Gina Davis – songwriting & voice

Gina Davis is a Canadian singer-songwriter, recording artist, studio vocalist and music educator based on the West Coast. Whether on stage at a festival, behind a microphone in the studio, or guiding a group of musicians through a new piece, she brings a mix of ease, focus, and joy. Her songs offer a space for reflection, connection, and delightful respite. (Last update 2025)

Dave Firestine – mandolin

Dave pulls out the “take no prisoners” style of playing at every dance – bringing the tunes to their full potential and beyond. He is a tune-meister and music jams are super fun when he is in the driver’s seat.

Originally a drummer, his strong sense of rhythm and syncopation is the foundation of his playing and tune writing, and truthfully he is never happier than when he gets to pull out the laptop drum kit to back swing and honky tonk tunes. Don’t worry, he can access his sensitive side when playing waltzes and beautiful melodies.

Dave is a music vagrant retiree now, but before that, he was Senior Gyzmologist building lightning detection systems. He is currently playing with the dance bands STEAM! (www.dancetosteam.com) and The Privy Tippers.

Ann Luna – bass

While “that thing’s bigger’n she is,” Anne Luna is a true presence on stage and makes playing the bass look easy. Her playing is graceful and elegant, yet precise and hard-driving with a sweet tone that enhances and complements any group she plays with. She is equally at home playing bluegrass, folk, country, western, and even Irish traditional music and jazz.

Anne has extensive recording and performance experience having recorded on over 20 albums with a number of distinguished musicians including Alan Munde, Kenny Maines, and Amanda Shires. Most notably, as a member of The Hard Road Trio along with her longtime musical collaborators Steve Smith and Chris Sanders, Anne released 3 critically acclaimed albums between 2012 and 2019.

As an accomplished and enthusiastic instructor, Anne’s energy and easy-going manner create a welcoming learning environment for students of every background and experience level. She has been featured in both the publication and in their online lesson archive of Bluegrass Unlimited. Jason Heath featured Anne on both his Contrabass Conversations podcast and on his YouTube channel (Double Bass HQ). Her own YouTube channel features an instructional series, “Bass Bites”, with an ever-growing, enthusiastic audience. (Last update 2024)

Tony Marcus – Swing band, swing chord

Tony Marcus has found joy playing many styles of music. He has played bluegrass with mandolin legend Frank Wakefield, jug band music and blues with Geoff Muldaur, fiddle tunes with the Arkansas Sheiks, string swing with Cats & Jammers, big band jazz with the Royal Society Jazz Orchestra, weird old Hawaiian and hokum with R. Crumb and the Cheap Suit Serenaders and honky tonk country with Rose Maddox, to name a few.

Playing music has taken him from Japan to Ireland, and from Alaska to Florida in the USA. He currently performs with Patrice Haan in the vocal duo Leftover Dreams and with the country band Crying Time. (Last update 2024)

Tim May – flatpick guitar

Tim May has taught for a bunch of years at the Colorado Roots Music Camp.  He’s also one of today’s hottest flatpickers, period.

For fifteen years, he performed with the progressive bluegrass band Crucial Smith, playing most of the high-profile festivals in the country including Telluride, Winfield and Winterhawk.  In 2002-2003 he toured with Patty Loveless in support of her bluegrass albums Mountain Soul and White Snow: A Mountain Christmas.  In 2005, he recorded on Charlie Daniels’ album Songs from the Long Leaf Pines, and was solo guitarist on the Grammy-nominated track I’ll Fly Away.

Tim has also toured with John Cowan Band, performed at the Grand Ole Opry as a member of Mike Snider’s Old Time String Band and played on the all-star Rounder recording Moody Bluegrass: a Nashville Tribute to the Moody Blues, of which Mark Hurley of Higher and Higher, the Moody Blues fan magazine, said “The jaw-dropping guitar solo on The Voice would cause Eddie Van Halen to weep from insecurity.”

Of his playing, Pat Flynn said “Tim always says that I influenced him, but the truth is that I’ve learned something every time I play with him.  I owe him a lot,” and Dan Crary said simply, “Tim May has just become one of my favorite guitar players.” (Last update 2022)

Ken Perlman – Banjo

Ken Perlman is a pioneer of the 5-string banjo style known as melodic clawhammer; he is considered one today’s top clawhammer players, known in particular for his skillful adaptations of Celtic, Appalachian, & Canadian fiddle tunes to the style. He is also a highly skilled guitarist whose book, Fingerpicking Fiddle Tunes was the very first contemporary manual devoted to adapting fiddle music to fingerstyle.

He has toured throughout most of the English-speaking world and in Western-Europe, both as a soloist and – for over fifteen years – in a duo with renowned Appalachian-style fiddler Alan Jabbour. An acclaimed teacher of folk-music instrumental skills, Ken has written such widely used banjo instruction books as Clawhammer Style Banjo. Fingerstyle Guitar, Melodic Clawhammer Banjo and Everything You Wanted to Know About Clawhammer Banjo; he has been on staff at prestigious festivals around the world, and he is currently director of three music-instructional camps: American Banjo Camp, Midwest Banjo Camp, and Suwannee Banjo Camp.

