staff
Jake Eddy
Jake Eddy is the leading torchbearer of solo bluegrass flatpicking and was called “one of the most exciting young guitarists” by Fretboard Journal. In 2023 he was invited to perform at Eric Clapton’s Crossroads Guitar Festival, performed 3 times on the Grand Ole Opry, and was nominated for IBMA Momentum Instrumentalist of the Year. His style is influenced heavily by the syncopated playing of Clarence White and he sites influences from Doc Watson and McCoy Tyner to Jimmy Bryant and Roy Clark. Bluegrass Unlimited says Jake’s recent album is “proof we live in the golden age of flatpicking” and when you hear him, you will have no choice but to agree.
Jeremy Wanless
Jeremy Wanless is celebrated for his own rugged and bluesy take on the traditional Blue Grass mandolin style created by Bill Monroe. As a teenager, Jeremy studied under internationally known mandolin masters Mike Compton and Skip Gorman. Jeremy worked for years on staff at the Augusta Heritage Center, American Mountain Theater, Gandy Dancer Theater, and Franks Family Music’s “Greatest Show On Rails” as well as numerous bluegrass ensembles over the years. A patient teacher with a refined musical manner, Jeremy teaches mandolin both privately and publicly and performs regularly with the “Phrawg Giggers” and “Franks Family Music.”
Mark Hembree
Mark Hembree: Mark Hembree is a bassist, vocalist, writer and editor. From 1979 to 1984, Hembree worked for Bill Monroe as a Blue Grass Boy. He cofounded the Nashville Bluegrass Band in 1984 and was a member until 1988.
Silas Powell
Silas is a 5th generation picker from the small town of Salem, WV. While a multi-instrumentalist of fiddle, guitar, and banjo, his passion remains with the mandolin.
Silas first had the mandolin in his hands in his playpen, and his dad and Papaw knew then he was going to follow them in their music talents. He first started playing the mandolin at age 7 when he picked up the instrument and started ‘chopping’ along to his dad’s band rehearsal!
Silas has performed at Merlefest, Houston-fest, Remington Ryde, Bob Evan’s Festival, and Baygrass Festival in the Florida Keys. He has performed with many top Bluegrass musicians, including Jesse McReynolds, David Grier, Doyle Lawson, Mike Compton, Blue Highway, Missy Raines, Sierra Hall, Mandolin Orange, Emory Lester, Johnny Staats, Terry Baucom, Joe Mullins , and The Grascals. Silas has been featured on Woodsong’s Old Time Radio hour as a “Woodsong’s Kid” as well as being a member of “Tomorrow’s Bluegrass Stars”. In 2017 and 2018 Silas was selected as 1 of 25 kids to participate at the IBMA’s Kids on Bluegrass.
Silas’s lists of competitions wins and awards is impressive for such a young player:
- 4 time Junior Champion, State of Maryland;
- 2nd place, Maryland State Adult division (age 12);
- West Virginia State Championship Adult Division Top 5;
- 4th place, Monterey Virginia’s Old Time Fiddler’s Convention (at age 10);
- 2106 State of West Virginia Junior Flatpick Champion
- 2nd place Appalachian Old time Fiddler’s Championship, West Virginia University (Fiddle);
- Scholarship Recipient Houstonfest, Galax, VA
In 2019, Silas became the 1st Recipient of the Monroe Mandolin Camp Apprenticeship, which offers students going into music teaching, a teachers hands-on experience and mentoring.
Add on to all of these accomplishments, Silas shares his love of music monthly at a local nursing home, which has earned him “Youth Volunteer of the Year”, State of West Virginia. You can see Silas Powell and The Powell Family Band at festivals around the country.
Will Kimble
Kimble mandolins are custom made tools for acoustic musicians. Each mandolin is carefully crafted by hand based on input regarding tone, feeling, aesthetics. There are no standard models or trim levels. Excellent workmanship is key to great sounding mandolins. Will started building mandolins in 2000. Taught by his father, Fred Kimble, they still work side by side building instruments.
