2025 INSTRUCTORS
Keith Billik is best known for his recordings and performances with Lindsay Lou & the Flatbellys, Mark Lavengood’s Bluegrass Bonanza, and his current project Wilson Thicket. He is also the creator and host of The Picky Fingers Banjo Podcast, a show listened to by banjo enthusiasts worldwide, which earned Keith a 2022 International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA) award nomination for his involvement in the bluegrass industry.
Keith taught private lessons during his tenure at Elderly Instruments, is a regular banjo instructor at the Great Lakes Music Camp, and is a familiar face to Midwest Banjo Campers after serving as the longtime camp soundman. This will be his second year on the MBC banjo-instruction faculty.
Greg Cahill formed the Special Consensus in the Chicago area and began touring nationally (and internationally) in 1975. Greg has appeared on all 20 of the Special Consensus recordings and has released three solo recordings (two with internationally renowned mandolinist Don Stiernberg, one with mandolin maestro Jethro Burns), and one European bluegrass music recording (with renowned Czech guitarist Slavek Hanzlik). He has also released four banjo instructional videos/DVDs (Musician’s Workshop), one banjo lessons book and one banjo tablature book (both co-authored with Michael Miles, Hal Leonard publishing).
Greg has appeared on numerous recordings by other artists and on countless national television and radio commercials (jingles) and conducts workshops and master classes at bluegrass camps and festivals worldwide. His teaching credits include Nashcamp, the Maryland Banjo Academy, Banjo Camp North, Midwest Banjo Camp, Suwannee Banjo Camp, Nashville Banjo Camp, Augusta Heritage Bluegrass Week, Steve Kaufman’s Acoustic Kamp, the British Columbia Bluegrass Workshops, the Sore Fingers Summer School (UK), and Bluegrass Camp Germany. Greg has taught at the Old Town School of Folk Music in Chicago for over 40 years and became the first adjunct professor teaching banjo for the Columbia College (Chicago) Strings Department in 2011. Greg is a regular contributor to Banjo Newsletter, received the International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA) Distinguished Achievement Award in 2011 and was inducted into the Society for the Preservation of Bluegrass Music in America (SPBGMA) Hall of Greats in 2019. He has been featured on the MBC banjo-instruction faculty many times.
Eli Gilbert is one of the most watched and supported banjo instructors online today. His videos have been viewed on YouTube millions of times, with over 60,000 subscribers. In addition to his online educational resources, Eli has taught at numerous bluegrass and banjo camps, including Banjo Summit, Augusta Bluegrass Week, Banjo Camp North, and Ashokan Bluegrass Camps.
As a performer Eli has toured throughout the US and Canada with such artists as Dale Ann Bradley, Alan Bibey, Chris Jones, and Rick Faris; he now tours with Missy Raines and Allegheny. Eli is an alumni of the Jazz Studies program of the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University, as well as the Bluegrass and Country Music Program at East Tennessee State. This will be his second year on the MBC banjo-instruction faculty.
James McKinney is both a Scruggs and Reno style expert, one of the foremost jazz players of the bluegrass banjo world, and one of the most technically precise banjoists around. He won the Southern U.S. Banjo Championship at age 15. Before long he had won dozens of state and regional championships, including the National Banjo Championship at Winfield, Kansas. He made the first of several appearances on the Grand Ole Opry at age 19 and worked for a time at Opryland theme park as a banjoist and musical arranger.
James moved to Nashville for good in 1990 to play full time in the James and Angela McKinney Band. He has taught countless workshops, and he has been on the staff at a number of major banjo camps, including the Midwest Banjo Camp, Smokey Mountain Banjo Academy, and the SPBGMA workshop. He has performed and/or recorded with Vassar Clements, Porter Wagoner, Barbara Mandrell, John Hartford, and Johnny Cash. His latest solo CD is called Mind Over Banjo. In recent years he plays with the Atlanta-based band, The Night Travelers, also featuring Niki Portmann on bass. James has been featured on the MBC banjo-instruction faculty many times.
