The Down Hill Strugglers (formerly known as the Dust Busters) strive to integrate a wide range of old-time songs, ballads, fiddle tunes, and jug band blues into every performance, infused with the old-time feeling and freewheelin’ high energy that characterized early string bands such as The Skillet Lickers, Dykes Magic City Trio, The Mississippi Sheiks, and J.E. Mainer’s Mountaineers among many others. They are influenced and inspired by the direct fusion of Scots-Irish and African music that took place in Appalachia, the Western states and the Deep South from the earliest colonial times through the Second World War. The band has had the opportunity to learn directly from living tradition bearers, especially Kentucky fiddler Clyde Davenport, North Carolina fiddler Joe Thompson and Kentucky banjo player Lee Sexton, as well as from their friend and mentor John Cohen of the New Lost City Ramblers, who himself learned from tradition bearers including Roscoe Holcomb, Maybelle Carter, George Landers, Frank Proffitt, Wade Ward, and others.