Cowan Creek Mountain Music School 2026

Registration Directions:

• For Standard Tickets: Pick from the 14 classes offered for 2026. Pay for your class.
• For Partial Scholarship: Click the option and select the class of choice from the drop down tab. You will be required to make partial payment.
• For Full Scholarship: Click the option and select the class from the drop down tab. You will not pay anything for this option.
• Most classes are capped at 10 students. If you wish to register for a class that is full, please contact Stacy Dollarhide to have you on a waiting list.

Interested in the Nancy McClellan Scholarship?

Both Partial Scholarship and Full Scholarship applies to this generous offer in memory of Nancy McClellan. Please follow the above directions to register.

IMPORTANT REMINDER FOR FULL SCHOLARSHIP REGISTRATION:

The full scholarship option will not require any payment. Select and register for class and please wait for Stacy to contact you.

Nancy McClellan Scholarship for KOTC: for children registering for Kids on the Creek during the week of CCMMS. This does not apply to any of the other weeks of the KOTC camp.

Please contact Stacy if you have any questions or concerns regarding your registration.

Banjo

Beginning Banjo with Leo Shannon

Bio:

Leo Shannon is a traditional musician from Seattle, Washington living in Whitesburg, Kentucky. He learned to play as a boy from older musicians around him and friends his own age, and plays now with The Onlies, John Haywood, Sarah Kate Morgan, and others. He is drawn to old music that has passed through many hands and the ghostly imprints left by sound reproduction machines.

Course Description:

Beginning banjo will explore the foundations of old time banjo playing, including basic picking patterns and simple chords. The class is open to all ages.

Early Intermediate Banjo with Karly Dawn Milner

Bio:

Karly Dawn Milner is a traditional musician, singer and songwriter born into a musical family from eastern Ky and plays guitar, banjo, fiddle, cello and mountain dulcimer. She enjoys sharing and teaching this traditional music of Kentucky with others. She learned to sing and sight read at a young age next to her grandmother at church, who would make her boldly sing melody as her grandmother would sing the harmony or alto part right in her ear while pointing her notes out in the hymnal. Her mother taught her traditional folk songs of Kentucky- instilling a love of songs of home, as well as pounding out tunes on the piano. Karly also began studying voice and cello at an early age and performing in musical theater. She spent several years traveling with the Clack Mountain String Band as well as other traditional mountain musicians. Having a special interest in playing traditional dulcimer music and being inspired by recordings of ID Stamper and Jean Ritchie, she has learned from KY dulcimer in person from Cari Norris, Randy Wilson and Don Pedi. She has taught at Cowan Creek Mountain Music School for most of the last 19 years and for about as long, has been leading the Ballad Singing at the JP Fraley Festival. Karly Dawn has spent many years presenting programs on Traditional Music of Kentucky in schools and for the Kentucky Folk Art Center in Morehead and has enjoyed performing at festivals such as Merlefest, Seedtime on the Cumberland, Hindman Dulcimer Gathering, ROMP, Chicago's Old Time School Of Folk and many community square dances.

Course Description:

This class is folks who have completed a beginning banjo class or have progressed to playing a few old time tunes and are ready to learn some fun Kentucky tunes and singing songs on the banjo. We will learn tunes in a few different popular tunings to round out your Kentucky old time repertoire and feel comfortable finding the tunes and joining the jam.

Intermediate Banjo with Montana Hobbs

A Morehead State University graduate of Traditional Music, Montana Hobbs is an old time banjo player specializing in Southeast Kentucky stylings. An awardee of the Kentucky Arts Council Folk Apprenticeship in 2017 under John Haywood and is currently studying under Daxson Lewis of MSU, Hobbs has dedicated much of her life to Kentucky music and how to pass down the home music of Kentucky and bring excitement and joy to the next generation. A South Arts Emerging Traditional Artist (2024), Hobbs knows the importance of folk traditions and its nuances. Hobbs is a founding member of The Local Honeys, an international touring act with longtime collaborator, Linda Jean Stokley.