Alan Munde
Alan Munde was born November 4, 1946 in Norman, Oklahoma and began his bluegrass banjo musical career while attending the University of Oklahoma. He and fellow student Byron Berline, fiddler extraordinaire, spent much of their time away from classes traveling around to various fiddle contests and musical events honing their performance skills.
After graduation, Byron left for a several month stint with Bill Monroe followed by a couple of years in the Army and on to his very long and successful career. After Alan’s graduation two years later in later 1969, he moved to Kentucky and recorded with Sam Bush and Wayne Stewart on the legendary and groundbreaking album Poor Richard’s Almanac. Moving to Nashville, Tennessee in late 1969 Alan was hired by Jimmy Martin to fill the banjo seat in his Sunny Mountain Boys bluegrass ensemble.
Alan toured and recorded with Jimmy Martin for two years appearing at many of the early festivals and participating in the recording of the much-applauded Jimmy Martin gospel album Singing All Day and Dinner on the Ground.
Leaving Nashville in early 1972, Alan rejoined his musical schoolmate Byron Berline as he and Roger Bush were forming in California the seminal bluegrass band Country Gazette. The Gazette traveled extensively making regular tours to Europe and Japan for several years. The group’s first album, Traitor in Our Midst, was a top selling album for United Artists. The Gazette, with many personnel changes over its thirty-five year run, has recorded over 30 projects (albums and CDs) and is still a touring with mandolin player Billy Bright and recording band under the banner The Bright Munde Quartet. Alan has also released many highly acclaimed banjo instrumental albums beginning with Banjo Sandwich to the most recent release on Munde’s Child Records of Bright Munde.
During his career Alan also spent much time developing bluegrass banjo workshop/seminar materials and presentations that have become a mainstay of the summer music camp scene. Munde was one of the first high-profile players to make his recorded solos available in written form and also one of the first artists to present workshops. He has made available much of his musical output available through instructional material for Mel Bay Publications, Texas Music and Video, and his on self produced material.
To further the educational aspects of his career, Munde joined in 1986 the faculty of the Creative Arts Department at South Plains College in Levelland, Texas. As the bluegrass expert in the Commercial Music Program, Munde further developed his unique teaching concepts that resulted in several publications including Getting Into Bluegrass Banjo that offers his best effort at offering a systematic path to learning the bluegrass style banjo.
Alan retired from the school in 2007 and continues his performance, teaching and recording career. His latest recording project is a duo CD with mandolin player Billy Bright titled Bright Munde. Alan and co-author Beth Mead-Sullivan have a book available from publisher Hal Leondard titled The Great American Banjo Songbook containing banjo arrangements of 70 songs from the golden age of American popular songwriting. Additionally, Alan operates the on-line business Al Munde’s Banjo College that sells his instructional books, DVDs, his bluegrass banjo recordings, and downloadable lessons.
John Keith
John Keith was born in Parkersburg, WV and raised just up and across the Ohio River in Newport, OH.
John began playing guitar when he was nine. One day he heard the Bill Monroe record Bluegrass Time, and decided he wanted, no, he needed a mandolin. That is when John began studying the music of Bill Monroe and other monroe-style players. In July, 1990, John was hired by Melvin Goins and toured for many years. During this time he met Mike Compton and became even more determined to play those old sounds of Monroe.
After the passing of Ray Goins, John took over the tenor vocals to harmonize with Melvin, recording three CDs and a live video. During these years, John had the opportunity to hang around with Mr. Monroe…and among his treasured possessions is a personal video of duets they sang together at Bean Blossom. Another precious memory happened at Long Hollow Jamboree, when Bill sang and insisted that John play the mandolin.
Poignantly, perhaps the last live music that Bill Monroe ever heard was the Goins Brothers Band playing his songs standing outside his window at the rehabilitation facility where he spent his last days, with John’s Monroe-style mandolin punctuating every line.
John tried to retire from music in 1998, but it wasn’t too long before he decided he couldn’t do without it. Now, he plays with The Open highway Bluegrass Band from Central Ohio. People know they can always count on hearing some ‘straight old Monroe-style’ mandolin playing from John.
