Lauren Rioux Fiddle
Lauren is the owner of Gypsy Girl String Studio, where students learn a wide variety of styles, in addition to workshops, jams, and musical outings. She is the youngest professional to have been elected president of the Maine chapter of the American String Teacher’s Association. She has also taught at camps and clinics around the country such as the Mark O’Connor Fiddle Camp, the Mike Block String Camp, and has her own teaching website jamwithlauren.com
Lauren grew up studying violin, and expanded into fiddle and roots music when she joined her first band at age 16. Since then she has performed regularly with Darol Anger’s Republic of Strings, Crow Molly, and shared the stage with Bruce Molksy, Tim O’Brien, Mike Marshall, Brittany and Natalie Haas and others at festivals such as Wintergrass, Delfest, Rockygrass, and Celtic Connections. Her debut album “All the Brighter” is now available.
Tatiana Hargreaves Fiddle
Tatiana teaches bluegrass fiddle at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in collaboration with the Carolina Bluegrass Band. As the new UNC bluegrass fiddle faculty, Tatiana Hargreaves teaches students of all levels and backgrounds teaching draws upon her performing experience as well as her academic background. Combining history with musical technique and stylistic commentary, she engages her students with how their music places them in the greater context of traditional music. She has taught at music camps such as the Rockygrass Academy and the Festival of American Fiddle Tunes and has presented about the history of old-time and bluegrass music at institutions such as Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina and El Institute Superior del Arte (ISA) in Havana, Cuba. Over the past eight years, Tatiana Hargreaves has been on the forefront of an up and coming generation of old time, bluegrass and new acoustic musicians. Since releasing her first solo album “Started Out To Ramble” in 2009, Tatiana has toured with musicians such as Dave Rawlings, Gillian Welch, Laurie Lewis, Darol Anger, and Bruce Molsky. From placing first at the Clifftop Appalachian Fiddle Contest, to her bluegrass fiddling on Laurie Lewis’ GRAMMY-nominated album The Hazel And Alice Sessions, Hargreaves shows a musical fluency that flows between old time and bluegrass worlds with ease.
John Mailander Fiddle
John Mailander is an acclaimed multi-instrumentalist who moves listeners in concert halls, festivals, and music camps at home and abroad. A sought-after performer, teacher, producer and recording artist, John is known for his deeply rooted voice on the fiddle, mandolin, and other stringed instruments.
John is a current member of Bruce Hornsby & the Noisemakers. He has toured and performed with some of the greatest names in the acoustic music world and beyond, including Billy Strings, Darol Anger, Molly Tuttle, Joy Williams, Jacob Jolliff, Tony Trischka, Ruth Moody, Col. Bruce Hampton, Joe K. Walsh, Peter Rowan, Lee Ann Womack, Missy Raines, Danny Paisley, Laurie Lewis, and John Reischman, to name a few. He was the featured fiddler for Steve Martin & Edie Brickell’s musical, Bright Star, for its debut run in Poughkeepsie, New York.
Joe Walsh Mandolin
Joe teaches mandolin at Berklee College of Music, where he graduated (’07) as the first mandolin principal ever from Berklee. He is also part of the new American Roots Program at Berklee. Ask him about string camps he’s taught at, and he runs out of fingers and toes, but they include Mike Block String Camp, Mark O’Connor String Camp, & The Maine Fiddle Camp among many others in the US, Canada and the United Kingdom.
Joe has toured, recorded and played with the absolute best in bluegrass, roots & acoustic based music, showcasing his omnivorous appetite for style. His experience includes, but is not limited to: The IBMA award winning The Gibson Brothers, Joy Kills Sorrow, Jonathan Edwards, Scott Nygaard, Matt Glaser, Emmylou Harris, Bela Fleck, John Scofield, Ricky Scaggs, Alison Brown, Darol Anger, The New England Bluegrass Band, The Stowaways, Brittany Haas & Owen Marshall, and last year’s Ossipee headliner, Marty Stuart!