Website: https://www.thelocalhoneys.com/

Course Description:

Intermediate Banjo is a space to explore your personal style within old time music. No two banjos are the same! And they shouldn't be! In this class we will focus on exciting and challenging techniques, how to sing with the banjo, two finger tunes/songs, alternate tunings, listening exercises and how to jam with others. Students should be comfortable with the "clawhammer" stroke and have a few tunes/songs under their belt.

Advanced Banjo with John Haywood

In Letcher County Kentucky, John Haywood, is a tattooer, painter and musician. He performed banjo on the Grammy nominated Tyler Childers Album “Long Violent History,” later contributing vocals and banjo to Childer’s version of “Two Coats.” He also performed with Childers at Radio City Music Hall, Bonnaroo, and Red Rocks Amphitheater. He has released a solo banjo cd of old time east Kentucky songs a 12” lp with his rock band Appalachiatari, and an EP with his punk band L.I.P.S.. He has also contributed to numerous studio recordings. His art and tattoo work draws from the experiences, culture, and music of the hollers and coalfields, and has been collected by diverse individuals from across the globe, earning him numerous awards and honors. He was apprentice and neighbor to banjo master/historian George Gibson, and a regular member of the late Lee Sexton’s band. He was also a member of Rich n the Po’ Folk, who released the album “When the Whistle Blew” on June Appal Records. In 2011, he established the Parlor Room Art and Tattoo in Whitesburg, a gathering place for local heathens, art enthusiasts, and music lovers.

Course Description:

The tunes taught in this course will fall within a range from intermediate to advanced. That said, the playing styles may be unfamiliar even to advanced students, so be prepared to take it back to the basics for certain portions of the course.

This class will build on Haywood’s personal experiences playing with and living near some of east Kentucky’s greatest old time banjo masters. He played in the Lee Sexton Band for many years and was apprentice and neighbor to George Gibson. Under these masters, Haywood studied the banjo playing of Banjo Bill Cornett, Rufus Crisp, Coy Morton, Morgan Sexton, Roscoe Holcomb, Henry Bunch, Jack Bunch, Rudell Thomas, Virgil Anderson, Dock Boggs, Grandpa Hudson, Buelle Kazee, and so many more regional players. He has also had the chance to play with some of Kentucky’s greatest old time fiddlers including Paul David Smith, Jimmy McCown, Roger Cooper, Jesse Wells, and more. In addition to specializing in east Kentucky banjo music, Haywood incorporates repertoire from outside of the region into his East Kentucky banjo playing tendencies. In this course, students will focus on overhand techniques, left hand plucking, two finger banjo, up picking, back thumbing, and ways of incorporating multiple techniques into one tune.

Fiddle

Beginning Fiddle with Ella Webster

Bio:

Ella Webster is from Lexington, Kentucky and has been playing fiddle since she was 5. She has nearly two decades of experience with traditional, bluegrass, contest, classical, and contemporary fiddle styles. Her love of old time music started at an early age thanks to her grandparents, who have played in a string band in Pikeville since the 1970s. Ella was especially influenced by Jim McCown, a mentor who taught her Pike County tunes from fiddlers like Snake Chapman and Paul David Smith. She now tours nationally as a professional fiddle player and throughout Kentucky with various artists.

Course Description:

This class will teach basic fiddle technique: how to hold the instrument and bow, an introduction to notes, and instrument care. Students will learn a collection of simple fiddle tunes, especially tunes considered “Cowan Creek” or Kentucky fiddle standards. They will also be introduced to jamming. Students with no prior experience are welcome!

Early-Intermediate Fiddle with Meghan Bryant

Meghan Bryant Hall from Floyd County, Kentucky made her first appearance on the CCMMS stage with her teacher Jamie Wells at age eight. She continued to study with Jamie at the Mountain Arts Center and later with Jesse Wells as CCMMS's first Charlie Whitaker Memorial Apprentice. Meghan recently graduated with a BA in traditional music performance and elementary education from Morehead State University. She teaches fiddle in the Hindman Settlement School's Pick & Bow afterschool program, as well as offering private lessons. She is a featured performer in the Mountain Arts Center's Kentucky Opry.

