2008 Performers

John McCutcheon will be our Friday night headline concert performer, at Valhalla in the Cartwright Center on the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse campus. John McCutcheon has emerged as one of our most respected and loved folksingers. As an instrumentalist, he is a master of a dozen different traditional instruments, most notably the rare and beautiful hammer dulcimer. His songwriting has been hailed by critics and singers around the globe. John's original songs include "Water from Another Time" and the unforgettable "Christmas in the Trenches." His thirty recordings have garnered every imaginable honor including seven Grammy nominations. His books and instructional materials have introduced budding players to the joys of their own musicality. And his commitment to grassroots political organizations has put him on the front lines of many of the issues important to communities and workers.

Johnsmith is a past winner of the New Folk competition at the Kerrville Folk Festival, and has taught songwriting there, as well as the Swannanoa Gathering, the Rocky Mountain Folks Festival, and the Big Sur CA Esalen Institute. He was recently featured on the elite “New Dimensions” program on NPR. Over two decades of performing festivals, concert halls, coffeehouses, colleges, and house concerts, along with a half dozen acclaimed CDs, Johnsmith has built a solid fan base in the US and abroad.

Becky Schlegel Becky Schlegel’s professional music career started in her teens. By the late 1990s, she had entered the bluegrass scene and begun writing. Her first solo release, 2002’s Red Leaf, added a contemporary flair to her bluegrassy sound and was named “Bluegrass Recording of the Year” by the Minnesota Music Academy. In the years since, Becky has released another award-winning record and performed scores of shows—including several appearances on Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion.  Her first national release, For All The World To See is scheduled to hit stores on June 17, 2008, and is already drawing rave reviews.

Ellis is a rising star in the independent music scene. With her joyful, unpretentious acoustic folk rock style, this Minneapolis-based singer-songwriter has been steadily building a national following and has independently sold more than thirty thousand copies of her previous five CDs. Touring more than 150 dates each year, Ellis has accrued a wealth of accomplishments including multiple “Best Musician” titles in Minneapolis and national songwriting honors, but even more outstanding is her sincere graciousness and ability to remain down to earth while her career is riding high.

Andy Cohen, anthropologist and player of the dolceola and guitar. The dolceola is a sixty-string, seven-chord zither with a piano keyboard. Cohen specializes in the Reverend Gary Davis guitar style, and will demonstrate ragtime, boogie-woogie, blues, fiddle tunes, and gospel songs on both instruments.

Matt Wattroba brings a very special set of talents to the stage whenever he appears as a folk musician. His excellent guitar playing, mellow voice, friendship with his audience, and knowledge of his presentations is impressive. Add to that Matt’s own special brand of humor and you are in for a most entertaining and enlightening evening. His love of folk music has led him to his position of "Folks Like Us" radio host, a position he held for over 20 years on WDET-FM. He was awarded "Best Overall Folk Performer" by the Detroit Music Awards for the year 2000.

The Mill City Grinders play traditional American string band music on banjo, fiddle and guitar. Most of their music is from the 1920's and 1930's, the heyday of old-time music. They focus on midwestern and traditional southern Appalachian fiddle tunes and songs.

Dennis Stroughmatt et L'Esprit Creole - Dennis is a featured speaker on the Missouri Humanities Council "Program Bureau," and a touring master artist on the Mid-America Arts Alliance Artist Tour and Illinois Artist Tour. He is an Illinois native who was first introduced to American French culture as a teenager near Old Mines, Missouri. It was there that he spent two and a half intensive years recording, observing, and learning many of the Creole French traditions still alive in "Upper Louisiana." Not only a musician, Dennis is a preservationist who focuses on creating an understanding of French Creole culture and music, and why cultural diversity is one of the greatest gifts we have in the United States.

David Stoddard writes and sings songs. He gets compared to Randy Newman and Loudon Wainwright III an awful lot and also to Lyle Lovett and John Prine  - and was once mistaken for George Winston. In 2005 he won the Kerrville New Folk Award. He also won the 2004 Minnesota Folk Festival New Folk grand prize, and he was a finalist in the first annual Winterfolk song writing competition in Montreal in 2003.

Orkestar Bez Ime, meaning "orchestra without a name" in Bulgarian, met in the Ethnic Dance Theatre and has since grown to be one of the Midwest's hottest and most sought-after international dance bands specializing in Balkan music. Using a mix of folk and modern instruments—including accordion, clarinet, dumbek, flute, guitar, kaval, tambura, violin and voice—the group stays close to traditional Eastern Europe through its American melting-pot sensibility.