FAVORITE LINKS

NORTHWEST (USA) MUSICIANS - ACOUSTIC / FOLK MUSIC IN THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST - MUSICIANS IN AUSTRALIA - MUSICIANS IN THE UK AND IRELAND - STILL MORE MUSICIANS - ONE VERY INTERESTING VIDEO - MUSIC DISTRIBUTORS - WRITERS - ARTISTS, INSTRUMENT MAKERS AND OTHER CREATIVE FOLKS - OTHER BUSINESSES WE APPRECIATE A LOT

NORTHWEST (USA) MUSICIANS

WILLIAM PINT & FELICIA DALE, two of our best friends and favorite collaborators, are brilliant interpreters of maritime songs, with hurdy-gurdy, guitar, mandolin, tin whistles and other instruments.

ALICIA HEALEY is both a singer/songwriter and a sound engineer. She has helped us out with recording, mixing, digital editing, vocal coaching and backing vocals on a several.

More of our favorite Northwest songwriter friends:
KAT EGGLESTON
MATT PRICE
SUSAN WELCH

And more of our favorite traditional musicians:
DENISE MARTIN (hammered dulcimer diva)
SHONTI ELDER (fiddle wiz)

ACOUSTIC / FOLK MUSIC IN THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST

There's a great list of Seattle venues and events on Richard Gillman's NWFOLK page and from THE VICTORY MUSIC REVIEW.

MUSICIANS IN AUSTRALIA

Cath MUNDY & Jay TURNER are a pair of excellent singer/songwriters, with stunning guitar, piano & violin accompaniment.

MUSICIANS IN THE UK AND IRELAND

ARTISAN - BRIAN BEDFORD, HILARY SPENCER and JACEY BEDFORD - were an acapella trio from Yorkshire. All of their great CDs are still available. They've also harmonized on some of our recordings, and Mike has played percussion on theirs.

IONA RITCHIE is a multi-talented paragon of young musicianship. She blew us away when we first met her in 2017, at only 14 years old, and she's been on the rise ever since!

SIMON BARRON and ROSALIND BRADY (BARRONBRADY) are two fine songwriters and performers with a repertoire lightly spiced with a few beautiful traditional songs, and an excellent CD.

HILARY SPENCER (England), in addition to her work on Artisan's many recordings, also has solo albums and CDs from the duo QUICKSILVER, with Grant Baynham.

JACEY BEDFORD, in addition to all her musical and writing feats (see info above and below!), also books our English tours. She does this for several of our friends, too, including WILLIAM PINT & FELICIA DALE (see the top of this page).

More mostly traditional:
PETE COE (England)
MARTIN BROWNE and ELIZABETH PADGETT (England)
DICK MILES (Ireland)
STEVE KEENE (England)

More mostly original:
PETE MORTON (England)
KATHIE TOUIN (Scotland) singer/songwriter/pianist.
LES BARKER (England) Indescribable. Just go see him.

Find more UK-based musicians, venues and events on FOLK AND ROOTS.

AND MORE MUSICIANS

We first met fiddler/violinist SARAH WILFONG in the Chicago area. She's fiddled in just about every conceiveable style, and now tours with Nashville-based band "Mustang Sally".

Turkish, Persian, Galician, Croatian, Bulgarian and other influences blend seamlessly in the singing, oud, violin, viola, bendir, darbuka and more from San Francisco based STELLAMARA. Our friends Sonja Drakulich and Gari Hegedus form the core of the band.

ONE VERY INTERESTING VIDEO

A CONVERSATION WITH FATHER CHRISTMAS: If you've wondered where our Christmas traditions come from, you'll be fascinated by the insights in this DVD from TALDISH CASTLE, who also publish medieval cooking videos.

MUSIC DISTRIBUTORS

CDBaby.com is our worldwide digital distributor. We love them!

Not a distributor, exactly, but Marc Gunn has been doing his part and more to get a great diversity of Celtic and Celtic-related music introduced to a wider audience through his Irish & Celtic Music Podcast.

