Bill and Libby Hicks (Special Event)

Performing together since 1982, Bill and Libby have had plenty of time to merge minds and styles and have developed a simpatico duet style on fiddle, guitar and keyboard that often makes people check to see if it really is only two people playing. In the past 10 years, along with performing and playing for dances, they have turned their attention to passing along the fun of old-time music. On several occasions they been on the staff of the Augusta Heritage Workshops on the campus of Davis and Elkins College in WVA, teaching musicians from all over the world about the distinguishing points of southern Appalachian fiddle and guitar styles and old-time string band singing. Last year they were the staff musicians at the National Storytelling Conference in Kingsport, Tennessee.Bill and Libby have been mainstays of the NC traditional music scene since the 1970s. Libby was the harmonizing half of a duet with Lightnin' Wells for seven years. They specialized in the old-time "brother duet" style of singing-- (with Libby playing guitar and singing Charlie, Earl, Ira, or Alton's parts usually, depending on which pair of brothers they were "borrowing from"-- or rather "paying tribute to" at the time). With a repertoire of hundreds of songs, they did paying jobs when they could find them-- at bars (perfect for the drinking and prison songs), victory parties for losing candidates, and the odd concert spot that family members coerced bosses and friends into hiring them for. In addition, they not only accepted but sought out opportunities to entertain for free any group that would appreciate the old sentimental songs--which meant hundreds of performances at church picnics, senior citizen groups and nursing homes (the optimum audience--they knew the words to all the songs and couldn't leave the building.) The only recordings that remain of that duet are somewhat bootleg and get swapped around sometimes at festivals.Bill, at the same time, was finding fame if not fortune touring the United States and Europe in funky vans as a founding member of the Red Clay Ramblers. He made a name for himself all over the map with his energetic fiddling, developed over years of seeking out and learning literally at the feet of the old masters such as Tommy Jarrell and Burl Hammons. His mom was mighty proud when the band performed off-Broadway in 1975 in the smash-hit play Diamond Studs. Bill also has made a place for himself in thousands of record (and now CD) collections with a long string of recordings with the Ramblers, featuring his fiddling as well as some original songs. In 1995, the Merle Watson Festival sponsored a reunion of his first band, the Fuzzy Mountain String Band, to celebrate the reissue on CD by Rounder Records of their early '70s recordings of fiddle tunes, still recognized as the "gold standard" of string band music. Those two records comprise part of the grounding repertoire of many old-time musicians all over the planet even today. (They can also be had as part of the Mel Bay instruction book series on the Fuzzy Mountain String Band edited by Dix Bruce.) For more info on Bill's career, see the Original Red Clay Ramblers, a website devoted to the original band and its members.