Beth Mead moved to Levelland, Texas back in the 90s to study banjo with Alan Munde; the two then worked together to create and compile The Great American Banjo Songbook, a delightful collection of 70 American Popular Songs from the Swing Era arranged for 5-string banjo. When Alan retired from South Plains, Beth stepped in to teach his banjo students as well as classes in bluegrass music (she still teaches at South Plains every summer).
Beth has taught for many years – and is still a regular – at Levelland’s own Camp Bluegrass. Also a strong guitarist and vocalist, Beth now travels the country and collaborates with various ensembles, including Front Porch Swing, the bluegrass band, Tookany Creek, and the bluegrass/Western band, Whereabouts. Her most recent recording, also featuring Jimmy Heffernan, Anne Luna, and John Catterall, is Elements of Style. MBC is pleased to welcome Beth this year as a newcomer to our banjo faculty.
Ricky Mier is a banjo player from Marin County California and is best known for his YouTube channel where he showcases his complex but approachable picking style, along with the music theory that he invented to describe the rhythmic and harmonic language that is unique to the 5 string banjo.
Ricky went to Berklee College of Music in Boston, and began playing full time with Twisted Pine. He won the Rocky Grass and the Fresh Grass banjo competitions and has recently toured extensively with the Michigan based band Full Cord. He is a prolific transcriber of banjo arrangements and a passionate teacher of the art of the 5 string banjo. This will be Ricky’s second year on the MBC banjo-instruction faculty.
Steven Moore is a multi-decorated banjoist with first-place wins at the National Bluegrass Banjo Championship (Winfield), RockyGrass, RenoFest, MerleFest, FreshGrass, and many state-level championships. Steven was nominated for IBMA’s Momentum Instumentalist Award in 2024. He tours with the Grammy- and Emmy-nominated David Mayfield as a member of the David Mayfield Parade, and also often joins newgrass legend John Cowan as a member of the Newgrass All-Stars.
Steven’s debut solo album, Just a Little Talk with Myself (released in 2022) has received tremendous acclaim in the bluegrass community. The album quickly reached #1 on Roots Music Report’s Progressive Bluegrass Album weekly chart, and seven tracks from the album have ranked amongst the best in bluegrass on Bluegrass Today’s Top 20 weekly airplay charts (with the title track reaching #4). Aside from his solo recording, many more examples of his playing appear on YouTube. This will be Steven’s first time on the MBC Faculty.
Alan Munde needs no introduction to long-time Bluegrass fans. From his early creative work with Sam Bush in Poor Richard’s Almanac to his traditional bluegrass apprenticeship with Jimmy Martin and the Sunny Mountain Boys to his 21-year stint anchoring the landmark Country Gazette, Alan has blazed a trail as one of the most innovative and influential banjo players of all time. Along the way, Alan has recorded and contributed to numerous instrumental recordings, including the 2001 IBMA Instrumental Album of the Year — Knee Deep in Bluegrass. He was recently elected to the IBMA Bluegrass Hall of Fame.
Alan has supplemented his recorded work with several instructional publications for the banjo; from 1986-2006 he taught Bluegrass and Country Music at South Plains College in Levelland, Texas. He has been featured on the MBC banjo-instruction faculty many times.
Born and raised in western Michigan, Grace van’t Hof discovered the banjo in high school while building a 5-string prototype that won a statewide Science Olympiad. Grace has toured internationally as a founding member of both Della Mae and Bill & The Belles; and can now be seen touring with the multiple IBMA award winner, Chris Jones & The Night Drivers.
In addition to bluegrass banjo, Grace plays tenor guitar, ukuleles, and fingerstyle banjo in country, old time, and ragtime styles with several groups, and is deeply committed to preserving and reinterpreting early 20th-century popular stringband music. MBC is pleased to welcome Grace this year as a newcomer to our banjo faculty.
Sam Bartlett is a traditional musician known throughout the United States for his banjo, mandolin, and guitar playing as well as for his original music. His compositions have been profiled on NPR’s All Things Considered, aired on Thistle & Shamrock; and his playing has been featured in two Ken Burns documentaries, Prohibition and The Dust Bowl.
