In a field dominated by bands, there are 2 individuals who are the unquestioned giants, Steve Rosen and Acie Cargill. Both are multi instrumentalists and play hard driving dance music especially suitable for clogging and buck dancing. Steve plays mostly music that originated or was passed along in the North and Acie's music definitely has a Southern flavor. Steve Rosen's Nail That Catfish to the Tree is a collection of 16 instrumental pieces featuring banjo, fiddle, guitar, mandolin, and on a few pieces...piano. Steve plays all the instruments. The title tune is known and played in jam sessions coast to coast and was composed by Steve. The rest of the material is traditional except for number 16 which is called Rhapsody in Red which also was written by Steve and is a modal banjo solo. Steve played for many years with the mighty Volo Bogtrotters and recently with a group called The Combine. He is highly respected in the old-timey world and has toured extensively. Acie Cargill's Stones in Shoes is a collection of instrumentals (with Acie's powerful fiddle calls) from his family in Kentucky. He is the featured performer but various family members also appear, including his son Leo, cousins Robert E Lee Tyler and Tiny Tyler and various uncles and cousins from Kentucky. These tunes are the authentic backwoods string band sound and all of them are played in the original modal versions. His family lived near Shady Grove (an hour by horseback) and Acie claims that this version is the absolute original version of that well-travelled tune. Eddyville Prison was sung by Native Americans imprisoned there and The Battle of Shiloh is based on a civil war ballad. The Cherry Tree is from an old family ballad and some of the tunes were played as children's games, such as Old Molly Hare, Cindy, Ginny Git Around, and Annie's In The Sycamore Tree. Lively adult dance tunes include Morton's Gap, Sally Godwin, Courtin Betsy Brown, and Black-Eyed Susie. Hark Ye, The Best Is Yet To Come is one of the tunes played by the Tyler family. Biography Acie Cargill was born into a musical family. His grandmother was Hattie Mae Tyler Cargill, a noted Kentucky singer of traditional ballads. She was the last of the Tylers, a family noted for being strict preservationists of the musical traditions passed along for many generations from Northern England /Southern Scotland. The tunes that they sung all used primitive scales. They were unique in their area in that they played instruments along with the ballads and the instruments all used special tunings that allowed the ancient tunes to be played without adding obstrusive notes to the performance. Acie knows all those scales and tunings and has been recorded for the Library of Congress, singing some of the old songs he knows and playing the 5 string banjo in the Tyler drop-thumb style. He is considered the living master of this style. The family lived in very secluded areas without electricity and they were not exposed to the newer types of music that swept through the US that featured the piano or the guitar using the 6 string guitar chords that are so prevalent today. In the Tyler music, there are no 3-note chords, just moving modal melodies. Some of this can be heard on Songs and Ballads of Hattie Mae Tyler Cargill, In The Willow Garden, Family Gathering (which featured some of the older Tyler musicians and the remants of the Cargill Brothers’ String Band and Acie playing the banjo as a young boy). His grandfather was Acie Cargill, a fiddler who came to Chicago to play as a fill in musician with the WLS Barn Dance radio show. Many of the old tunes Acie plays were from the elder Acie via his Grandmother Hattie. Acie’s father was an associate of Woody Guthrie and played harmonica in their jam sessions. Acie said his fondest memories were sneaking out of bed and hiding to hear the music they played late into the night when Woody visited. Acie’s mother was a church organist for 65 years and her instructions to him can be heard in the song Dear Mother ( for example, don’t you ever play gospel music in a tavern). It was the exposure to Woody (and also his mother’s playing) that led Acie into learning the chorded guitar styles that he usually plays today in his performances. In public Acie plays folk music, bluegrass, old-time standards, traditional country music, progressive country rock, early rock and roll, old-timey, gospel, and he even played bass for contemporary jazz giants Max Brown and Johnny Frigo. Acie's cousin, the late Henson Cargill, was a national star with his hit song Skip A Rope. And through one of the Tyler women, Acie is related to country giant Willie Nelson. He also is a prolific songwriter and has recorded over 400 of his songs available on the internet. His music has been heard in almost every country in the world and three times he has been put up for grammy nominations for folk music and his albums have been among the most played music on college and public radio folk music programs.