http://www.racheleddymusic.com/
• http://appalachianfolk.weebly.com/rachel-eddy.html
• http://bluegrassmusic.com/content/2014/reviews/rachel-eddy-nothin-corn/

Charlie and Nancy Hartness

The above video gives you an idea of how completely nutty traditional musicians can be; Charlie and Nancy Hartness readily acknowledge that their lot in life is to share Old-Time music with a laugh. The Hartnesses are Old-Time players and teachers from North Georgia. Charlie’s specialties are fiddle, harmonica and ukulele – and songwriting; Nancy accompanies on banjo, guitar or some sort of squeeze-box-accordion-kind-of-instrument. The two are magic together.

Charlie and Nancy have one album, Hawk Proof Rooster: Got A Little Home, and have appeared on two Spencer and Rains recordings as band members: The Old Texas Fiddle Vol. II; Weird Tunes of Old Texas, and The Skeleton Keys.

For more information on Charlie and Nancy Hartness, visit

• http://hawkproofrooster.com/

Jim and Joyce Cauthen

When Joyce Cauthen moved to Alabama from her native Texas in 1971, she and her husband Jim began attending folk festivals and fiddlers’ conventions around the state. Five years later, Jim decided to learn to play Old-Time fiddle. He’s now a popular dance fiddler and Joyce has taken up a variety of accompanying instruments – guitar, dulcimer, bass, and banjo. They have much to offer as teachers and mentors, and share their skills as instructors at the Alabama Folk School and other gatherings.

Joyce became very active in the Old-Time community in Alabama. In order to create an audience for old-time musicians, she learned to call traditional dances and in 1980 she founded the Birmingham Country Dance Society, which now has more than 200 members. She also participates in the Artists in the Schools Program of the Alabama State Council on the Arts, teaching and performing old-time music and dance for children.

Joyce is director emeritus of the Alabama Folklife Association, penned With Fiddle and Well-Rosined Bow: The History of Old-Time Fiddling in Alabama, published in 1989 by the University of Alabama Press. She also produced a related recording, Possum Up a Gum Stump: Home, Field, and Commercial Recordings of Alabama Fiddlers, to accompany it.  In 1999, Joyce edited Benjamin Lloyd’s Hymn Book: A Primitive Baptist Song Tradition and produced an accompanying CD for the Alabama Folklife Association. Other CDs of Alabama-based music she produced include Jesus Hits Like the Atom Bomb: John Alexander’s Sterling Jubilee Singers of Bessemer and Bullfrog Jumped: Children’s Folksongs from the Byron Arnold Collection. She’s also written a book on a prominent Alabama quilter, Out of Whole Cloth: The Life of Bettye Kimbrell.

In 2011 the Alabama State Council on the Arts honored Joyce with a Governor’s Arts Award.

• https://sites.google.com/site/flyingjennysite/

Martin Fisher

Martin Fisher comes to every Breakin’ Up Winter (and other NOTSBA events) to share his passion and expertise in old-time recording technologies. His wax-cylinder recordings are as authentic as it can get, and he’ll show you how those are made and record you in true old-time style.