Ethan Setiawan Mandolin
Steve Roy Ukulele!
Steve currently teaches Bass, mandolin, guitar and fiddle, and uke as an instructor at the 317 Main Community Music Center in Southern Maine. He has also taught at camps across the country including Steve Kaufman’s Flatpik & Acoustic Kamp.
Steve is as versitile as they come, playing in a band called Grassputian as a bluegrass guy, and a band called Jazzputian as a jazz guy simultaneously, while also enjoying folk, rock, funk, classical, country, old time, rockabilly, heavy metal etc. etc. etc! He is a multi-instrumentalist and has toured with Laurie Lewis, Hit and Run Bluegrass with Rebecca Fraiser, Chris Stewart and the Backcountry, among others. He is also well known in the Portland scene, playing with bands such as The Stowaways, and Erica Brown and the Bluegrass Connection.
He is a fantastically fun and energetic teacher and we are thrilled to be introducing a new instrument–ukulele, to the camp this year, and having him teach it!
Allison deGroot Clawhammer Banjo
Allison de Groot combines love for old-time music, technical skill and a creative approach to the banjo forming her own sound – unique and full of personality. Her collaborations with Allison de Groot & Tatiana Hargreaves, Bruce Molsky’s trio Molsky’s Mountain Drifters, The Goodbye Girls and Nic Gariess provide spaces to explore the role and depth of clawhammer banjo.
Allison has toured all over the world with various groups, performing at events such as Newport Folk Festival, Celtic Connections, Rockygrass, Hardly Strictly, Winnipeg Folk Festival & Tønder Festival. The music scene in her hometown of Winnipeg, Canada, immersion in Appalachian old-time communities, a performance degree at Berklee College of Music in Boston, and touring extensively throughout North America and Europe have all shaped her playing.
Gabe Hershfeld Bluegrass Banjo
Gabe Hirshfeld is a member of the Lonely Heartstring Band. He grew up in Newton, Massachusetts. At the age of 15, he heard the great banjo player Earl Scruggs in the theme song of NPR’s Car Talk. The sound of the banjo spoke to him in a way that no other sound ever had and it changed his life. After playing and obsessing over the banjo for several years, Gabe attended Berklee College of Music where he cofounded the Lonely Heartstring Band.. He now lives in Brighton, Massachusetts, in a house with an intense number of fiddle players. In addition to the Lonely Heartstring clips you’ll find him twinning withTony Trischka, jamming with fiddler John Mailander and flatpicker MollyTuttle, or demonstrating with apparent seriousness his “new banjo tune”—capo’d at the 18th fret. Three more of his original compositions (without the tongue in the cheek) grace the TriMountain Sessions’ 6-tune CD “Sloth, Indolence & Torpidity.” There’s Hoss ‘n Rumble, a crooked quasi-Celtic romp; the elegant and elegiac The Waltz of Time; and the title cut, a fluid bluegrass cruise. He is a graduate of the Berklee College of Music.
Alex Rubin Guitar
Alex is a Boston-based guitarist and educator. He is currently a member of the music extension faculty at Wellesley Public Schools and, since 2016, has toured nationally and internationally as the guitarist for the April Verch Band.
After completing an undergraduate neurobiology degree at Cornell University in 2011, he returned to the vibrant Boston music bluegrass scene, studying privately with Berklee professor John McGann and teaching multiple instruments at Wellesley Public Schools. In 2014, Alex started the folk duo, No Bones About It, which has performed around the northeast, including performances at the Freshgrass Music Festival and Club Passim, as well as completing a country-wide tour of New Zealand. In March 2016, Alex joined the April Verch Band as their full-time guitar player.
George Clements Guitar
George Clements is a New England based guitarist and singer/songwriter steeped in American folk music traditions. He is a graduate of the Berklee College of Music. For the past 5 years, he has been performing as the frontman and lead singer for the modern acoustic group, The Lonely Heartstring Band. He is currently living in Maine, working on his first solo album and is also involved with an off-Broadway show called, The Simon & Garfunkel Story, playing Paul Simon.
