With his soaring tenor vocals and vintage 6-string bass guitar with surf inspired twang, Jimmy Touzel has crafted a unique concept album and signature solo country act. His debut full length album, Lonesome Lullabies, was released last year by Belle Isle Records and to much fanfare. Drawing on influences such as 50’s rock, spaghetti westerns, and the 1960’s Nashville Sound, Lonesome Lullabies is drenched in plate reverb, tremolo, and slap back delay. These sounds and reverberations of the 50’s and 60’s helped Jimmy paint a picture with Lonesome Lullabies that is both sad, dreamy, and ethereal. Early reactions to the album have drawn comparisons to Eddie Arnold, Elliot Smith, Ennio Morricone and Hank Williams.

In addition to his work as a solo artist, Jimmy has been a mainstay in the San Francisco Bay Area’s traditional American music scene for the past 20 years. Playing upright bass, electric bass, tuba, clarinet, and sax, he specializes in traditional bluegrass, traditional jazz, hot jazz, Django jazz, old time, rockabilly, classic country, and western swing. In addition to numerous music and film recordings on the upright bass fiddle, electric bass guitar, clarinet, sax, tuba, and guitar, Jimmy has toured coast-to-coast at home in the US, as well as performances in Canada, Holland, France, Belgium, Costa Rica, and Russia. He has performed live on stage with groups of note, such as the Earl Brothers, Gaucho, the Stylistics, Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs, Evanescence, Lindsey Sterling, the Brothers Comatose, Jackie Gore, and the Tams.

Mr. Touzel also has a passion for performing classical music on the clarinet. Before moving to the Bay Area, he held the Bass Clarinet chair in the Symphony Orchestra Augusta (GA) and the 2nd/Eb Clarinet position in the Long Bay (Myrtle Beach, SC) Symphony. Additionally, he played with the Wilmington (NC) Symphony and the Aspen Festival Orchestra. Jimmy has performed under the batons of many of the worlds leading conductors such as David Zinman, James Dupriest, Julius Rudel, Michael Stern, and Damon Gupton. He attended the Aspen Music Festival where he studied with Bass Clarinet legend Dennis Smylie.

Originally from Georgetown, South Carolina, Jimmy earned his Bachelor of Music Performance from the University of South Carolina where he studied clarinet with Doug Graham, jazz bass with Jim Mings, and jazz with Bert Ligon. Past clarinet studies also include: Carey Bell, Jerome Simas, Ted Gurch, Mark Brandon, and Gloria Campione. Past bass teachers have included Ken Miller, Djordje Stijepovic, Craig Butterfield, and Reggie Sullivan. An educator himself, Mr. Touzel is a member of the instrumental music faculty at the Oakland School for the Arts, where he teaches classes in classical, jazz, rock, and music history.

Never one to forget the glory of being a teenage child and learning how to play the electric bass in the 90’s, Mr. T still loves to turn it up loud and rock it hard, should the circumstances call for it.

DAN LEVENSON is an Appalachian native who has grown up with the music of that region. Today he is considered a respected master teacher and performer of both the clawhammer banjo and Appalachian style fiddle. Banjo Newsletter’s R.D. Lunceford describes Dan “as an interpreter, rather than a music re-creator”. Fiddler Magazine’s Bob Buckingham described him as “an accomplished fiddler and …one of the best clawhammer banjo players in the country.” Ken Perlman has called him “The Johnny Appleseed of the Banjo.”

Dan performs and teaches regularly throughout the world, including in England, Ireland, Israel and Brazil. He has taught at many music schools and camps, including in the John C. Campbell Folk School, Mars Hill, Maryland Banjo Academy, The Ozark Folk Center at Mountain View, AR, Banjo Camp North, The Rolland Fiddle Camp and Dan’s own Clawcamp and Old-Time Music instructional weekends held at various locations throughout the country.

Dan is a two time awardee of the prestigious Master Artist Award from Arizona’s Southwest Folklife Alliance and has won awards on both instruments including first place at the 2005 Ohio Clawhammer Banjo Championship and Grand Champion at the 2010 Ajo, AZ Fiddle Contest.

Dan has eight recordings of his own and is one of the most prolific authors of instructional and tune books for clawhammer banjo and fiddle (see the shopping pages in the menu) with 15 Mel Bay publications to his name, including Clawhammer Banjo From Scratch; Old-Time Fiddle From Scratch the Clawhammer Banjo Masters series with co-author Bob Carlin (Kyle Creed, Wade Ward and Fred Cockerham & Tommy Jarrell volumes available). His latest book, Dan Levenson’s Master Collection of Old-Time Tunes (304 fiddle tunes transcribed in standard notation for fiddle and other melody instruments) is now available!

Bob Carlin is probably the best known clawhammer style banjoist performing today. He has taken the distinctive southern banjo style to appreciative audiences all over the US, Canada, Europe, Australia and Japan. Carlin is a three-time winner of the Frets Magazine readers poll, and has four Rounder albums and several instruction manuals and videos for the banjo.

Bob is not only highly sought after for his musical talent, but for his amazing skill as a producer for the music industry and traditional music researcher. He has produced a large number of CDs that are well-known to all and has authored numerous magazine articles and books for a wide range of publications.

To learn more about Bob’s accomplishments, please follow the link buttons and you will not only see the long list of productions, but you will get to hear audio clips of some of Bob’s CDs and peruse photos and press clippings.