2025 Presenters & Performers

Breakin’ Up Winter XXVII

March 7-9, 2025

We are excited to announce that Breakin’ Up Winter will be held at the Cedars of Lebanon State Park on starting Thursday evening, March 6 through Saturday night, Mar. 8, 2025. Checkout of cabins and group lodge will be Sunday, March 9. Registration opens December 1, 2024.

Ready to Have Some Fun? Join Us Mar 7-9, 2025!

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Breakin’ Up Winter XXVIII registration is just around the corner for 2025!

Thanks to all our loyal participants in this great annual event. We continue to hold the event at Cedars of Lebanon State Park, which will mark this as the 28th year at that location. We are thrilled to have great food provided by Wilson County’s own Wildberry Catering. We want you all to enjoy the weekend, have wonderful meals with wonderful company and fellowship! 2025’s lineup looks to be another wonderful one with the Canote Brothers, Jim and Joyce Cauthen, and Hilarie Burhans.

Register early and let’s make this the best Breakin’ Up Winter ever!

We have wonderful performers in our lineup and are looking forward to seeing everyone again! Please check out the bios below to our amazing performers that will be joining us in 2025.

Registration will open december 1, 2024

Camp Closures

2 of the 3 campgrounds at the park are still closed for renovations. Campground #2 is due to be completed by end of October – but that is not guaranteed. Though these sites may not be available, there are ALWAYS plenty of bunk beds available in the group lodge – so take advantage of those. Also, there are several motels, hotels and such just up the road in Lebanon, TN. It’s a quick 6 mile drive to the park from HWY 40 – so consider staying in town as an option.

Performers

The Canote Brothers

Early country music was a simple style with sparse instrumentation. The first commercial country music recordings in 1922 and 1923 by Eck Robertson and Fiddlin’ John Carson were either solo or duo recordings by fiddlers. Duo acts performing old-time country music were common, often featuring the uniquely blended harmony singing of two brothers were a common combination. One of these early acts, the Monroe Brothers, included the future “father of Bluegrass Music,” Bill Monroe. The Delmore Brothers, the McGee Brothers, and the Blue Sky Boys (Bill and Earl Bolick) were other popular brother duets performing and recording country music in the 1930s.

The twin brothers Jere and Greg Canote from Seattle continue that tradition. As they describe their music: “We are proud to think of ourselves as links in the chain of musical brother duets like the Stanley Brothers, the Blue Sky boys, Sam and Kirk Magee or the Everlys. But we are always amazed by the possibilities of a fiddle and a guitar, (and those genetically matched voices). While we have one foot firmly planted in the traditions of American Roots music, we certainly have an ear tuned to the novel and the quirky.”

They have taken advantage of their genetics for as long as they remember; starting as Christmas elves tap dancing their way around the wishing well in the first grade. They have played an important role in the active old-time music scene on the West Coast through a string band class they have been teaching for more than 30 years. And apparently they still have fun with it: “We love the beautiful old fiddle tunes and the hypnotic ‘in the moment’ experience of playing this American Old Time music. We wish everybody could join us!”

Learn more about their documentary

Jim and Joyce Cauthen

Joyce and Jim Cauthen of Birmingham, AL have been active in playing, studying, and preserving old-time fiddle music for the last 45 years. It started when Jim decided to play the fiddle and they could not find a real old-time fiddler to help him learn. Wondering if such music had never flourished in Alabama (as some friends told her), Joyce began researching the subject and quickly found that Alabama had a rich fiddling history. This research turned into her first book With Fiddle and Well-Rosined Bow: The History of Old-Time Music, published by the University of Alabama Press in 1989, and still in print. Immediately after finishing the book, she and Jim began a long series of trips throughout the state with professional equipment to record fiddlers they had met in their research and together produced an LP/CD, Possum Up A Gum Stump: Home, Field and Commercial Recordings of Alabama Fiddlers. A good number of those lived in the northern counties of Alabama and had ties with Tennessee fiddling. While Jim made a living wage as an engineer, Joyce did freelance folklore work before becoming executive director of the Alabama Folklife Association, a statewide organization. In these roles, she produced articles and books about Alabama gospel music, Sacred Harp and Primitive Baptist singing, folksongs collected by Byron Arnold, foodways, quilts and baskets, etc. For 10 years they ran the traditional music stages at festivals in Birmingham and Montgomery. They’ve been members of two old-time string bands, the Red Mountain White Trash (now RM Yellowhammers) and Flying Jenny (now silent). They were founding board members of the Alabama Folk School and have taught at the Swannanoa Gathering, Mars Hill, Festival of American Fiddle tunes, and Augusta Heritage old-time weeks.

Wanting people to have the opportunity to participate in the music as players and dancers, they established a group now called Birmingham FOOTMAD—Friends of Old-Time Music and Dance—which is thriving after 44 years. For 20 years, they have helped nurture Birmingham’s monthly old-time jam. Drawn by the opportunity to hear a talk by the great music scholar Charles Wolfe, they came to their first BUW in 1995 and have attended ever since.

Watch a video of them performing

Hilarie Burhans

Hilarie has been playing and teaching her driving clawhammer banjo style for more than 45 years. She co-founded of the nationally-touring Hotpoint Stringband, with whom she have recorded five albums, and has collaborated on too many other musical projects to count. A track from her solo CD was featured on an episode of the acclaimed HBO series Deadwood. More than 6,000 subscribers enjoy her YouTube banjo channel, and her banjo instructional Patreon has more than 700 paid subscribers. In her younger days, she won the Ohio State Banjo Contest nine times, and placed in the contests at the Appalachian Stringband Festival (Clifftop) a number of times (3rd in Banjo, and First Place in both the Traditional Band and NeoTraditional Band contests.)

Hilarie love teaching banjo, and especially love working with beginners and with folks making the transition from learning note-by-note from an instructor or tablature to learning tunes from recordings or “on the fly” at jams.

She live in Athens, Ohio, and is the lucky wife of a fiddler (Mark Burhans) and also the mother of a fiddler (Ry Burhans.) She grew up in Arizona, Wisconsin, Karachi Pakistan, Massachusetts, Addis Ababa Ethiopia, and then, after 9th grade, moved to the college town Athens in the Appalachian part of Ohio. She feel deeply rooted in Ohio, but has not lost her love for travel, and has drug her banjo to India, Nepal, Australia, Costa Rica, Portugal, England, France and Germany, and has taught banjo workshops in many of those countries.

Learn more about Hilarie here

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.