Sam has performed and taught traditional music to communities throughout the country and beyond for the past 35 years, from venues as diverse as Wolf Trap and Jacob’s Pillow, to the Skopje International Festival in Macedonia, the National Theater of Taiwan, and the Alaska Folk Festival. Sam’s banjo playing is featured on Garry Harrison’s legendary Red Prairie Dawn album. He has also recorded with a virtual who’s who of other American traditional musicians, among them: Paul Brown, Brad Leftwich, Pete Sutherland, Dirk Powell, Rodney Miller, and Rick Good. MBC is pleased to welcome Sam this year as a newcomer to our banjo faculty.
Hilarie Burhans has been playing and teaching clawhammer banjo for more than 45 years. She lives in the Appalachian foothills of Athens, Ohio and is a much in-demand player at old-time music festivals thanks to her intensely rhythmic, driving banjo style.
Hilarie co-founded the Hotpoint Stringband, a nationally-touring contradance band with whom she has recorded five albums. HBO used a song she recorded on the critically acclaimed show Deadwood, and she has 4collaborated on too many other musical projects to count! More than 5,000 subscribers enjoy her banjo YouTube channel, and her instructional videos on the Patreon platform have many devoted subscribers who praise her clear, relaxed teaching style. Hilarie has been featured on the MBC banjo-instruction faculty several times.
Howie Bursen is a top-shelf musician with vast experience both onstage and as a teacher. A pioneer of melodic clawhammer and a master of triplet-ornamentation and fiddle tune variations, his playing is widely admired for its expressiveness and drive. He has taught at American Banjo Camp, Banjo Camp North, Common Ground, Maryland Banjo Academy, Pine Woods Trad Week, and many more instructional events.
Howie has recorded four solo albums, including two on Folk Legacy (now Smithsonian Folkways). The Singout! review of his CD, Banjo Manikin, stated: “When the recording was over and the spell was broken, I remembered once again why I love traditional music so much.” His most recent recording is Volcano Lake. MBC is pleased to welcome him back to the MBC banjo-instruction faculty.
Victor Furtado took to teaching himself clawhammer banjo at age 9, and with a wide array of musical influences and being mainly self taught he came to creating his own unique styles of banjo playing which earned him lots of attention in the banjo community. By age 12 Victor had appeared on the Grand Ole Opry, Woodsongs Oldtime Radio Hour, won many banjo competitions, and self recorded his first solo banjo album.
Around age 13 Victor met the Wildmans at Galax fiddlers convention, and after so many visits with them he joined the band. Victor recorded two studio albums thanks to the support of recording engineer Tom Mindte. In 2019 Victor received the Steve Martin prize for excellence in banjo and bluegrass, and soon thereafter Victor and The Wildmans recorded their Debut album with Travianna Records. In Bluegrass Today’s words “a young man with an absurdly precocious talent, and a depth of understanding of old time music that is at odds with his age.” Victor has been featured on the MBC banjo-instruction faculty several times.
Adam Hurt (Old-Time Banjo) Deemed a “banjo virtuoso” by the Washington Post, Adam Hurt has fused several traditional old-time idioms to create his own elegantly innovative clawhammer banjo style, having been introduced to the instrument at age eleven in his native Minnesota.
A respected performer and teacher of traditional music, Adam has played at the Kennedy Center and conducted banjo workshops around the country and abroad at such prestigious events as the Swannanoa Gathering, the Augusta Heritage Center, Midwest Banjo Camp, American Banjo Camp, Suwannee Banjo Camp, and Sore Fingers. Since moving to the South in 2002, Adam has placed in or won most of the major old-time banjo competitions, including three first-place finishes at Clifftop, and he has claimed several state banjo and fiddle championships. Adam’s music can be heard on multiple recordings, including Earth Tones, Perspective, Insight, and his most recent, Artifacts. He has been featured on the MBC banjo-instruction faculty many times. adamhurt.com
Michael Miles is one of America’s most innovative and inventive clawhammer banjo players. He is also a master banjoist, guitarist, award-winning composer, author of numerous theatrical works combining music and history, and an acclaimed music educator. Alone in concert or with his signature stage production, From Senegal To Seeger, Miles has had standing ovations on four continents. But give him a string quartet, jazz band, orchestra, or choir and Michael creates new music, bringing critical rave and professional respect from people across the globe. When Pete Seeger heard Michael’s very first recording his response was, “This is enough to make me want to learn the banjo all over again.” Michael has published more than a dozen books with such companies as Hal Leonard and Mel Bay; he has recorded several CD’s with great collaborators including Bela Fleck, Darol Anger, and some of Chicago finest musicians. His websites are www.MilesMusic.org and www.ExistentialBanjo.com. Michael has been featured on the MBC banjo-instruction faculty many times.
