Celebrity Judges |
John Davidson is a multifaceted performer whose career has spanned both stage and screen. He has recorded a dozen albums and had a #7 charting single on Billboard's Adult Contemporary list, appeared in films including The Happiest Millionaire and Edward Scissorhands, starred on television in The Girl With Something Extra, served as host for The Tonight Show and That’s Incredible, and appeared on Broadway in productions of Oklahoma and State Fair. Most recently, he's been featured in the North American touring companies of Wicked and Finding Neverland. He has also returned to his favorite role: troubadour, and is currently touring a solo vocal and instrumental show.
A recent Broadway World review said: “John Davidson is today's Will Rogers. He spends 60 or 70 minutes on stage, all alone. OH. MY. GOSH. The voice, the voice, the voice. He can sigh the most sweetly silent of ballads and then belt for the back row of the MUNY in St. Louis. John Davidson is a musical marvel. The show itself is perfectly constructed and presented…The evening is full to the brim with his commentary on life, politics, and lessons learned as he has aged. You don't need to know who John Davidson is to enjoy his show. You only need to know how to feel. Making you feel, through storytelling, musical or otherwise, is what John Davidson was born to do.” (Sept. 2019) www.johndavidson.com Gerald Ross is comfortable with just about every type of “roots” music there is, from western swing, bluegrass, Hawaiian, blues, jug band music, jazz standards, Tin Pan Alley, New Orleans rhythms to boogie-woogie, and he plays it all on guitar, lap steel, Dobro and ukulele. He’s performed in concert with Bonnie Raitt, Arlo Guthrie, Doc Watson, Johnny Gimble, Riders In The Sky, Brownie McGhee and many others. He appears in the award-winning film documentaries The Mighty Uke and the PBS syndicated Wheatland – The First 40 Years.
Gerald won the Solo Artist Category of the 1993 WEMU Jazz Competition and has appeared many times on A Prairie Home Companion. Today, Gerald is one of America’s best-known performers, entertainers and advocates for the ukulele. He’s released seven solo CDs, published instructional materials, and is very much in demand as a music festival instructor in the United States and abroad. “Gerald is truly one of the greatest multi-instrumental musicians in the Midwest. His repertoire includes Hawaiian steel guitar, ukulele, guitar and bass, and many more instruments. You would be hard pressed to nd a musician with the breadth and depth of musical knowledge that Gerald possesses. His three CDs cover blues, swing, Beatles, Hawaiian, Tahitian, Latin, Italian, Aboriginal, and original instrumental arrangements and compositions ... His warm personal demeanor, friendly smile, and intricate melodies always seem to mesmerize the crowd. Gerald Ross is the cream-of-crop of professional musicians and continues to leave his audiences happy and wanting more.” (Terry Truhart, Windy City UkeFest) Geraldross.com For more than forty years, Bill Staines has traveled back and forth across North America, singing his songs and delighting audiences at festivals, folksong societies, colleges, concerts, clubs, and coffeehouses. A New England native, Bill became involved with the Boston-Cambridge folk scene in the early 1960's and for a time, emceed the Sunday Hootenanny at the legendary Club 47 in Cambridge. Bill quickly became a popular performer in the Boston area. From the time in 1971 when a reviewer from the Boston Phoenix stated that he was "simply Boston's best performer," Bill has continually appeared on folk music radio listener polls as one of the top all time favorite folk artists. Now, well into his fifth decade as a folk performer, he has gained an international reputation as a gifted songwriter and performer.
