Performers & Workshop Leaders

Lindsay McCaw and Grace van't Hof have been playing old time, 100 year old pop tunes, and early country music for several years together in the Detroit, MI area with Hawaiian Guitar group the Boblo Islanders and Honky Tonk supergroup the Velvet Boys.

Lindsay plays fiddle and Hawaiian steel guitar and Grace plays guitar, several styles of banjo and ukulele.  In addition to being a Velvet Twin Lindsay has toured around the US with the Corn Potato String Band and Roochie Toochie and the Ragtime Shepherd Kings. 

Grace has played traditional country and bluegrass music on the Grand Ole Opry. They tour with Chris Jones and the Night Drivers, are a regular member of Chris Scruggs and the Stone Fox Five,  and was a founding member of both Bill and the Belles and Della Mae. 

Our friend from the Boblo Islanders and the Velvet Boys, Joel Jackson, will join us on Steel Guitar.  

Ruby John (she/her)is an Anishinaabe fiddler and a member of the Grand Traverse Band. Raised in Michigan’s traditional music community, she grew up immersed in local Irish sessions, contra and square dances, and Old-Time fiddle jamborees across the state. Her playing spans Old-Time, Métis, Irish, and French Canadian styles, reflecting the diversity of the traditions she carries. Recently, Ruby has been sharing her love of music by teaching fiddle to children on Beaver Island, Michigan.

Ruby and Emily met at Earful of Fiddle Music & Dance Camp, where they quickly discovered how naturally their ideas and styles fit together. They formed a fast friendship and over the years have traveled, taught, and performed side-by-side at festivals and camps throughout the region. Their work brings together Ruby’s grounding in Old-Time, Métis, Irish, and French Canadian fiddle traditions with Emily’s percussive dance movement.

Emily Doebler (she/they) works closely with musicians of all kinds to create movement that emphasizes the shared connection between dance and music. Introduced to traditional percussive dance at age five, Emily grew up learning and performing in communities that shaped her interest in traditional music and dance. She has received three Michigan Traditional Arts Apprenticeships with Nic Gareiss that focused on improvisation, the complexities and interconnectedness of music and percussive dance, and the history of traditional dance and music. Emily embraces the opportunity to be curious about the collaboration of movement and sound, and emphasizes the importance of reconsidering the conventional confines of movement and expression.

Ruby and Emily together create performances that highlight the conversation between music and dance and the traditions that shaped them.

David Scrivner, Hawken and Emily Boldman, and Mason Herbold have been playing traditional Ozarks music together for four years, usually at dances, jams, and house parties. After meeting him at a fiddle camp where the two were students in 2018, Hawken and Emily approached David to begin a more focused mentorship in Ozarks old-time fiddling 2021. Mason joined the group in 2023 when he moved to the Ozarks from Central Missouri to attend college at Missouri State University.

The band’s sound leans heavily toward driving dance music of the Ozarks while also incorporating notey hornpipes, jigs, and other tunes from the Missouri Valley tradition of Central Missouri. Led by David Scrivner, who learned primarily from legendary Ozarks dance fiddler Bob Holt and has remained dedicated to Ozarks style fiddling for three decades, the group focuses on providing fiddling with a drive for dancing via their significant repertoire of tunes from the Ozarks and Missouri broadly. With a brief beginning in classical violin, Emily has dedicated herself to fiddle for the last decade, completing the Missouri Folk Arts Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program with Nathan McAlister in 2023, focusing Ozarks dance fiddling. Emily and David enjoy fiddling dances together, often incorporating twin fiddling or fiddle and mandolin duets after the fashion of old Tommy Jackson recordings. A victim of the power of young love, Hawken followed Emily into old time music, with a notable broad background in bluegrass and other genres. Hawken’s primary Missouri backup influences are Alvie Dooms, Kim Lansford, and David Scrivner. Hawken enjoys providing driving backup for square dances and is known in the Ozarks for his penchant for tasteful bass runs. Mason brings a touch of Central Missouri to the group, having been mentored by master guitarists from Central Missouri including Dave Cavins and Kenny Applebee, as well as fiddlers such as Dwight Lamb, Liz Amos, and Amber Gaddy. In addition to his strong, steady guitar backup, Mason fills out the band’s sounds with Missouri Valley style accordion backup, which he learned from Amber Gaddy.

Born in Belfast into a family with deep roots in traditional music, fiddle player Danny Diamond spent his formative years learning, playing and performing at festivals and informal music sessions around Ireland. He lived in Dublin for many years, where he worked as a performer, music archivist (with ITMA, the Irish Traditional Music Archive) and sound engineer. During this time, Danny co-founded the influential traditional Irish band Mórga and the Irish-Nordic experimental folk trio Slow Moving Clouds. He recorded the debut album from world-renowned contemporary folk band Lankum and toured internationally with Irish contemporary dance theater company Teac Damsa’s multi award-winning production 'Swan Lake / Loch na hEala'.

Now based in Minneapolis, Danny plays in a duo with multi-instrumentalist and singer Brian Miller. Their second album, 'Northern Shores', was released in January 2026. Danny tours with original Riverdance lead vocalist Katie McMahon, performs with Irish-West African ensemble Canadh Croí, and makes ambient folk music under the name Senior Infants. Alongside performance work, Danny teaches with the Center for Irish Music in St Paul and is the Director of Atlantic Arts LLC, consulting on strategy and technology with local, regional and international Irish cultural heritage organizations. 