Course Description:

Early Intermediate Fiddle is for students who have completed a beginner class, feel comfortable holding the fiddle and bow, and can already play a few simple tunes. This class will build a repertoire of basic Kentucky fiddle tunes, focusing on tunes that are commonly played at jams or square dances. The class will also explore bowing patterns, slurs, and other techniques that can be incorporated into your playing.

Intermediate Fiddle with John Harrod

Bio:

John Harrod has been documenting, playing, and teaching Kentucky music for 50 years. Although he started out playing bluegrass in high school, he credits Mark Wilson and the late Gus Meade with introducing him to the world of pre-bluegrass traditional music. With them he produced a series of field recordings that are available from Rounder Records and the Field Recorders' Collective. He has taught fiddle at the Cowan Creek Mountain Music School, the American Festival of Fiddle Tunes, the Augusta Heritage Center, Swannanoa Old Time Week, and Centre College. He performs with Kentucky Wild Horse. His recordings include Living in the Promised Land, Spirits of the Lonesome Hills, and Wild and Free with Kentucky Wild Horse and a solo fiddle recording Johnny Come Along.

Course Description:

The intermediate fiddle class will learn a variety of Kentucky tunes from well-known and not so well-known fiddlers. We will learn about the fiddlers themselves, the places they came from, and how the music changed from place to place. We will emphasize bowing as the key to getting the sound and the feeling of these old fiddlers. The tunes should be accessible to all players with a couple of years’ experience.

Advanced Fiddle with Roger Cooper

pending…I need to give him a call tomorrow.

Other

Early-Intermediate Guitar with Heather Summers

Bio:

Heather Summers is a traditional musician, folk singer, and songwriter who lives in New Albany, Indiana. She has performed as one half of the duo The Other Years and performs her own songs in and around Louisville, KY. Having been a student at Cowan for many past years, she is elated to return to Cowan to share the knowledge of traditional music that she has been endowed with.

Course Description:

This early-intermediate guitar course is for students who can play basic major and minor chords on guitar and strum simple rhythm patterns comfortably. In this course, students will gain confidence joining in on any traditional old-time jam by increasing their knowledge of fiddle tune chord progressions and recognizing chord changes in real time. By the end of the week, students will be able to play many traditional fiddle tunes up to speed, confidently join in on unknown tunes, and have fun with bass runs!

Intermediate-Advanced Mandolin with Matthew Carter

Bio:

Born and raised in Pike County, Kentucky, Matthew Carter is a lifelong music enthusiast. He has taught guitar, mandolin, and fiddle for the Letcher and Knott county pick and bow programs, and was the director of the Letcher county program from 2014 through 2018. In July 2025, Matthew was a tutorial staff member teaching mandolin workshops at the Festival of American Fiddle Tunes in Port Townsend, Washington. He currently plays electric bass in the mountain metal band, Appalachiatari, with fellow CCMMS instructor, John Haywood. Matthew also enjoys playing old-time music with his wife, Carrie Wells Carter, and their friends and family members.

Course Description:

Intermediate/Advanced mandolin is for players who are comfortable learning tunes by ear in a group or jam setting. We'll learn at a pace the whole class is comfortable with, while also breaking down the trickier parts on our way up to jam speed. In this class we'll be learning tunes from Kentucky fiddlers, Norman and Nancy Blake tunes, and many other unique and fun tunes from various mandolinists and fiddlers.

Intermediate Dulcimer with Sarah Kate Morgan

Bio:

Inspired by a dulcimer built by her grandfather, Tennessee-born Sarah Kate Morgan has been playing dulcimer since she was 7 years old. She went on to place 1st at the 2012 National Mountain Dulcimer Championships at Winfield, Kansas at the age of 18. Morgan is also a talented singer and songwriter whose style reflects and honors life in southern Appalachia. She has performed and/or recorded with roots music giants such as Tyler Childers, Alice Gerrard, and Erynn Marshall & Carl Jones. Having achieved degrees in Traditional Music, Appalachian Studies, and Arts Administration from Morehead State University, her work centers on a lived belief that art and tradition are living, breathing tools that foster hope, build community, and create change.