Perhaps the best-known exponent of the “melodic” clawhammer style, Ken Perlman is known where-ever banjos are played as a master of clawhammer technique and an expert teacher of clawhammer mechanics. He was a Banjo Newsletter columnist from the early 1980s till the magazine closed down in 2021; he has written several books on clawhammer instruction including Melodic Clawhammer Banjo and Clawhammer Style Banjo, he has recorded several series on audio and video banjo instruction, and he has taught at well over a dozen music camps including Augusta Folk Heritage, Common Ground on the Hill, the Festival of American Fiddle Tunes, the Puget Sound Guitar Workshop, Rocky Mountain Fiddle Camp, the Swannanoa Gathering, and the Tennessee Banjo Institute; he has also been music or co-director of several banjo camps including American Banjo Camp, Banjo Camp North, the Bath International Banjo Festival, Maryland Banjo Academy, and Midwest Banjo Camp.
Ken toured for nearly fifteen years with renowned Appalachian-style fiddler Alan Jabbour (1942-2017), and recorded two CDs with him: Southern Summits and You Can’t Beat the Classics. His most recent solo recording is Frails & Frolics; his most recent banjo books are Appalachian Fiddle Tunes for Clawhammer and Cape Breton & Prince Edward Island Fiddle Tunes for Clawhammer. In the summer of 2017, Ken was invited to offer a Master’s Showcase at the Appalachian String Band Festival (AKA: “Clifftop”) an event set up to “showcase the legends who have dedicated their lives to the preservation and presentation of old-time music.” kenperlman.com
Lukas Pool is a multi-instrumentalist and luthier known for his innovative playing style and respect for Old-Time tradition. He grew up in Mountain View, Arkansas in the Ozark Mountains, where he started playing banjo at the age of 12, spending most evening on the courthouse square with his friends and family – learning and growing with the music.
In 2008, Lukas left Arkansas to attend Berklee College of Music. Upon graduating in 2012, Lukas has performed alongside comedian/banjo enthusiast Steve Martin, recorded with fiddling legend Darol Anger, and performed at a wide array of venues and festivals including the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, TN. Lukas is a two-time National Old Time Banjo Champion and a returning guest professor at the Berklee College of Music, and is in high demand as an instructor at camps nationwide. He has been featured on the MBC banjo-instruction faculty several times.
Molly Tenenbaum is widely respected across the contemporary old-time scene as an innovative player with great respect for musical traditions. She has been playing old-time banjo since she was a teenager in Los Angeles, inspired by artists heard passing through McCabe’s Guitar Shop and the UCLA Folk Festival as well as by such LA locals as Eddie Lowe and Earl Collins.
Molly has traveled across the country and performed around the Pacific Northwest with bands including The Queen City Bulldogs and Dram County. She’s has taught locally and nationally at music camps, including American Banjo Camp, Augusta, and The Festival of American Fiddle Tunes. MBC is pleased to welcome Molly this year as a newcomer to our banjo faculty.
Jane Rothfield is an award-winning powerhouse fiddler and clawhammer banjo player who has been playing Old Time Music “forever”! She got her start playing with older generation fiddlers and banjo players from New England, North Carolina and Quebec and since high school has had bands that played music rooted in Traditional American and Celtic music styles. Jane tours throughout the US, Canada – and most recently, Europe – as a solo artist, and as part of several configurations including the duo Hen’s Teeth, the Janie Rothfield Old-Time Trio, the Idumea Quartet, and her contra dance band, Coracree.