Singing mostly his own songs, he has become one of the most popular and durable singers on the folk music scene today, performing nearly 200 concerts a year and driving over 65,000 miles annually. He weaves a blend of gentle wit and humor into his performances and one reviewer wrote, "He has a sense of timing to match the best standup comic." Bill's music is a slice of Americana, reflecting with the same ease his feelings about the prairie people of the Midwest or the adventurers of the Yukon, the on-the-road truckers, or the everyday workers that make up this land. Composer David Amram recently described Bill as "a modern-day Stephen Foster…his songs will be around 100 years from now." Over the decades, you have heard Bill singing on Garrison Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion, HBO's award-winning series Deadwood, and Public Radio's Mountain Stage. Additionally, his music has been used in a number of films including Off and Running with Cyndi Lauper, and The Return of the Secaucus Seven, John Sayles' debut as a writer-director. In 1975, Bill won National Yodeling Championship in Kerrville Texas. Another important recognition was given to him in 2007. Presented by the Boston Area Coffeehouse Association, The Jerry Christen Award recognized Bill's contribution to New England folk music. To date, Bill has recorded 26 albums; The Happy Wanderer and One More River were winners of the prestigious Parents' Choice Award, taking a gold medal and silver medal respectively. His songs have been recorded by many artists including Peter, Paul, and Mary, Tommy Makem and Liam Clancy, The Highwaymen, Mason Williams, Grandpa Jones, Jerry Jeff Walker, Nanci Griffith, Glen Yarborough and others. As well as recordings, over 100 of Bill's songs have been published in three songbooks: If I Were a Word, Then I'd Be a Song, Movin' It Down the Line, and Music to Me, the latter published by Hal Leonard Corporation. His song, All God's Critters, has been recently released as a Simon and Schuster children's book with illustrations by Caldecott honor-winning artist, Kadir Nelson. www.acousticmusic.com/staines Amy Gallatin, born in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, lived in several states before settling in the West, where she was raised. During her ten years in Idaho and Montana, she had had the good fortune of being able to work at two of her loves in life: horses and music; Amy helped to organize the horseback riding programs and was the featured entertainer at various guest ranches. Her performing background had been as a solo artist out West prior to her meeting some Connecticut musicians while wintering in New England in 1992. With that Connecticut connection came the opportunity to tour as a working unit, so Amy packed her guitar and moved east in the fall of 1993 to pursue her music. Eight albums later—including a "Live in Europe" album and two projects recorded in Nashville with ace producer Rich Adler—Amy Gallatin and her band Stillwaters have taken the stage at some of the most prestigious venues in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, UK, and Europe. Their recent tour of The Netherlands, Germany, Czech Republic, Switzerland and Denmark—the band's fifth—drew extremely enthusiastic crowds at house concerts, music clubs, theaters, country & bluegrass festivals. They have twice had the honor of representing the United States as the featured performers at the European World of Bluegrass convention in The Netherlands. Amy is at home singing various musical styles—country, folk, bluegrass or western swing—branding each song with soulful sincerity. Her influences are diverse, ranging from old and contemporary cowboy tunes learned out West, to great country artists like Emmylou Harris, Merle Haggard, Loretta Lynn, and the Everly Brothers, with even a dash of blues influence thrown in: Koko Taylor, Katie Wilson, BB King, and Shemekiah Copeland. amygallatin.com Music has been important to Nick Noble since he was an adorable choirboy in New York City some fifty years ago. For the past thirteen years, he has hosted the weekly FOLK REVIVAL program on Worcester Public Radio (WICN), celebrating the great folk music of the past while passionately supporting local musicians today. A 10-time nominee, in 2015 Nick won the Pulse Magazine Worcester Music Award as best radio DJ in Central Massachusetts. In October of 2019 he celebrated his 600th show. An educator for 35 years (he taught history to students in grades 6-12 for 28 years and is currently working in the Communications Office at his alma mater, St. Mark's School in Southborough, MA), Nick is the author of seven books—all on historical subjects—including "NUMBER #1": a journey through folk music history (Outskirts Press, 2009), the story of popular folk music in the 20th century told through the lens of one of the period's seminal groups. Nick also enjoys performing, both as a solo artist and with his ‘faux band”—Wolfpen—at a variety of venues. He particularly loves to lead audiences in singing, making them honorary members of Wolfpen. Nick attends, hosts, and sometimes performs at various folk festivals throughout the summer and fall, particularly the New Bedford Folk Festival, the Newport Folk Festival, and the Portsmouth Maritime Folk Festival. He is co-founder of the annual Do Do's Garden Callender Avenue Mini Faux Folk Festival (DDGCAmFFF) which takes place each July. He has been both a panelist and a judge on several occasions, including Northeast Regional Folk Alliance (NERFA) "On the Griddle" opportunities and the annual Maritime Songwriting competition in Portsmouth. www.wicn.org/members/nick-noble/ |