Joe Newberry, Mike Compton and Jesse Milnes will join us in July.
Mike Compton and Joe Newberry play traditional and new American music that honors the past and forges a path toward the new tradition of the future. While two musicians do not a bluegrass band make, their music rings true to fans of bluegrass, early country, blues, gospel, and string band music. Together, Compton & Newberry are shining a much-deserved contemporary light on the roots, as they tend to the branches. too.
Compton & Newberry are masters of their craft whose combined pedigree speaks for itself. In addition to multiple IMBA and Grammy nominations and wins, their talents have been featured on “A Prairie Home Companion,” the Transatlantic Sessions, the soundtracks to “Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?” and “Cold Mountain”, as well as numerous other popular collaborations with a diverse range of artists and styles. The duo can be counted on to showcase the sounds that laid the foundation for ragtime, country, folk, rural blues and Americana, as well as other sounds that dominate radio and music charts today.
A Compton & Newberry program features a familiar combination of tunes and songs from the great American songbag mixed with their own newly composed numbers which are already taking their rightful place in the new tradition. They are just the artists to bring fans together for a multi-generational celebration of music we all can love.
Jesse Milnes grew up in the world of West Virginia old-time music. Though he is widely known as a fiddle player, Jesse’s first instrument was a guitar and he has developed a personal style of finger-picking, drawing on influences from blues to bluegrass to country.
He has played fiddle and guitar with many country, old-time and bluegrass bands over the years, including the Sweetback Sisters, a country band for which he was also a main songwriter. Jesse has won many local and regional fiddle contests, including the WV State Folk Festival in Glenville, WV, and the Ed Haley Fiddle Contest in Ashland, KY.
Jesse and his wife, Emily Miller, have toured in Australia and California and recorded an album as a duo. They also are both part of the Jesse Milnes Band, and live in Elkins, WV with their two children.