Alan Bibey
Since first hitting the scene in the early 1980’s, Alan has made a name for himself as one of the most technically gifted mandolinist in bluegrass and acoustic music. He was an original member of such ground-breaking bands as The New Quicksilver, IIIrd Time Out, BlueRidge and, for the last 12 years, Alan Bibey & Grasstowne. He has been voted Mandolin Performer Of The Year five times, including 2018 and 2019 by the Society for the Preservation of Bluegrass Music of America (SPBGMA). Alan Most recently won 2019 IBMA Mandolin Player Of The Year as well as previously for Instrumental Album Of The Year, Album Of The Year and Recorded Event Of The Year, just to name a few. Alan Bibey & Grasstowne have had over ten #1 Bluegrass songs including four from their latest Bluegrass project, Grasstowne “4”. Their Bluegrass Gospel single “Gonna Rise & Shine” has been #1 twelve times and in the top ten for 34 weeks and their latest single “When Jesus Swings The Wrecking Ball” has been in the top ten for the last 40 weeks! Alan’s BlueRidge project “Side By Side”, for which Alan wrote the title track, was nominated for a Grammy. He was included in the Mel Bay book, “Greatest Mandolin Players Of The Twentieth Century”, and in 2004, the Gibson Company put into production the Alan Bibey Signature line of mandolins, reaffirming his status as one of the most influential mandolin players in Bluegrass and acoustic music history. Alan will be leading our “PLAY IT FORWARD” classes-using traditional bluegrass musical ideas to play contemporary sounds.
Mike Compton, Director
Befriended and mentored by Bill Monroe, the acknowledged Father of Bluegrass Music, Mike Compton is one of today’s foremost interpreters of Monroe’s genre-creating mandolin style. Compton’s mastery of mandolin is at once effortless and exceptional. A compelling entertainer either alone or with a group, his skills as a singer, arranger, instrumentalist, composer and accompanist also make him in-demand as a band member and ensemble player at festivals, clubs and concert halls, recording sessions, music workshops and as a private instructor.
Compton’s decades of touring and recording with musical luminaries ranging from rockstars Sting, Gregg Allman and Elvis Costello, to straight-fro-the-still acoustic legends like John Hartford, Doc Watson, Peter Rowan, Ralph Stanley and David Grisman, have established him as a true master of the modern American mandolin and a premier interpreter of roots and Americana musical styles. With over 140 CDS in his discography, Compton has helped keep mandolin a cool, relevant sound as the modern musical styles ebb and evolve to reach an every-broadening audience.
A native of Meridian, Mississippi, Compton picked up the mandolin in his teens and absorbed the area’s native blues, old-time country and bluegrass sounds. He soon gravitate to Nashville, where he helped found one of the 20th Century’s most admired and influential bluegrass groups, the iconic Nashville Bluegrass Band. He’s also been a part of the Hubert Davis Band, John Hartford Stringband, 1942, Compton & Newberry, and other seminal groups.
When A-list Americana producer T-Bone Burnett needed experts in authentic rural musical styles to anchor the landmark ‘O Brother, Where Art Thou?’ movie project and subsequent tour, he called upon Compton’s unique knowledge and signature mandolin style to authenticate the Soggy Bottom Boys’ rootsy sound. That Grammy Award Album of the Year-winning album went on to sell seven million copies and sparked a global revival in old-time and bluegrass musical styles.
Connoisseur of hand-painted vintage silk ties, popularizer of the denim overall urban fashion statement, lover of iconic men’s hats and curator of oddball official days (ask him about National Lost Sock Memorial Day or National root Canal Appreciation Day), Mike Compton thrives at the intersection of traditional funk and modern authenticity.
Equally skilled in bluegrass, old-time string band music, country blues, roots Americana styles, and much more, Compton soars beyond easy categorization as n acoustic mandolin player and singer. Gifted at tastefully incorporating rural, roots-based learn and rhythm mandolin styles into modern Americana music, Compton’s unique musical skill set allows him to entertain audiences ranging from racers and urban hipsters to die-hard country, folk and bluegrass fans.
A mandolin master able to channel the Monroe-style playing better than anyone, Compton is a preservationist who continues teaching the music that Bill Monroe innovated, and which set the standard for generations of bluegrass mandolin players to come. For more information about Mike, visit his website at mikecompton.net