Cedar Run Song Workshops: Instructors

ALASTAIR MOOCK
Alastair has won top honors at some of the country's most prestigious songwriting contests, including those at the Falcon Ridge, Sisters, and Great Waters folk festivals. In 2007, he was nominated for a Boston Music Award for Outstanding Singer/Songwriter of the Year. The Boston Globe calls him "one of the town's best and most adventurous songwriters," and the Washington Post says, "Every song is a gem."
Alastair's writing style is often compared to those of John Prine and Woody Guthrie. Like them, he tends to stick to simpler harmonic forms and tight rhyming patterns that emphasize his lyrical dexterity ande natural talent for storytellling. His songs have the smooth, clean lines of American classics - a timelessness reinforced by his whiskeyed voice and muscular fingerpicking.
Alastair has toured the US extensively, performing at an impressive array of major folk venues, including the Newport and Boston folk festivals, the Birchmere in D.C., Nashville's Bluebird Cafe, and the Old Town School of Folk Music in Chicago. He has also performed in Scandinavia, the UK, France, Germany, and the Netherlands.
Alastair has released five albums to date, including 2007's Fortune Street, his second for international roots label, CoraZong Records.

JOE JENCKS
At age 36, Joe Jencks has more than 20 years of professional experience as a vocalist. He is also the youngest of a large musical family and grew up singing harmonies with his siblings at home, in church, and in the community. From Opera and Art Song to Barbershop, Madrigals, Folk, and Jazz, Joe brings a rich and diverse background to the process of helping singers and songwriters of any level find their voices. Joe is a conservatory-trained vocalist, acclaimed songwriter, entertainer, and student of singing practices, who has been touring internationally for nearly a decade. He sings with the passion of an R&B/Gospel singer, the knowledge of a classically trained vocalist, the soul of an Irish tenor, and the conscience of a troubador. And at the center of Joe's music is an abiding love for all humanity, a love that transcends the everyday and borders on the mystical.
In addition, Joe Jencks is an award-winning songwriter. Dirty Linen magazine rated Joe's latest CD, "The Candle and the Flame," among the "Best of 2007." In this recording, Joe delivers a performance that is so personal and so passionate that it shatters any stereotype and places him solidly on the map as one of the finest modern singer/songwriters. Joe has shared the stage with folk luminaries such as Pete Seeger, Utah Phillips, Holly Near, and John McCutcheon. He draws on his Irish heritage and conservatory training, using his lush lyrical voice to enchant, heal, and inspire. He is widely respected for his unique merging of musical beauty, social consciousness, and spiritual exploration, through which he invites us all to live fully inside of our passions and beliefs.

KATE CAMPBELL
Since making her recording debut in 1995 with the heart-rending "Songs From the Levee," Kate Campbell has put together an amazing body of work, notable for its consistent excellence, its honesty, and its intimate artfulness. While doing so, she has managed to include the likes of Guy Clark, Emmylou Harris, Nanci Griffith, Maura O'Connell, Buddy Miller, and the heart of the Muscle Shoals classic soul and R & B hit-making machine as both admirers and collaborators in her distinctly literate musical vision. Kate's eloquent gift for storytelling places her firmly among the best of the Southern writing tradition, drawing comparisons to Flannery O'Connor, Eudora Welty, and William Faulkner. This gift, her clear-water vocal delivery, and her easy command of a full range of American musical styles have combined to earn her recognition as a formidable talent by critics, musicians, and a discerning public. Kate has wowed audiences at England's Cambridge Folk Festival, the Philadelphia Folk Festival, and Mountain Stage, among others,and she has been featured on NPR's Morning Edition and All Things Considered. The daughter of a Baptist preacher from Sledge, Mississippi, Kate's formative years were spent in the very core of the Civil Rights movement of the 1960's, and the indelible experiences of those years have shaped her heart, her character, and her convictions ever since. Her musical tastes were forged in the dampered, smoky fires of soul, R&B, Southern rock, country, and folk music. These combined influences continue to spark her vision of the world.