Jane recently released her eleventh recording, Out of Thin Air, which features all of her own compositions and songs; two of her tunes have won the Best Non-Traditional Tune Award at the Clifftop Festival. Jane has taught banjo and fiddle privately and at camps and festivals including Banjo Camp North, Old Songs Summer Camps, Friends of American Old Time Music and Dance (UK), the Festival of American Fiddle Tunes, and Janie’s Jumpstart. Her teaching method combines strategies for quickly learning to play by ear with a focus on the important rhythms and musicality that go into traditional old time fiddling! She has been featured on both the MBC banjo- and fiddle-instruction faculties several times. www.janerothfield.com
Greg Blake was born and raised in West Virginia where he developed his love for bluegrass & traditional country music; most of his adult life has been spent mostly in the Midwest – Missouri, Kansas and Colorado. He spent nearly fifteen years with the Bluegrass Missourians and while with them, he earned SPBGMA’s Guitar Player of the Year Award five consecutive years (nine nominations), and a Kansas State Flatpicking championship. He was also nominated twice for SPBGMA’s Male Vocalist of the Year Award. He subsequently helped form the band Jeff Scroggins & Colorado, and started traveling more extensively throughout the US and worldwide.
With the release of his first solo album in 2015, Greg is now being recognized as one of the industry’s premier vocalists and guitarists. He was just recently nominated for Male Vocalist of the Year by the IBMA. Now a member of Special Consensus, Greg also teaches guitar and vocals throughout the year at bluegrass instructional camps. MBC is pleased to welcome Greg this year as a newcomer to our guitar faculty.
Brian McCarty is a multi instrumentalist, vocalist, mandolin instructor, and is the current mandolinist of The Special Consensus. He makes his home with his lovely family in Kansas City, MO. He grew up immersed in music, playing drums, fiddle , and singing in his family’s traveling country gospel band. He began competing as a vocalist and instrumentalist early on, winning many awards.
Over his 20+ year bluegrass career Brian has served as mandolinist for numerous bands such as The Bluegrass Missourians, The Matchsellers, and Greg Blake and Hometown. When he’s not busy on the road, he offers in person and virtual lessons, primarily teaching Monroe and Celtic style mandolin. His goal as an instructor is to provide students with not just a foundation, but also a springboard for developing their own style! MBC is pleased to welcome Brian this year as a newcomer to our mandolin faculty.
Tyler Jackson’s professional career started at the age of twelve in Branson, Missouri, working on the Buck Trent show, the Jim Stafford show, and the Branson Belle riverboat – playing primarily 1920s traditional jazz. Jackson eventually branched out to explore other styles, drawing from both jazz and western swing influences such as Bob Wills, Django Reinhardt, and Wes Montgomery. In 2004, he released his debut tenor banjo CD, First Impression, produced by his close friend and mentor, Buddy Wachter.
Jackson has worked with many other artists on tenor banjo, including Howard Alden, John McEuen, Jim Cullum, Dale Watson, and most recently David Grisman, where the two collaborated on the CD, Tenor Madness – the fourth installment of Grisman’s Tone Poems series. Also an accomplished jazz bassist, from 2006-2013 he played upright bass in the band for country singer Ray Price. Tyler is currently the assistant curator at the American Banjo Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. MBC is pleased to welcome Tyler this year as a newcomer to our tenor banjo faculty.
Dan Eubanks is best known to the bluegrass world as a bass player and vocalist in Special Consensus, the widely touring, Grammy nominated, and IBMA award-winning band led by Greg Cahill; he appears on the last three Special Consensus recordings, “Country Boy: A Bluegrass Tribute to John Denver”, “Long I Ride”, and the 2018 IBMA Album of the Year “Rivers and Roads.” Before joining “Special C” in 2013, he freelanced and toured with various artists out of Nashville, and also recorded several independent record projects, mostly with jazz, blues, Latin, rock, and Americana artists.
