DEB SHEBISH is a dynamic, nuanced, and versatile fiddler. Her playing conveys a distinctive style with an effortless mastery and infectious joy. Deb was awarded the 2023 North Carolina Arts Council Folklife Apprentice Grant to study Old-Time music under Travis Stuart of Haywood County, North Carolina. Deb fell in love with Old-Time and Irish fiddling in Bloomington, Indiana in 1998 and was greatly influenced by the musicians she met there.  In 2000, she met Joe Dawson, (1928-2012), an old-time fiddler from south-central Indiana who grew up deeply immersed in the traditional music of the area.  She loves to share his unique style and repertoire that she learned at Joe's weekly living room jams. Deb has toured nationally and internationally at venues including: Nashville's Ryman Auditorium with Mairead Ni Mhaonaigh and Ivan Goff, the United States Air Force Academy, Villanova University for the Irish Ambassador to the US, the Kelly House in Philadelphia for the Prince of Monaco, Waterford, Ireland Tall Ships Festival, Bangor, Maine's Celtic Crossroads Festival, and the Leith Folk Club in Scotland.

TRAVIS STUART is a banjo player from Haywood County, North Carolina. The backbone of bluegrass, old time string band music carries a legacy that is inescapable, and from his earliest days growing up, Stuart was steeped in that legacy. Playing his great-uncle Austin Stamley’s banjo, Stuart has mastered a local old time style and shared it around the United States and Europe, touring and recording alongside his twin brother, Trevor. As far as his music takes him, Stuart remembers to bring it on home, working to preserve and pass down Western North Carolina’s old time music to the next generation through teaching and mentoring. He has facilitated workshops and classes for Junior Appalachian Musicians and East Tennessee State University’s Bluegrass, Old Time, and Country Music Studies program. Travis Stuart is the recipient of the 2023 North Carolina Arts Council Folklife Apprenticeship as a mentor on Haywood County Old-Time music repertoire to Deb Shebish and was awarded the 2019  South Arts Folk & Traditional Arts Master Artist Fellowship.