Guitarist, singer Dáithí Sproule is a native of Derry in the north of Ireland and has lived for many years in Minnesota. He was a member of the seminal group Skara Brae with Maighread and Tríona Ní Dhomhnaill and their brother Mícheál Ó Domhnaill, with whom he was one of the first people to introduce the guitar tuning DADGAD into Irish music, and he has recorded and performed around the world with many of the greats of Irish traditional music, including Trian (with Liz Carroll and Billy McComiskey), Fingal (with James Keane and Randal Bays) and, for more than thirty years, with the Irish band Altan. Other musicians with whom he has performed include Tommy Peoples, Seamus and Manus McGuire, Peter Ostroushko, James Kelly, Paddy O’Brien, Laura MacKenzie, Dolly Parton and Minnesota blues great Dave Ray. His compositions have been recorded and performed widely.

Dáithí has presented two television documentaries about Irish song — the second, “Ceol na gCoillte” (Woods Music), was broadcast this year on Canadian and Irish tv, the theme being Irish songs and music making their way into North American tradition through the lumber camps.

Dáithí Sproule has also had a life-long commitment to Irish language and culture. His studies on Early Irish poetry and history have been published in the magazine Comhar and in Ériu, a journal of the Royal Irish Academy.  His collection of short stories in Irish, An Taobh Eile, was published In 1987. Dáithí has taught Early and Medieval Irish at University College Dublin and courses on Celtic culture, mythology and history at the University of St. Thomas and the University of Minnesota. He has been a teacher at the Center for Irish Music in St. Paul, Minnesota, since 2006.

Steam Machine is a midwest based old time/bluegrass project fronted by award winning fiddler AJ Srubas and old time music & dance enthusiast Rina Rossi on guitar. A shortlist of spectacular musicians perform with the band on banjo and bass.

AJ grew up in a musical family near Green Bay, WI where he latched onto the fiddle at age 10. A self-taught fiddler with no formal training, he has been steadily collecting ribbons for his old time and bluegrass playing, including first place at the Appalachian String Band Music Festival in Clifftop, West Virginia, first place fiddle at the Mt. Airy Fiddlers Convention, and most recently, third in bluegrass fiddle at 89th annual Galax Old Fiddlers Convention in Virginia. A versatile player and teacher, AJ continues to teach at camps around the country and play fiddle and steel with a variety of local and nationally touring bluegrass, old time, country, and Cajun bands.

Rina grew up in Ann Arbor listening to old time and bluegrass on the radio and at festivals, and decided to take up the fiddle at age 17. She moved to the Twin Cities and auditioned for the Wild Goose Chase Cloggers, through which she became very involved with the vibrant midwest old-time scene. Her guitar and bass playing have helped lock in many band ribbons at fiddlers conventions. A regular square dance caller at the Monday Night Square Dance in Minneapolis, she has called dances at old-time events around the country and world.

As a band, the two time Appalachian String Band Music Fest (Clifftop) Trad Band Contest finalists, Folk Alliance Midwest Official Showcase Artists, and Class Notes teaching artists have been busy touring the region and the country since 2018, performing at diverse venues from roots music hubs to bluegrass and Americana festivals, and teaching workshops at traditional music camps across the country including the Augusta Heritage Center (WV), Fiddle Tunes (WA), Ashokan Center (NY), Earful of Fiddle (MI), Kaufman Kamp (TN), Swannanoa Gathering (NC), and others.

At home in Minneapolis, they stay busy volunteering as organizers for many of the local community old time and bluegrass institutions. more info at steammachinemusic.com

Joe Zavaan Johnson (he/they) is a multi-instrumentalist, arts educator, Black music researcher, and native of Ohio. He is currently an Ethnomusicology Ph.D. Candidate at Indiana University-Bloomington, where his dissertation looks at the Black banjo renaissance through the lenses of Black studies, human geography, folklore, and ethnomusicology.

Johnson’s research has garnered significant attention, being featured on NPR, in Bluegrass Breakdown magazine, and at the Library of Congress’s American Folklife Center, where he delivered a lecture in the prestigious Benjamin Botkin Folklife Series. His work, funded by the Mellon Foundation and the American Council of Learned Societies, bridges academic scholarship with public engagement, bringing the rich life of Black string band music to broader audiences. His recent work includes “This Aint Texas No More!: Beyoncé and the Black Banjo Renaissance,” published in a special edition of Southern Cultures’ focused on Country Music’s Mythology.

As a dedicated educator and community builder, Johnson frequently collaborates with grassroots organizations focused on coalition building, community healing, and cultural reparations. He is an inaugural recipient of the Black Banjo Reclamation Fellowship and currently serves as the history instructor for the second cohort of Black banjo and fiddle fellows, where he teaches beginner banjo classes. His commitment to cultural preservation and education extends to performance venues as well—recently, Johnson was a featured artist at the Berkeley Old Time Music Convention, the DeFord Bailey Legacy Festival, and the Fort Worth African American Roots Music Festival, and was also a panelist at Biscuits and Banjos.

Johnson’s mentors include renowned musicians Jake Blount and Brad Leftwich, whose guidance has shaped his approach to both performance and pedagogy. Through his multifaceted work, Johnson continues to illuminate the vital contributions of Black musicians to American roots music.

The Wild Goose Chase Cloggers are a non-profit educational organization whose mission is to promote and sustain interest in traditional Appalachian clogging by offering concerts and workshops anywhere they can find an audience. The Wild Goose Chase Cloggers was established in 1979 and consist of 12 dancers accompanied by a live old time stringband. They have been performing across the midwest and internationally for over 40 years and are a frequent favorite at international dance festivals.