Stash Wyslouch Guitar
Polish-Colombian Stash Wyslouch is an avant-garde bluegrass guitarist. Imagine the bastard child of Bill Monroe and Sun Ra. Stash’s music dances between wild originals and reimaginations of bluegrass standards, with a penchant for improvisation, story-telling, gospel and outer-space worthy composition. He’s released 3 albums of original music with his own group, The Stash Band, that’s been described by the Boston Herald as a “Sonic Kaleidoscopic of Weirdness and Wonder.”
“STASH and his band have really broken musical boundaries by doing things that just don’t seem possible on acoustic instruments.” – Billy Strings
“A brilliant and Free-thinking Mind” – Chris Eldridge (The Punch Brothers)
“Heavy acoustic laced with musical cosmology” – Tony Trischka
When he’s not doing his own thing, Stash can be found playing with the likes of Bruce Molsky’s Mountain Drifters, the Jacob Jolliff Band and Tony Trischka.
Patrick McGonigle Vocals, Harmony, Songwriting
Patrick M’Gonigle is the fiddler and tenor singer for Rounder Records artist, The Lonely Heartstring Band. Patrick holds a BA from the Berklee College of music and a Masters degree in contemporary improvisation from the New England Conservatory and specializes in Bluegrass and Country fiddle.
Charles Clements Songwriting & Vocals
Double bassist Charles Clements grew up in Westborough, Massachusetts and began playing music at an early age. A 10 year journey through piano, viola, trumpet and electric bass led Charles to the double bass in high school which he began to study privately with Rhode Island Philharmonic bassist Nancy Kidd and play in jazz ensembles and youth orchestras in the Boston area. He attended the New England Conservatory of Music earning his Bacehlor’s Degree studying with Boston Symphony bassist Todd Seeber. Charles went on to receive his Masters Degree at Manhattan School of Music in New York, studying with New York Philharmonic bassist and jazz talent David Grossman.
Charles was a New World Symphony fellow from 2011-2014 and now is a regular substitute in the Boston Symphony. He has performed with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, the East Coast Chamber Orchestra, and Boston’s ‘A Far Cry Chamber Orchestra’. Previously, Charles was a fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center for two summers earning the Maurice Schwartz prize for musical achievement in 2010. Other festivals charles played at include the Britten-Pears program in England, the Schleswig-Holsten Music Festival in Germany, the Aspen Music Festival, the National Orchestral Institute, and the Domaine Forget Institute in Canada.
Charles now resides in Boston where he plays with a variety of different classical music ensembles and collaborates on a wide range of projects ranging from American Roots to Barouqe.
Brittany Karlson bass
Bassist and vocalist Brittany Karlson is an adventurous musician with roots in jazz, American old time, Swedish, and improvised music. She has performed across the USA, Canada, and Europe in a variety of ensemble settings, including Letter Castle and the Goodbye Girls (with Allison de Groot, Mollie Tuttle, and Lena Jonsson). She has performed with Darol Anger, Joe Walsh, and John Mailander. Brittany often works in freely improvised settings, ranging from solo bass to duos with bassist Ian Kovac to collaborations with musicians like Sam Lisabeth, Jesse Collins, Nick Neuberg, Matt Delligatti, and Jeb Bishop.
Brittany Karlson performs original songs under the moniker Karl, having released debut album “Feast Day” on Lungbasket recordings in 2015 and will release her upcoming album “And the Green Grass Grows all Around” in 2019.
Brittany, based in Boston, is enrolled in a three-year Alexander Technique Teacher Training course under the direction of Ruth Kilroy, and is scheduled to be an AmSAT certified teacher by October 2019. At Fiddle Hell, she’ll teach a few bass workshops, sing a bit, and play bass for The Whomp!, the Cellosaurus Stomp Flash Mob, and a variety of jams and workshops.