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Jeremy Kittel and Jesse Mason
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For those of us wondering about the state of the younger generation, here to ease our minds are a couple of music majors barely out of Saline High School, one holding three U.S. National Scottish Fiddle Championships and the other a composer with a pilot's license.
JEREMY KITTEL has been at the violin since he was five, plays Celtic, Irish, classical, jazz, swing, old-time and bluegrass; he's performed in Canada, Ireland, Scotland and at the White House. He studies music at the University of Michigan. For more information, see: www.jeremykittel.com
JESSE MASON graduated from Saline H.S., just south of here, in 1998. He began the piano at five and took up the guitar in high school - like a lot of other guys - and later studied composition at Interlochen Arts Camp. He is now working on a music major and an aviation minor at Eastern Michigan University.
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Jo Serrapere and the Hot Tail Section
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Clinical psychology and songwriting seem to be a natural mix of studies, especially blues songwriting, and it's odd one doesn't hear of more artists taking this approach to it. Detroit's JO SERRAPERE has taken diverse elements of Mississippi John Hurt, Tom Waits, Nat King Cole, Louie Prima and Bessie Smith, added her own original work, put together a great band and made it all work. In the past few years they've performed at festivals and halls all around the east, south and midwest: from Memphis to the Kennedy Center's Millennium Stage.
The Hot Tail Section features John Devine on dobro, mandolin, electric and acoustic guitar; Motown session player Jef Reynolds on acoustic and electric bass, mandolin, cello and guitar; and Stuart Tucker, a long-time professional drummer who also teaches English at the University of Detroit.
In 1999 Jo was the Songwriting Winner at the South Florida Folk Festival for "Dream My Girl" and won the Detroit Music Award for Best Vocalist in Acoustic Music. In 1998 she was Showcase Artist at the North American Folk Alliance Conference.
For more information, see: www.joserrapere.com.
MOLLIE O'BRIEN was raised in Wheeling, West Virginia; a lefthanded redhead along with her brother Tim, the youngest two children and the only serious singers in a big Irish Catholic family. She went to college for two years and ended up in New York City with a day job and an idea of becoming a musical-comedy star; brother Tim had found his way to Colorado and a visit from his friends changed her life. "They were doing all this Boswell Sisters and Cab Calloway I had never heard before," she said, "and I just went nuts. That music gave me a mission. It took me a couple years, but I moved to Boulder in 1980 on a quest to sing those songs. I met some people right away, and we started a jazz band called the Prosperity Jazz Band, doing '30s and '40s swing stuff with three-part harmonies. It was a really wild time to be in Boulder."
Her albums range from folk and bluegrass to blues and jazz, all laced with overtones of R & B. Asked how her family influenced her work, she said, "My oldest brother, Trip, brought home a Ray Charles record from college. I flipped and haven't been the same since."
She married a Colorado musician and they have two daughters, 12 and 14. "We've been married for 17 years... and I'm as proud of that as anything I've done. It's hard being a mother and trying to make a living as a traveling musician. There's a tremendous lot of maneuvering and guilt. It's hard, but I love it; I can't imagine doing anything else. On the plus side, my kids have heard lots of music their peers haven't heard. Their friends think they're weird because they don't like Britney Spears."
ROBIN and LINDA WILLIAMS met in South Carolina in 1971, when Linda was home visiting her parents and Robin was playing in a local club. They moved to Nashville, separately, and played the Nashville open stage club circuit in the early 70s. They married and in 1975 cut their first album, Robin and Linda Williams, the first of 15 and still counting.
They've been with us since the early days of the show, back when we had 18 listeners and 12 people in the audience, and they've brought humor and great music to us ever since. And out there on the national circuit they play a remarkable variety of venues, from coffee houses, churches and the Grand Ole Opry to concert halls, outdoor stages and Austin City Limits, and over any given season they'll put on as many miles as a lot of truckers. But it's the music and not the miles that have brought them the respect of their peers and the praise of the critics.
Their latest album, In The Company Of Strangers, with appearances by Mary Chapin Carpenter, John Jennings, Andy Waldeck, Tim O'Brien and Stuart Duncan, quickly reached the top ten on Gavin's Americana Chart.
