Great Lakes Folk Festival

Legendary old-time musician, photographer, filmmaker, and folklorist John Cohen was born in Queens, NY in 1932.  He played for fifty years with the New Lost City Ramblers, and has produced numerous albums for Folkways and other record labels, as well as films and photographs.  He... Read More →

Jackson Lynch was raised on New York's Lower East Side and began playing blues guitar at an early age, quickly branching out to include old-time banjo and fiddle.  As lead fiddler of the Down Hill Strugglers, he has learned music from a broad array of sources, including field recordings... Read More →

Raised in Virginia, Minnesota, and New York City, Walker Shepard has developed a strong style on the fiddle, banjo and guitar.  He has been influenced by the fiddling of Clyde Davenport in person, as well as by numerous sources from field recordings and 78rpm records. As a singer... Read More →

Eli Smith was raised in New York's Greenwich Village, and began playing folk and blues guitar at an early age, soon also taking up old time banjo, mandolin and harmonica.  Eli has had the opportunity to learn from rural tradition bearers as well as from traditional music masters... Read More →

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... Read More →