Known the last decade primarily for his high-energy, high-volume, electrified country band and live show, JP Harris is at last (at risk of sounding cliché) truly returning to his roots. Before his colorful classic country career began, JP lived for well over a decade in a remote corner of the US with no electricity, running water, or winter road access; it was in this time that he picked up the banjo, and dove headlong into the world of old time stringband music. As a product of his living conditions, the unamplified, acoustic sounds and communal, almost trance-like melodies of old time jam sessions became the sole soundtrack to the lowly lit evenings of his late teens and twenties.      Upon picking up the banjo, JP Harris also began a luthier's apprenticeship with the late banjo maker Will Fielding; by the time he began building his own instrument, he had become obsessed with the 19th century sound of the fretless banjo, an incarnation predating its modern cousin and more akin to the African predecessors made of gourds and gut. In the absence of frets, JP could find what the fiddlers he played with called "the notes between the piano keys;" those same semitones were banned across the globe, across various empires throughout the last millennium, for the emotional responses elicited from listeners.     After eight years of building banjos, and spending a large part of the summer months roaming between fiddler's conventions across the country, JP caught the touring itch, formed his band JP Harris & The Tough Choices, and slowly let his passion for fiddle-and-banjo music take a backseat for the next chapter of his musical life.    Desiring the archaic tones and hypnotic rhythms of his past once again, JP began the side project "JP Harris' Dreadful Wind & Rain;" mining deep into memory and time, he performs a repertoire of obscure banjo ballads, 18th & 19th century folk songs of dark and sometimes sinister subject matter, and reinterprets old time standards in his own light. Accompanied by fiddle, vocal harmonies, and occasional guitar, he paints a clear retrospective of "the original country music." 

Nora Brown started learning uke at age 6 from the late Shlomo Pestcoe. With a focus on old time music he laid a foundation of love of music and the community it creates. He instilled in her the lesson that music is meant to be shared. Now 14 years old, Nora plays banjo and sings ballads. She plays solo and also with many of her mentors including her friend, fiddler Stephanie Coleman, as a duet under name Little Leatherwood. Today Nora is being mentored by many of her favorite old time musicians including Alice Gerrard, , Lee Sexton, Anna Roberts-Gevalt, Sammy Lind, KC Groves, Courtney Hartman, Mac Traynham, and John Haywood. One of her most important mentors is the late John Cohen. The last 3 years Nora has won blue ribbons in the youth banjo competition at the Clifftop Appalachian String Band Music Festival in West Virginia. In 2018 she also placed 3rd in the Adult Banjo Finals at Clifftop. In July 2019 she received 1st place in the Folk Song competition (all ages) at the 52nd Annual Grayson County Old-Time and Bluegrass Fiddlers Convention in Elk Creek,VA. She has taught both beginning and advanced banjo at the famed Ashokan Center’s long standing old-time camp known as Southern Week. Nora continues to travel and learn from old masters and regularly to eastern Kentucky to visit with 90 year old master banjo player and former coal miner Lee Sexton and master banjo player and historian George Gibson. Nora plays traditional music with a heavy interest in eastern Kentucky and Tennessee banjo playing. She has played TED salon in NYC, the Floyd Radio Show in Floyd VA., Washington Square Park Folk Festival, Brooklyn Folk Festival, Brooklyn Americana Festival, Oldtone Roots Music Festival, both Summer and Winter Hoots at the Ashokan Center, NYC Trad Fest and has had multiple month long residencies at famed Barbès in Brooklyn NY. On Oct.25, Nora released her first record of 11 traditional songs and tunes called Cinnamon Tree produced by Alice Gerrard. The record was released on Jalopy Records and pressed by Third Man Pressing in Detroit. It is available only on limited edition vinyl with a digital download. The record landed #7 of the Billboard Bluegrass Charts the 2nd week of its release.