2026 Camp II – Instructors
Dave Firestine
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.
Katie Glassman
Katie Glassman is one of the country’s most renowned and decorated Texas-style and swing fiddlers, as well as an accomplished songwriter, singer, and a highly sought after educator. Katie is a 4-time National Swing Fiddle Champion and 2-time National Divisional Champion, to mention a few of her accolades.
For 6 years Katie toured and recorded with the renowned trio, The Western Flyers, winners of 2018 Ameripolitan Awards “Best Western Swing Group” and Western Music Association and the Academy of Western Artists “Western Swing Album of the Year” award for Wild Blue Yonder.
As an educator, Katie is the founder, owner, and primary instructor at the online fiddle academy, FiddleSchool.com. Since Fiddle School opened in 2018, her thorough online curriculum has given fiddlers around the world the opportunity to learn, improve, and progress in Texas-style fiddling, western swing, and early jazz. Offering over 1,000 sequential instructional videos and countless webinars on fiddling and improvisation, Katie is also an innovator, creating a modern curriculum for a traditional American art form. (Last update 2023)
Anne Heaton
Anne Heaton is a celebrated singer-songwriter, teaching artist, and speaker who has captured audience imaginations with her songs that are, by turns, “tender, barbed and spiritual” (Washington Post). She’s been featured by the New York Times Music Podcast, NPR, the Sundance Film Festival, and Lilith Fair (2010). Known for the infectious energy of her live performances — “a natural performer [with] a rich, soaring voice” (Seattle Times) — she has played over 1,000 headlining shows nationwide. Anne has shared the stage with artists such as Jewel, Sarah McLachlan, and jazz drummer Max Roach. Anne has taught songwriting at Berklee College of Music’s Summer Programs and GRAMMY Camp. She recently shared her research on the social emotional learning outcomes of songwriting with teenagers in a March 2025 TEDx talk, “Why Teaching Teens Songwriting Can Make the World a Better Place.” Anne lives in Milwaukee, loves coffee, Lake Michigan, and being a mom to two freethinking daughters. (Last update 2026)
Ann Luna
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
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
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
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)
Doug Smith
Doug Smith, winner of the 2006 International Fingerstyle Guitar Championship, weaves together folk, classical, jazz and contemporary forms into a unique, flowing fingerpicking style recalling the playing of Chet Atkins, Leo Kottke, Michael Hedges, and Alex de Grassi. Of his playing, Billboard writes “Inviting melodies… stunning fingerpicking”; Fingerstyle Guitar magazine raves “Smith’s fretboard brilliance continues to dazzle.”
He’s been heard nationwide on radio and TV, including The Discovery Channel, Martha Stewart Living, CNN, TNN, ESPN, and Encore. He also played guitar on the soundtracks for the movies Moll Flanders, Twister, and August Rush.
Doug has released six of his own albums, and in 2005, he earned a Grammy award for his role in the album Henry Mancini: Pink Guitar along with a Who’s Who of fingerstyle guitarists including Laurence Juber, Pat Donohue, Ed Gerhard, Mark Hanson and William Coulter. (Last update 2018)
Steve Smith
Steve Smith is not only known as one of this country’s top mandolin players but also as an outstanding educator. Along with his work with the Roots/Bluegrass group, The Hard Road Trio, Steve has been on faculty at a host of camps. He’s appeared at some of the country’s largest festivals and venues including Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, High Mountain Hay Fever, RockyGrass, Swallow Hill, the Freight and Salvage, Oklahoma International Bluegrass Festival, the Big Horn Mountain Festival, and the Minnesota Old-time and Bluegrass Festival. With the Las Cruces (NM) Symphony, he has performed works of William Grant Still, George Gershwin and George Crumb and music from the show “Chicago.”
In his thirty years of touring, he’s also performed in Ireland, Germany, France, Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Cuba and the US Virgin Islands. He has also performed in musical theater in Cotton Patch Gospel (multi-instrumentalist, vocalist and actor) and the Robber Bride Groom; he composed and performed the score for a production of the Sam Sheppard play “Curse of the Starving Class.”
Steve has appeared on over 30 albums as performer and producer with musicians including Jim Hurst, Mitch Perry, Tim May, banjoist Bill Evans, Alan Munde and Tim O’Brien. His music has been heard on countless radio stations across the US and on the Discovery Channel, The History Channel and even the Weather Channel. (Last update 2018)
Keith Yoder
Keith Yoder has taught guitar, banjo, mandolin, bass, fiddle, and resophonic guitar full time since 1994. In recent years, he has become the go-to guy for jam leadership as well, leading jams at many of the major acoustic music camps in North America. He loves helping folks, both first-timers and veterans, learn the joy of playing with others.
He’s released several CDs, and most recently one where he plays all instrumental parts and sings all vocal parts. (Last update 2023)