Also an independent folklorist, Ken spent close to two decades collecting tunes and oral histories from traditional fiddle players on Prince Edward Island in Eastern Canada. His most recent solo recordings are Frails & Frolics and Northern Banjo; his recordings with Alan Jabbour are Southern Summits & You Can’t Beat the Classics; his latest book is Appalachian Fiddle Tunes for Clawhammer Banjo. (Last update 2023)

See Ken Perlman videos

There will be jam classes and a lot of spontaneous jamming during the camp, so join in as they are big fun. If you’re a newbie and experiencing the (unfounded) “Jam Fear” that everyone does, don’t be intimidated. Everyone experiences Jam Fear when they start, if they have any sense. At first it may be a little scary, but it’ll soon turn into a lot of fun. Some reasons you might hesitate:

• “They’re going to hear me mess up.” No, they’re all busy trying to do their own thing. Very rarely in the average jam does anyone even hear the stuff you’re doing, since they’re worried about their own.
• “I’ll make mistakes.” Yes, you will, as everyone does, and if you’re not beating the daylights out of your instrument, you’re the only one who will hear them.
• “I’ll be put on the spot.”  No, in a jam, you can always choose to hang back. If anyone calls on you to take a solo, a shake of your head is a perfectly legitimate response.
• “I can’t keep up.”  Maybe so, maybe not. If you can’t, you can still play the chords or notes that sound OK to you as the music passes by.

The fact is that just like that cold water, it’s sometimes a bit scary to jump in the first time, but once you’re used to it, you’re telling everyone that they should jump in; what a bunch of weenies! Please, give the jams a try which may include: Swing Jams, Slow Jams, Bluegrass Jams, Acapella Jams, Honkey Tonk Jams or Old Time Jams.

Cosy Sheridan, Co-Director

Cosy Sheridan has been called “one of the era’s finest and most thoughtful singer-songwriters.” She first caught the attention of national folk audiences in 1992 when she won both the Kerrville Folk Festival’s NewFolk Award and The Telluride Bluegrass Festival Troubadour Contest, then released her critically-acclaimed debut CD Quietly Led on Waterbug Records. She has released nine CDs, her music is featured in the Robert Fulghum multi-media novel The Third Wish and she tours consistently throughout the US. Her concerts are wide-ranging explorations of modern mythology (meet Hades the Biker), love songs for adults, contemporary philosophy for the thoughtfully-minded and her signature parody on aging and women. Throughout this journey, her lyrical dexterity is backed by her distinctive, percussive bluesy-gospel guitar style. A guitar student of instrumental luminaries such as Guy Van Duser and Eric Schoenberg and a voice student at The Berklee School of Music, she brings a depth of experience to her craft. For the past 18 years, she has taught classes in songwriting, performance and guitar at workshops and adult music camps across the country including The Puget Sound Guitar Workshop and The Swannanoa Gathering. In 2008 she co-founded The Moab Folk Camp.

Dave Firestine, Co-Director

Dave pulls out the “take no prisoners” style of playing at every dance – bringing the tunes to their full potential and beyond. He is a tune-meister and music jams are super fun when he is in the driver’s seat.

Originally a drummer, his strong sense of rhythm and syncopation is the foundation of his playing and tune writing, and truthfully he is never happier than when he gets to pull out the laptop drum kit to back swing and honky tonk tunes. Don’t worry, he can access his sensitive side when playing waltzes and beautiful melodies.

Dave is a music vagrant retiree now, but before that, he was Senior Gyzmologist building lightning detection systems. He is currently playing with the dance bands STEAM! (www.dancetosteam.com) and The Privy Tippers.

Charlie Hall, Founder

After earning a bachelor’s degree in Music Education with emphasis in French horn, Charlie Hall started out as a member of the 6th US Army Band in San Francisco.  When real life reared its ugly head, he found he needed a day job, which he found in computers from 1983 to 2003.  From 2003 to his retirement in 2017, he was a full-time guitar, mandolin and bass teacher.  He’s taught high school band as well as classes in beginning guitar, fingerpicking, bluegrass guitar, music theory and jamming. Charlie was a founder and driving force of the Black Rose Acoustic Society in Colorado Springs, a favorite destination for roots musicians and roots music fans.  He performed for ten years with the popular folk/bluegrass band Black Rose, was a finalist in the 2000 National Fingerpicking Championship and was nominated Bluegrass Guitarist of the Year in 1996 by the Colorado Bluegrass Music Society. With his wife Marianne Danehy, Charlie was creator & co-director of the Colorado Roots Music Camp from 2006-2017.  He and Marianne are thrilled to hand off management of the Roots Camp to the folks at the Rocky Mountain Mennonite Camp as well as Cosy Sheridan and Raul Reynoso.

December 11, 2018, we said goodby to Charlie who passed away after a valiant battle with brain cancer. He leaves behind a large legacy of music and education and those who knew him are better for it.  May we all carry on his legacy of life, love and life-long music!

Marianne Danehy, Founder

Marianne Danehy discovered “her people” around 2002; that is, those who played roots music.  From 2005 to 2014, she taught violin and fiddling in Colorado Springs, and is a registered instructor with the Suzuki Association of the Americas.  Undaunted by two degrees and a former life in Mechanical Engineering and Mathematics, she’s the mother of two nearly-grown kids, William and Anna. Marianne is an excellent teacher and an expert at getting folks started both on violin and fiddle styles.  From 2006-2017, along with her husband Charlie Hall, she was co-director of the Colorado Roots Music Camp.

Colorado Roots Music Camp has enjoyed wonderful and talented instructors over the years since its beginnings in 2006. Our thanks to them for thier part of the rich legacy and music community created each week.