COSY SHERIDAN
Cosy Sheridan has been called “one of the era’s finest and most thoughtful singer/songwriters”. One of the pre-eminent songwriters on the folk scene to document the lives of modern women, she places the fast-paced culture of 21st century America into a mythic context with insightful, energetic and at times comic effect. The Cornell Folksong Society wrote: “Sheridan is frank, feisty, sublimely and devilishly funny. She fuses myth with modern culture; Persephone with Botox.”

Cosy first appeared on the national folk scene in 1992 when she won the songwriting contests at the Kerrville Folk Festival and the Telluride Bluegrass Festival, and released her critically acclaimed CD Quietly Led on Waterbug Records. The Boston Globe called her “one of the best new singer/songwriters in the United States”.
Since then she’s released 6 more CDs, taught songwriting and performance at workshops across the country, co-founded The Moab Folk Camp with TR Ritchie, and written a one-woman-show entitled The Pomegranate Seed – An Exploration of Appetite, Body-Image and Myth in Modern Culture which she performs at colleges and for women’s organizations around the country. Curve magazine called The Pomegranate Seed “a sparkling folk journey from beginning to end." She recently wrote a song-cycle for best-selling author Robert Fulghum’s book Third Wish.

Cosy has taught at various camps around the country, including Puget Sound Guitar Workshop, California Coast Music Camp,The Swannanoa Gathering, and Summersongs Songwriter's Camp.

KATHY HUSSEY
Dirty Linen magazine declared Kathy Hussey to be "a songwriter to watch." Other recording artists and peers have agreed. An award-winning songwriter, Kathy has earned top honors in the Kerrville Folk Festival's New Folk Competition (Winner 2003; Finalist 2002), Mountain Stage Newsongs Contest (Top 5 Winner, 2003), Suwanee Springfest Song Competition (2nd Place, 2005), Gum Tree Songwriters' Fest (Grand Prize, 2005), and the Telluride Troubadour Competition (Finalist, 2006). Based in Nashville, she has hosted a legendary writer's night in Music City USA for more than a decade. With three highly acclaimed CD's to her credit, Kathy's music has logged significant airplay on a long list of radio stations across the country, and her tunes have been recorded by a variety of artists. Working live, she has opened for a diverse list of major acts, including Blues Traveler, Phish, Steppenwolf, and 10,000 Maniacs, and she has established a firm reputation as a great songwriting teacher and workshop presenter.

ERIC GARRISON
Cedar Run founder/director Eric Garrison is a singer/songwriter, concert producer (Carriage Barn Concerts in New Canaan, CT and HPFL Concerts in Hyde Park, NY), producer/engineer/studio owner (China Moon Productions), occasional actor, sometime theatrical sound engineer, and teacher. His touring forays around the eastern U.S. and the Upper Midwest have left behind a trail of reviews that speak of drawing from a broad palette of musical traditions and fashioning "folk music the way it's supposed to be" (Stamford Advocate). Eric's music has been hailed for its "expressive melodies, insightful themes,and sensitive, yet bold and direct lyrics" (Taconic Newspapers). As a performer, Eric is known for the warmth of his shows, for his humorous stories and articulate perspectives on the human condition, and for the strong rapport that he develops with his audiences. He has been called the "consummate performer, telling stories and singing as though he was entertaining in his own living room." (Stamford Advocate)
Eric has three solo CD's to his credit. His "Looking for Egypt" project featured supporting performances by Rick Danko and Garth Hudson of The Band, Rex Fowler of Aztec Two Step, John McCutcheon, Bob Franke, John Platania (of Van Morrison's Band), and producer Scott Petito, who has worked with an amazing array of contemporary talents, including James Taylor, The Band, Livingston Taylor, Keith Richards, Dave Brubeck, and The Fugs. Eric has also produced two collaborative CD's, including a children's project with Christina Muir of Hot Soup, and an award-winning CD of family music with Alabama singer/songwriter Mae Robertson, "Sweet Dreams of Home," which Eric produced and for which he wrote the title tune.
Eric's extensive experience with workshop programs, both as a teacher and administrator, includes producing a variety of workshops for his two concert series, as well as a fourteen year association with the Swannanoa Gathering, where he was the founding coordinator and designer of the Contemporary Folk Week program and originator of the Performance Lab Week.