Course Description:

This class is for folks who already play the dulcimer and are ready to move on to more complicated tunes! We will cover techniques like strumming complicated rhythms with speed and accuracy, flatpicking and fingerpicking, complicated melodies in a variety of tunings, improvising, singing with the dulcimer, and how to find and name chords up and down the fretboard. We'll learn lots of Kentucky and Appalachian tunes as well as a few Irish and Scottish melodies thrown in. In 2025, she released the album Featherbed alongside duo partner Leo Shannon. We'll learn primarily by ear, but I'll provide sheet music at the end of the class. Pre-requisites: You need to be able to tune your dulcimer on your own and play a few simple melodies from memory.
Singing with Linda Jean Stokley

Bio:

Linda Jean Stokley is a singer, songwriter, and musician from Woodford Co., KY. She is looking forward to her 15th year teaching at Cowan Creek Mountain Music School. She is one half of The Local Honeys. Songs are presents and she loves gifting an unearthed old gem of a song to a new friend. Website: https://www.thelocalhoneys.com/

Course Description:

We'll be discussing and putting into application::

• the cornerstones of traditional 3-part country harmony, and exploring the flexibility of choices within a duet approach
• arranging songs for duos and trios
• lead singing (finding your voice, and the power of stylistic decisions, making choices, singing by feel...)
• group singing (the power of singing with others and fun songs)
• exploring the fundamentals and power of vocal awareness and health

Fiddle and Guitar with Don Rogers and Gabriel Dansereau

Gabriel Dansereau

Bio:

Gabriel Dansereau is a multi-instrumentalist, composer/songwriter, and educator who grew up in eastern Kentucky as a part of the Appalachian old time music tradition. As a kid he learned to play the fiddle and attended Cowan Creek Mountain Music School for many years learning tunes from great Kentucky musicians such as Paul David Smith, Jimmy McCowan, Roger Cooper and Ray Slone. He developed an interest in jazz guitar and went on to receive a B.A. in jazz guitar performance from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Gabriel currently lives in New York City and continues to teach and perform many styles of music.

Don Rogers

Bio:

Don Rogers has deep roots in Kentucky music. His grandfather and great uncles recorded on the Gennet label in the 1930s as the Kentucky String Ticklers. Don is a songwriter and multi- instrumentalist whose work can be heard on several projects including his latest June Appal record, The Tiny Thread. His songs have also been recorded byThe Local Honeys. In addition to his work as a singer and songwriter, he performs with The Local Honeys, Marble Creek Rangers, Allman Butter Band and his band The Apostlebillies. He has also regularly been called on as an accompanist for other singer-songwriters including Lance Rogers, Darrin Hacquard, Nicholas Jamerson, Jeri Katherine Howell, Carla Gover, Noeline Hofmann and others.

Course Description:

Don Rogers and Gabe Dansereau will lead a fiddle & guitar class that explores playing these two instruments together. The class will include listening, talking, and playing. The class will cover technique and musicianship on both instruments, including rhythm, playing a tune you've never heard before, fiddle and guitar accompaniment for songs and ways to further develop skills beyond this class. We will learn fiddle tune melodies on both instruments. Students should be intermediate or advanced players of one or both instruments and should have some experience playing with others.

Visiting Masters

George Gibson (Master in Residence)

Banjo master George R. Gibson was born in 1938 at the confluence of Little Double, Big Double and Buffalo Creeks in Knott County, KY. He learned to play and sing the old songs, in the old tunings, from family and neighbors including his grandfather, George W. and his father, Mallie. In the liner notes for this recording George says, "As far as I know, I am the last person left playing the old Burgey’s Creek banjo music. I am the last possum up the tree."

