Welcome to the Prairie Grapevine Folklore Society
The Prairie Grapevine 2011-2012 season will be one of our best ever. Our performances will offer a range of genres from Celtic, to ballads, to old-time stringband and modern singer-songwriters. Please join us to welcome these folks to Central Illinois.
Our Next Concert is:
Stringband Music and Song
Join us in welcoming the Sangamo Stemwinders to the Prairie Grapevine concerts. Members of the group have performed for the Prairie Grapevine and elsewhere in Central Illinois as part of several bands: Allen Street Stringband, McGee Creek, The Threshers, The Prairie Chickens, and Molly and Friends. The Stemwinders will entertain you with traditional dance music and songs, as well as some original compositions, all with a Midwestern flavor, played on fiddle, mandolin, guitar, and banjo.
Sangamo Stemwinders
Steve Staley, known to thousands of Illinois schoolchildren as the "house fiddler" at Lincoln's New Salem, has been a fixture of the Springfield-area folk music scene for more than three decades. He is a veteran of the Allen Street String Band, the Prairie Chickens, the Threshers, and other ensembles.
Mark Mathewson's songs have been recorded by a number of nationally touring bluegrass performers. He is a winner of the Chris Austin Songwriting Contest at Merlefest, bluegrass music's top songwriting prize, and has performed in several regional bluegrass and old-time music groups, including McGee Creek and The Threshers. Mark also was the author of the play "New Salem Harmony" about Abraham Lincoln's time at the village of New Salem, and performed at the Theatre in the Park in 2010: http://newsalemharmony.com
Randy Smith has provided fiddle, mandolin, and guitar for several bluegrass and old-time bands in Western and Central Illinois.
Erich Schroeder is a relative newcomer to the Central Illinois music scene, and is one of the finest clawhammer banjo players in Central Illinois. Old-time music fans -- indeed, anyone -- can hear him at http://vrteach.org/. Erich is a curator at the Illinois State Museum.