Dan has a Master’s degree in Jazz Studies, and spent many years serving as an adjunct instructor at several colleges and universities in the St. Louis area. Recently, he has taught bass at the Joe Val Bluegrass Festival near Boston, Walker Creek Music Camp in California, and Camp Nimble Fingers in British Columbia. MBC is pleased re-establish our full-time bass program and welcome Dan back to our bass-instruction faculty.
Elizabeth Loring’s earliest memory is her mother teaching her “Little Sir Echo,” which they sang as a duet into a reel-to-reel tape recorder. Music was a part of daily life in Elizabeth’s family, and she soon developed a special love for choral singing. In recent years, she got to sing with the Ripple Effect vocal group in front of 9,000 people at a Notre Dame women’s basketball game, and perform in concert on stage at Carnegie Hall.
Always a fan of folk music, Elizabeth first heard bluegrass in the late 1980s and it quickly took over her life. Since then, she has performed and recorded with bands from San Diego to Charlottesville, teaching bluegrass singing in festival workshops and private lessons along the way. Elizabeth has helped teach vocal harmony classes at Midwest Banjo Camp since 2014. She currently plays bass, sings, and writes songs with Chicago’s Andy Miller & the 145s. MBC is pleased to welcome Elizabeth this year as the founding instructor of our new voice program.
Keith Baumann A true multi-instrumentalist, Keith Baumann serves at MBC 2024 as part-time instructor of tenor banjo and mandolin. Over the years he has also taught guitar, dobro and bluegrass banjo at MBC. Keith has been a professional musician and teacher for close to 40 years. Originally from the East Coast, in the 1980s he moved to the Bay Area, where he worked alongside banjo virtuoso Alison Brown in Heartland, and played in the Lost Weekend Band with Western Swing Hall of Fame member Don Burnham. He moved to the Midwest in the 1990s, played dobro and mandolin with Special Consensus, and since then has performed with such notables as Vassar Clements, Laurie Lewis, Peter Rowan, Claire Lynch, Stacy Phillips, Alan O’Bryant, and Patsy Montana.
Keith has played at music festivals throughout the U.S. and has been an instructor at several national music camps including Midwest Banjo Camp, NashCamp, and Puget Sound Guitar Workshop. A mainstay of the Chicago area music scene, he maintains an active performing schedule of Bluegrass and Jazz, and taught at Chicago’s Old Town School of Folk Music for over 15 years; he also writes for DownBeat, Guitar Player and Flatpicking Guitar.
Keith Baumann Web Site
Beth Hartness Raised on a tobacco farm in Caswell County, North Carolina, Beth Williams Hartness began singing and taught herself to play the guitar at age twelve, influenced by her mother’s passion for early 1960s folk music. Beth was first introduced to old-time music in the 1980s while living in Charlotte, North Carolina, and during this time she was a founding member of the Charlotte Folk Music Society, serving as vice president and festival organizer.
Beth has been a member of numerous award-winning string bands. Her unique, fingerpicking style of back-up guitar is featured on several of Adam Hurt’s recordings as well as the Young Fogies II, Marvin Gaster’s Uncle Henry’s Favorites, Erynn Marshall’s Greasy Creek, and others. She has taught guitar workshops and provided jam support at festivals and music camps and has often served as a contest judge at events such as the Tennessee Valley Fiddlers Convention and the Appalachian String Band Festival (Clifftop).
Niki Portmann is currently the bassist for The Night Travelers with James McKinney on 5-string banjo. Together they tour and play in the continental U.S. and are looking forward to tours in both Western Europe and Australia. The Night Travelers’ first CD project, Campfire went into world-wide release in Fall of 2012.
Niki studied electrical engineering and worked as an engineer for many years before discovering the acoustic bass and re-discovering her childhood love for playing music. Using her engineering skills, she also works as sound engineer for The Night Travelers and founded Portmann Acoustics, which sells her own boutique line of custom engineered speakers and amplifiers for acoustic instruments. Niki was inducted into the Atlanta Country Music Hall of Fame in November 2016.