We are excited to have the following incredible talent calling dances, playing tunes, teaching workshops, and fostering community.
Callers
Charmaine Slaven
Hailing from Western Montana, influenced greatly by West Coast callers while living in Seattle for many years, and now based in Indianapolis, Charmaine Slaven has been teaching and calling participatory dances since 2006. Her enthusiasm for participatory dance is infectious, and she has an amazing ability to get all levels of dancers having fun on the dance floor. Primarily a caller of traditional Appalachian square dances, she has also been influenced by other styles of traditional dance that she’s encountered through her work as a musician, founder of the Tractor Tavern Square Dance, several-time director of Dare to be Square West, music and dance program director at John C. Campbell Folk School, coordinator for the Festival of American Fiddle Tunes, and work as the Director of Development for the Country Dance & Song Society.
T-Claw Crawford
T-Claw (he/they) is a dance caller, musician, and community organizer. Growing up in Nashville, he played punk rock until he heard the old string music. After grizzling down on the banjo and fiddle for a few years, dance calling was intuitive. T picked up a few tricks from Bill Martin at Dare to be Square West 2007. Those seeds were just enough to capture nuggets of traditional square dance beauty and bring bits and pieces across the continent in a quest to help revive the community art form. They toured by bicycle across 8 states and on to New Zealand as the country variety show band, Fiddle Pie. Many folks will tell you that T-Claw is the “The Johnny Appleseed” of trad. square dancing, having instigated his enthusiastic brand of get-togethers all across North America. 2017 West Virginia proved to be a fertile ground for absorbing some of the best living old time callers’ styles and choreography. After immersing in that culture for some years, T moved on to their new comfort zone, rolling around on the fun-wagon in Brasstown, NC with beloved partner and delightful daughters. T-Claw relishes in pie, honky tonkin’, biscuits, and serving as Music & Dance Coordinator at the 100-year-old John C. Campbell Folk School.
Bands
Tall Poppy String Band
Tall Poppy String Band is a majority trans old-time trio featuring Cameron DeWhitt, Morgan Harris (both based in Portland, OR) and George Jackson (Nashville, TN). Their shows are deeply historically informed by the American string band tradition, with special emphasis on those parts of the music’s lineage that are often ignored. Yet they also approach their source material with playfulness and experimentation, joyfully engaging with old time tunes and songs from where they stand as a contemporary musicians with their own distinct artistic voices.
Montana Révellions
The Montana Révellions are composed of Jamie Fox, a Métis fiddler of the Assiniboine and Gros Ventre people from the Fort Belknap reservation, and Isaac Callander and Louise Steinway from Sand Coulee, MT. The trio will be playing in the Métis style of fiddle music that originated in Montana and the surrounding regions— North Dakota, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba.
Jamie Fox
Jamie hails from Fort Belknap Indian Reservation, Montana – home of the Aaniih and Nakoda tribes. Under the wing of local fiddler, Fatty Morin, the Fox Family learned the Metis tunes and tradition by joining house sessions and sitting next to Fatty at the local square dances.
Métis fiddle music is a mixture of Celtic, French, and Native American cultures. Jamie and her family have been fortunate to play with master traditional Métis fiddlers Jimmie LaRocque and Mike Page of the Turtle Mountain reservation, Johnny Arcand of Saskatoon, and Fatty Morin in Montana. Those old-style, traditional-lineage players firmly root The Fox’s in the Métis tradition deep into the 19th century. Coming from within the tradition themselves, they represent the continuance of this generation maintaining a style and repertoire that dates back to the fur trade era of the 17th century and the first generation of European and Aboriginal mixing in the upper reaches of the North American continent.
Isaac Callander
Isaac has been a regular in the North American Folk Music scene for the last twenty years. He has performed with such notable acts as Jeff Scroggins and Colorado, The April Verch Band, Bobby Hicks, John Reischman, Tony Trischka, Tommy Emmanuel, and Peter Rowan to name a few. Isaac’s versatility as a musician has garnered him accolades on fiddle, guitar, mandolin, banjo, and bass. His musicality and versatility keep him in demand as a soloist and side man touring throughout the world. Isaac’s current endeavors include playing with several duos, trios, and bands throughout North America and Europe, teaching at camps and workshops, building and repairing instruments, publishing tune books, and recording.
Louise Steinway
Louise Steinway hails from Vancouver, BC, Canada. She has a passion for fiddle music – especially Canadian Old-time, American Old-time. Scottish, Bluegrass and Country and Western – a passion she shares with her husband, Isaac Callender. She played with her family band for over 20 years entertaining in seniors homes with Country and Western music, playing fiddle, piano, mandolin, guitar and singing. In 2017 Louise and Isaac posted a fiddle tune every day on youTube for their “Tunes and Coffee” video series. After completing the year of videos they moved on to releasing books featuring the tunes they played. Since then Louise and Isaac have continued to grow their repertoire and spread their love of fiddling by teaching and performing all over North America and Europe.
Dare to be Square West 