When Paul Chesterton first heard bluegrass music back in 2003, he fell in love with the banjo. He soon had purchased his first banjo and started teaching himself how to play it. At a local bluegrass festival, he learned the clawhammer style at a workshop. After spending the past couple of years focusing more on that style and writing songs, Paul put together a hard driving, old time string band.
"The Freight Hoppers high energy performances made a permanent mark on the old-time music scene from the mid to late 90’s. Based in Bryson City , North Carolina , this Rounder Records act topped the bluegrass charts with their first release Where'd You Come From, Where'd You Go. The band took a hiatus when fiddle player David Bass had to have a heart transplant, but that was not before they left lasting impressions on the festival and club circuit along with major media appearances such as A Prairie Home Companion.
BIOGRAPHY “Dirk’s got great subtlety, tremendous feel, and he’s very loose and very modern, in the best sense of the word.” ---T-Bone Burnett Dirk Powell has expanded on the deeply rooted sounds of his Appalachian heritage to become one of the preeminent traditional American musicians of his generation. In addition to acclaimed releases on Rounder Records, he’s recorded and performed with artists such as Loretta Lynn...
Producer Lloyd Maines recalls hearing The Stairwell Sisters for the first time: “I happened upon this tribe of women musicians, playing old-time string music, with the power and excitement of a great rock band.” Tribe of women indeed. Evie Ladin explains what holds sway with the sisters, themes similarly found in one of their early influences, Hazel Dickens & Alice Gerrard: “not exactly the sweet and tender ladies, but the stand up for yourself and face the world kind of women.”
Dorsey Dixon and his brother Howard Dixon were 2 amongst 7 total siblings, all poor mill workers by the time they reached their teen years in North & South Carolina. Dorsey Dixon did not start writing his own rural folk songs until age 32, but songs like "Weaver's Life", "Factory Girl", "Babies in the Mill", "The School House Fire" and "Spinning Room Blues" were infused with struggles of the poor workers in the southern textile mills, and were later rediscovered by labor & song historians.
The Carolina Chocolate Drops are a group of young African-American stringband musicians that have come to together to play the rich tradition of fiddle and banjo music in Carolinas’ piedmont. Rhiannon Giddens and Justin Robinson both hail from the green hills of the North Carolina Piedmont while Dom Flemons is native to sunny Arizona. Although we have diverse musical backgrounds, we draw our musical heritage from the foothills of the North and South Carolina.
Cautionhorses is a post-punk band from Brighton,South United Kingdom. http://www.myspace.com/cautionhorses