Phil Jamison

Founding Coordinator of Old-Time Music & Dance Week, Phil is nationally-known as a dance caller, flatfoot dancer, and old-time musician, playing banjo, fiddle, and guitar. Since the 1970s, he has called dances, performed, and taught at music festivals and dance events throughout the U.S. and abroad. He is member of the Green Grass Cloggers and a 2017 inductee to the Blue Ridge Music Hall of Fame. A scholar of Appalachian dance and author of Hoedowns, Reels, and Frolics: Roots and Branches of Southern Appalachian Dance, Phil recently retired from teaching traditional music and dance at Warren Wilson College.

Carl Jones

Carl Jones is a songwriter and multi-instrumentalist born in Macon, Georgia, and living in Hillsville, Virginia. He is widely respected for his instrumental talents and original songs about the joys and tribulations of life in the South. Carl’s songs have been recorded by The Nashville Bluegrass Band, Kate Campbell, Rickie Simpkins with Tony Rice, and others. He was part of the Rising Fawn String Ensemble with James Bryan and Norman and Nancy Blake. Today he tours the globe with wife, fiddler Erynn Marshall. Carl is known for his fine musicianship, sense of humor, songwriting, and charismatic teaching.

Erynn Marshall

Erynn Marshall, coordinator of Swannanoa Old-Time Music & Dance Week, is a fiddler known internationally for her music. She loves to teach tunes from the repertoire of traditional fiddlers she visited over the last 25 years or to sleuth out playing secrets from archival recordings. She has won blue ribbons at Clifftop (the 1st woman to do so) and Mt. Airy fiddlers conventions and performed across Europe, Australia, and China with her multi-instrumentalist/husband, Carl Jones. Erynn has produced several recordings, is featured in 3 books, 5 films and the Women of Old-Time Music exhibit at the Birthplace of Country Music Museum (VA).

Kelley Breiding 

Kelley Breiding is an award-winning musician skilled in clawhammer banjo, fiddle, guitar, and bass. A full-time member of The Crooked Road Ramblers, she hosts The Floyd Radio Show and her own Blue Ridge Opry. Kelley occasionally performs with the NC Sacred Steel legends, The Allen Boys. Since 2017, she has taught old-time fiddle and flatpicking guitar in the Ashe County Junior Appalachian Musicians program. Recognized by the Blue Ridge National Heritage Area and NC Arts Council, she received a Lifetime Achievement Award from Music Maker Relief Foundation in 2023. Kelley has performed nationwide alongside legends and at major folk festivals.

Brian DeMarcus 

Brian DeMarcus began attending fiddler conventions in 1967, and he has been hooked on the music, dance, and culture of the Southern Appalachian Mountains ever since. Starting in 1971, he spent 12 years touring professionally with the Green Grass Cloggers from North Carolina, taking the rich traditional sounds of old-time string band music, dance calling, and Southern Appalachian clogging into venues around the world. He plays in several bands in Alaska, his longtime home, and has been on staff at many music and dance camps around the country..

Laurelyn Dossett 

Singer-songwriter Laurelyn Dossett lives in Stokes County, North Carolina. Her songs have appeared in film and television and have been recorded by many artists including Grammy-winner Levon Helm (“Anna Lee”) and Rhiannon Giddens (“Leaving Eden”). She has written songs for seven professional plays, as well as a folk song cycle for the North Carolina Symphony. Laurelyn teaches songwriting at the UNCG School of Music.

Gordy Hinners

Gordy Hinners, known for his driving fretless banjo style and his masterful flatfooting, has been performing traditional Appalachian music and dance for over 50 years. He spent years touring with the influential Green Grass Cloggers and performed with master fiddler Ralph Blizard for over two decades as a member of the New Southern Ramblers. Gordy has won many awards for both his dancing and banjo playing. He taught at the first Swannanoa Old-Time Week over 30 years ago and still attends every year. Gordy lives in the NC high country with his wife, musician and dancer Rebecca Keeter

Michael Ismerio 

Michael Ismerio is a community organizer who got tangled up with the old-time music scene in Portland, Oregon, in the late 1990s. He had a lot of energy for co-creating things up and down the West Coast and beyond as an organizer, fiddler, and square dance caller. He has fiddled and called dances as far away as China. In 2012, he relocated to Asheville, NC, and turned his energy towards connecting kids and adults with nature and the amazing Appalachian mountains that surround the region

Nadine Landry 

Raised in a musical family on the east coast of Quebec, Nadine Landry has dedicated herself to music for over 20 years, playing oldtime, Cajun, and honky-tonk music. She is equally comfortable on guitar or upright bass, and her deeply passionate and powerful singing has been capturing the hearts of fans everywhere she goes. When she’s not touring with the Foghorn Stringband or as a duo with Sammy Lind, she’s happy at home on the Gaspe Coast in eastern Canada.

Sammy Lind 

Minnesota-born Sammy Lind is widely respected as an old-time musician and instructor. After many years in Portland, Oregon, he co-founded Foghorn Stringband in 2000 with friends who shared his passion for traditional music. Since then, he has traveled the world performing and teaching. His playing shows deep respect for fiddlers and archival recordings that he studied for countless hours, and it carries the drive that comes from years of playing for dancers. After a few years in Whitehorse, Yukon, Sammy settled in eastern Quebec in 2016, living in the village of Pointe-à-la-Croix with his wife and bandmate, Nadine Landry.

Cary Moskovitz 

Cary grew up in Greensboro, NC, in a musical family. He began playing guitar at age 12, joined his first band at 15, and began teaching guitar lessons while still in high school. Cary performs a variety of American string band genres including old-time, blues, country, and swing, and he has won competition ribbons for guitar, banjo, harmonica, and singing. He is the author of How to Play Old-Time Fiddle Tunes on Harmonica. His recordings include a tribute album honoring blues pioneer Papa Charlie Jackson, Old-Time Fiddle Tunes on Harmonica, and two albums of banjo duets with Mark Olitsky

Ben Nelson 

Ben Nelson grew up in a family of old-time musicians in the mountains of southwest Virginia. A passionate educator and community builder, he has worked as an elementary school science instructor, naturalist, traditional music teacher, and square dance caller. Ben has taught music and dance at Warren Wilson College, the Junior Appalachian Musicians program, and traditional music camps throughout the U.S. He was a founding member of the prize-winning string band The Moose Whisperers, and studied traditional music abroad as a Thomas J. Watson Fellow.

Kilby Spencer 

Kilby Spencer, a native of Whitetop, VA, founded the Crooked Road Ramblers in 2001. He was raised in old-time music and influenced by his parents, Thornton and Emily Spencer, who revived the Whitetop Mountain Band in 1975, as well as his cousin Dean Sturgill and uncle Albert Hash. Known for his powerful, rhythmic fiddling, Kilby has won contests across Virginia and North Carolina. Since 2017, he has been the Whitetop Mountain Band’s fiddler while leading the Ramblers. A Field Recorders Collective board member since 2007, Kilby teaches, judges, and performs nationally, preserving Appalachian traditions through recordings and acclaimed festival appearances.