WRITERS

Our good friend ELIZABETH ANN SCARBOROUGH, best known for her science fiction/fantasy novels, is also a designer and crafter of elaborate beaded jewelery. Her bead book, Bead Time Stories, is a collection of original beadwork patterns (with photos by Mike Freeman). Her website will keep you up to date on her science fiction writing as well, including her collaborations with Anne McCaffrey.

Internationally bestselling science fiction writer ANNE McCAFFREY was our collaborator on two special recording projects linked to her novels of Pern, besides being a good friend and a delightful person, much loved and missed.

Both Elizabeth and Anne have(/had) long been involved in music, and more recently some of our musician friends have taken to writing - FELICIA DALE and JACEY BEDFORD both have stories published in sf/f short story anthologies, and Jacey has produced several excellent novels.

And speaking of connections between music and sf/f, if you haven't read ELIZABETH KERNER's Song in the Silence yet, find it! The sequels, Lesser Kindred and Redeeming the Lost, are equally brilliant and highly recommended. And the big news now is there there is another trilogy in the works. Yay!!!! See Elizabeth's webpage for more information.

DANNY CARNAHAN has written not one but three murder mysteries set in and around the California tradtional music scene. Danny wrote the song Borderlands, which is on our 'Cut to Rhythms' CD, as well as the version of True Thomas that Tania recorded way back when.

It'd be equally appropriate to put ROB LOPRESTI in our list of musicians links, but since we've just read his mystery Such a Killing Crime (set in the heart of the 1960's Greenwich Village folk scene), here he is. You'll want to read this book, too!

ARTISTS, INSTRUMENT MAKERS AND OTHER CREATIVE FOLKS

Our dulcimers are made by DUSTY STRINGS ACOUSTIC MUSIC SHOP in Seattle. If you'd like more information about hammered dulcimers, contact them or THE NONSUCH DULCIMER CLUB in Britain.

Tania has several favorite ocarinas now, from tiny pendants made by CLAYZENESS WHISTLEWORKS to a big bass from JOHN LANGLEY, but the one keeping her enthralled at the moment is a wooden double ocarina made by Cynthia Smith of NORTH COUNTRY WORKSHOP. We've made a YouTube video using all three.

ELIZABETH MALCZYNSKI LITTMAN painted covers for the first editions of Anne McCaffrey's "Harperhall" trilogy, and they are particular favorites of ours. We were positively delighted to be able to find her and arrange to use one of her original illustrations for the CD cover of our second collaboration with Anne McCaffrey: Sunset's Gold.

We first came across LORI LOTZE'S inspired artwork embellishing many of her father's flutes. Her dad, ALLAN GUFFEY, makes the Kiowa (Native American) flutes that we first used in our concerts and recordings.

We've lately added more Native American flutes by another skilled maker - STELLAR FLUTES, based near Shelton, Washington.

Cali and Alden Hackmann, who live just up the road from our home in Suquamish, have stopped building their fabulous OLYMPIC INSTRUMENTS hurdy-gurdys, but if you can find one on the rarified h-g market, it's well worth looking at.

Completely unrelated to music -- Tania's brother Lars Opland designs and vacuum forms model airplane kits (early Alaskan and Canadian bush planes.) KHEE-KHA ART PRODUCTS is his home business in Wasilla, Alaska.

OTHER BUSINESSES WE APPRECIATE A LOT

For many years, when we've been in the western hemisphere, we've done most of our travelling by VW bus. It's a cozy way to travel, but comes with its own challenges. Knowing where to find a good VW mechanic is crucial. EION'S AUTOMOTIVE in Seattle has kept us rolling, fielded desperate phone calls from the road, and generally been there when we needed him.

We were also very lucky to find Frey's Foreign Cars when we had trouble in Boulder CO. They don't seem to have a webpage of their own, but you can find their details along with a whole directory of VW repair specialists on ROADHAUS.COM

And it's not just the car that sometimes needs work while we're on the road. BRIAN RODGERS just outside of Rochester (U.K.), does tune-ups and repairs on our guitars and mandolins when we're in Britain, and we highly recommend his work!