The Floyd Radio Show

Join us for The Floyd Radio Show on Saturday, March 2, 2019 at 7:30 pm. Guests include Spencer & Rains, The Sunny Mountain Serenaders and Gina Furtado! Tickets are $12 in advance, $15 day of show.

Tricia Spencer & Howard Rains

Tricia Spencer is a Kansas fiddler who grew up learning the tradition of old time music from her Grandparents. At an early age, she was perched up on some stage tapping her foot to the beat of fiddles, banjos, mandolins and guitars. While growing up, her free time was spent traveling to festivals and fiddling contests throughout the Midwest where she learned from the likes of Pete McMahan, Cyril Stinnet, Lyman Enloe, Dwight Lamb, Amos Chase, and Lucy Pierce. Tricia is multi-instrumentalist who has studied with some of the great masters and is highly sought after as a performer, dance fiddler, and instructor.
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Howard Rains is a native Texas artist and the fourth generation to play on his fiddle. He comes from a musical and artistic family and his two obsessions are painting and playing the archaic style of fiddling of his home state. Howard plays rare, old tunes learned from friends, family, mentors, and old recordings. As much known for his painting as his fiddling, Howard has painted many of the great old time musicians, both living and gone.

Together, Spencer & Rains have performed and taught nationally and internationally, preserving and building upon the traditions of their region. The husband and wife duo are known for their twin fiddle harmony, which is a product of the influence of midwestern Scandinavian fiddlers Tricia heard as a child. At the same time, Howard’s distinct repertoire reintroduces listeners to the pre-contest styles of Texas fiddling. That same sense of harmony is in their vocals, as well, which they pull from all manner of American folk music. Both multi-instrumentalists, they are steeped in tradition and are dedicated to the preservation, performance, and teaching of old time music.
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Howard and Tricia’s recordings can be found on the Old Time Tiki Parlour label where Howard also works as chief graphic designer and Tricia does hand lettering.

The Sunny Mountain Serenaders

The Sunny Mountain Serenaders feature three of the most accomplished, steeped-in-the-tradition old-time musicians you’ll find anywhere.

Mark Campbell, who was raised in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, has won many ribbons at Southern fiddle contests, including 1st Prize at Clifftop in 2001. He is an unrepentant booster of Virginia music and a long-time musical mentor to scores of folks in the Richmond area. When he’s not playing with the Serenaders, Mark enjoys playing with his wife and daughters, known collectively as The Campbell Family Band. Mark also is an accomplished landscape painter.

Native Virginian Mac Traynham, who plays banjo and harmonica and sings lead with the Serenaders, may be best known for the soulful tight-harmony duets that he sings and plays with his wife, Jenny. He’s another guy who’s papered his walls with fiddlers convention prize ribbons. Mac lives in the country, near Floyd, VA, and is a full-time musician, banjo builder, cabinetmaker, and farmer.

John Schwab is the guy who literally wrote the book on playing old-time backup guitar. He’s anchored the rhythm sections of several fine bands, including The Hoover Uprights, who took the blue ribbon in the traditional band contest at Clifftop in 2001 and again in 2003. John plays his old Gibson archtop guitar and sings harmony with the Serenaders.

Gina Furtado

Gina Furtado’s innovative and unique musicianship and songwriting, although based in traditional music modalities, breaks free from the assumed constructs and makes a new musical statement that’s influenced by emotion, is played with the highest skill, and expresses an enormous verve and vitality.

With an intent to use the banjo as a medium of personal expression, Furtado moves through varied modes of musical treatments. Although she’s known mainly known for her work as the banjo player for Chris Jones and the Night Drivers, she has a long history with her banjo. Born and raised in Front Royal, Virginia, Gina began touring up and down the east coast in her tween years with her siblings, earning countless ribbons from fiddlers conventions, a strong reputation in the regional bluegrass scene, and a stamp from Bluegrass Today as “absurdly talented”. She later played in a number of regional acts (Blue Light Special, New Girls Nite Out, On the Run, Bud’s Collective) and has made her international touring exposure with Chris Jones and the Night Drivers soon after joining the group. She is sought after as a teacher privately and at camps across the country. Her new album, True Colors, was released in September 2017 and debuted at #13 on Bluegrass Billboard Charts, and had two #1 songs on Bluegrass Today Charts! Gina was featured on the cover of Banjo Newsletter in the December 2017 issue, along with her original tune “Saylor’s Creek”. She was a nominee for the 2018 Internaional Bluegrass Music Association’s Banjo Player of the Year.
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