Geoff Bartley, David Massengill and Fishken & Groves

Geoff Bartley (1948 - ?) is a folk-blues guitar player singer-songwriter and recording artist. His last two CDs, 2009's "Put the Big Stone Down" and 2011's "Mercy for the Dispossessed", were promoted by Kari Estrin Management in Nashville and went to No. 1 on folk radio. In the 1980s, Geoff won four guitars at the National Fingerpicking Champion-ships in Winfield, Kansas. Some of his songs and co-writes have been recorded by other artists in New England, Canada, Ireland, and Nashville, and some are included in the Smithsonian Folkways Recordings of the Fast Folk Musical Magazine collection in Washington, D.C. A new CD called "Particles of Light" will become available in late summer 2014. Since 1994 Geoff has played guitar and sung harmony for folk treasure Tom Paxton. Geoff was also instrumental in bringing the HD-40LSH Tom Paxton Signature Model Martin guitar into production in 2004. In 2007, Geoff's song A Letter from Prison about Nelson Mandela was recorded by the progressive bluegrass band, The Infamous Stringdusters, on their CD "Fork in the Road" on Sugar Hill. Subsequently, that recording was used in the independent 2008 Lionsgate film "The Lucky Ones". Before his main stage appearance at the 2009 Boston Folk Festival, the Boston Area Coffeehouse Association awarded Geoff its Jerry Christen Memorial Lifetime Achievement Award. Geoff presents two nights of acoustic music every week at the Cantab Lounge in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Both nights have been voted Best of Boston. In further recognition, the Cambridge Mayor's Office in conjunction with the Boston Bluegrass Union proclaimed February 13, 2004 to be Geoff Bartley Day. Songs and instrumentals he has written have been used on the History Channel, Animal Planet, the Learning Channel, the Discovery Channel, the National Geographic Channel, NOVA and Nature on PBS and other cable networks, in private and commercial films and documentaries, and in private and commercial advertising in the US and other countries. Geoff endorses and plays Elixir strings. The folk press has called him a world-class guitarist, a brilliant songwriter and the prophet and spiritual godfather of the Boston folk scene.
http://www.geoffbartley.com/

By birth a Tennessean, David Massengill “emigrated” to the Greenwich Village folk scene in the mid-70’s, walking the same streets and playing the same storied coffee houses as Dylan and Van Ronk.

Thirty years later, he’s still walking those streets—but now he’s being recognized universally for his pivotal role in keeping the American folk music tradition alive. Called “a master of vivid lyrical imagery”(Boston Globe), David continues to create beautiful and poignant “story songs” that are intimate and relevant and tug at your emotions. Songs like "Rider On An Orphan Train“ a narrative ballad ringing with truth and anguish” (Washington Post), "Number One In America", a riveting and ironic civil rights anthem” (Boston Globe) and the biting political statement, "The Gambler", a thing of beauty about all things ugly” (Barry Crimmins).

His songs have been covered and recorded by Joan Baez, The Roches, Lucy Kaplansky, Tom Russell, Nanci Griffith and his mentor, Dave Van Ronk, who said David “took the dull out of dulcimer!” Notes Music Boulevard, “That David made the lap dulcimer his instrument of choice tells us a lot about the soft-spoken native of eastern Tennessee. He accompanies his performance with an instrument indelibly Appalachian, yet conquers even the most urban of musical communities. He does it without losing that remarkable gift for true storytelling.”

David has released six albums, eleven bootlegs and fourteen books to date, including “Partners in Crime”, the debut album of The FolkBrothers, David’s duo project with the late great Jack Hardy.
http://www.davidmassengill.com/
http://www.fishkenandgroves.com/

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