Music scholar Art Rosenbaum has written, "[George's] singing and playing, with complex interweaving of vocal line and banjo figures with the banjo tuned in any of a number of old time tunings adapted to suit modal song melodies, is in the tradition of Kentuckians Banjo Bill Cornett (whom he met as a youth), Walter Williams, Justus Begley, and Shorty Ralph Reynolds." (_Art of the Field Recording, Vol. 2_, Dust-to-Digital, 2009)

Gibson has mentored a younger generation of eastern Kentucky banjo players--including June Appal artists Brett Ratliff and Kevin Howard--ensuring that the old traditions do not disappear. ~ June Appal Recordings (https://juneappalrecordings.bandcamp.com/album/last-possum-up-the-tree)

Sarah and Ron Howard

Sarah and Ron Howard are a sibling duo from Perry Co. Kentucky. They have strong ties to CCMMS where they were students in its infancy, and worked their way through as teaching assistants, teachers, and visiting masters. They both had a desire to learn and pass on their musical heritage at a young age. Sarah was a fiddle student and apprentice of the late Ray Slone who introduced the pair to many of the original teachers and founders of the CCMMS and gave them their earliest opportunities to perform in festival and square dance settings.

With strong roots in the Old Regular Baptist Church, they attribute much of their style of singing and tight harmonies to the melodies they heard lined out in church. They traveled with their parents on weekends for many years in KY, TN, VA, and WV as family bluegrass gospel band, The Howard Family. Their sound was a rich mix of folky, mountain gospel and original songs accompanied by tight mountain harmonies and the many instruments that each played, as well as the acapella Old Regular Baptist ballads they grew up singing.

In 2015, Ron’s musical wife Kinsee joined the family. As both Ron and Sarah’s families grew, traveling slowed significantly but they still sing and perform together at square dances and CCMMS, and with The Howard Family when schedules allow. Their music can be heard on Rich Kirby’s radio documentary, “A Fiddle Runs Through It”, PBS documentary “The Rhythm of My Soul: Kentucky Roots Music”, “The Very Day I’m Gone: Songs of Addie Graham” cd, as well as the following CDs by the Howard Family: “The Same Today”, “Follow Me”, “The Potter’s Hands” and “Our Style”.

Derek Wall

Derek Wall was born and raised in Magoffin County, Kentucky, and currently lives in Morgan County, Kentucky. He was reared in a household of musicians and singers. His grandfather Hassell Helton sparked his interest in music at a young age. Hassell Helton initially learned to play a banjo from his father Claude Helton, but soon realized he preferred the fiddle. At the age of 9, Derek picked up the fiddle just like his grandfather. Derek and his uncle Jackie Helton played together nearly every Sunday, during which time he discovered that he loved the drop thumb banjo. In the inverse of his grandfather, he laid the fiddle down and began to teach himself clawhammer banjo. Through the years, he has learned to play three-finger Scruggs style banjo as well, but his love has always been the drop thumb style of banjo music that his family played.

Randy Wilson (Roving Storyteller)

Randy Wilson is a fifth generation eastern Kentuckian who worked for the Hindman Settlement School for 30 years doing songs, stories, and dances in the elementary schools. He plays traditional and original tunes on banjo, guitar, autoharp, and mountain dulcimer. Mr. Wilson has played in many festivals across the country- Appalshop’s Seedtime on the Cumberland, Hindman Settlement School’s Family Folk Week, The Great American Dulcimer Festival at Pine Mountain State Park, The Smithsonian Festival of Folk Music on the national mall, cultural exchange festivals with native peoples of Alaska and Puerto Rican folks in the Bronx, NYC. Included are concerts and cultural exchanges at the University of Rome, Rome, Italy and a recent tour of music in Japan.Mr. Wilson is steeped in dance calls from eastern Kentucky and beyond- the Kentucky running set, squares, circles, reels, and play party games.

For twenty years Mr. Wilson produced Kid’s Radio for WMMT at the Appalshop in Whitesburg, Ky, airing children’s voices and oral histories from across the region. He made numerous recordings with students in addition to his own recordings- albums from children’s music to blues to Christmas songs.