2025 Camp I – Instructors
Susan Cattaneo
Susan Cattaneo is one of Boston’s most respected songwriters. Respectful of tradition, but not bound by it, Susan blends rock, folk and blues with a healthy dose of country. Call it New England Americana with a twang.
Susan’s latest project, The Hammer and The Heart is a double album with an electric side and an acoustic side. The album charted at #1 on the Billboard Heatseekers Chart. Her single “Work Hard Love Harder” was the #1 song on Folk Radio in August and the album was a top 5 Folk Radio Album. The album has also been nominated for five Independent Music Awards including Best Country Album, Best Producer and Best Acoustic Single. The album reflects her love for collaboration the record features 40 local and national artists including Mark Erelli, The Bottle Rockets, Bill Kirchen, Jennifer Kimball, Dennis Brennan and Jenee Halstead just to name a few.
Over the past three years, she was an Emerging Artist at Falcon Ridge Folk Festival and a finalist or winner at some of the country’s most prestigious songwriting and music contests including: Kerrville’s New Folk Contest, the Philadelphia Songwriters Project and at the Wildflower Festival Songwriters Contest, the International Acoustic Music Awards, the Independent Music Awards, the 5 Unsigned Only Song Contest, the USA Songwriting Competition, the Mountain Stage New Song Contest and the Mid-Atlantic Song Contest.
Susan has also been teaching songwriting at the Berklee College of Music for over 15 years and performed all over New England with Western Mass trio The Boxcar Lilies. (Last update 2021)
John Corzine
John Corzine has been part of the southern California acoustic music scene for more than 40 years. Festivals and contests, Disneyland and dance floors, coffee houses and concert halls — John has performed throughout the southland, having gathered a collection of some of the best bluegrass, old-time, country and folk music you’ll find. Influenced and inspired for life by meeting Doc Watson at age of 9 years old, John spent his early years in local flatpicking and clawhammer banjo contests and began performing bluegrass and old-time music professionally shortly thereafter. John performed and toured with Philo/Flying Fish recording artists Jim Ringer and Mary McCaslin, and was featured on Mary’s A Life and Time album.
John has played in many area bands over the years, often with his wife Peggy Corzine on bass and vocals. John and Peggy currently perform with their youngest son Cody as the Corzines, and you can hear him this summer with the Coyote Brothers at the California Bluegrass Association’s Father’s Day Festival in Grass Valley, CA.
John comes to Camp for the first time this year to share his teaching and performing experience in the use of the guitar as a lead instrument, as the rhythmic foundation in a bluegrass and old-time band setting, and as the melodic and complementary background to vocal performance. (Last update 2021)
Dave Firestine
Dave pulls out the “take no prisoners” style of playing at every dance – bringing the tunes to their full potential and beyond. He is a tune-meister and music jams are super fun when he is in the driver’s seat.
Originally a drummer, his strong sense of rhythm and syncopation is the foundation of his playing and tune writing, and truthfully he is never happier than when he gets to pull out the laptop drum kit to back swing and honky tonk tunes. Don’t worry, he can access his sensitive side when playing waltzes and beautiful melodies.
Dave is a music vagrant retiree now, but before that, he was Senior Gyzmologist building lightning detection systems. He is currently playing with the dance bands STEAM! (www.dancetosteam.com) and The Privy Tippers.
Katie Glassman
Katie Glassman is one of the country’s most renowned and decorated Texas-style and swing fiddlers, as well as an accomplished songwriter, singer, and a highly sought after educator. Katie is a 4-time National Swing Fiddle Champion and 2-time National Divisional Champion, to mention a few of her accolades.
For 6 years Katie toured and recorded with the renowned trio, The Western Flyers, winners of 2018 Ameripolitan Awards “Best Western Swing Group” and Western Music Association and the Academy of Western Artists “Western Swing Album of the Year” award for Wild Blue Yonder.
As an educator, Katie is the founder, owner, and primary instructor at the online fiddle academy, FiddleSchool.com. Since Fiddle School opened in 2018, her thorough online curriculum has given fiddlers around the world the opportunity to learn, improve, and progress in Texas-style fiddling, western swing, and early jazz. Offering over 1,000 sequential instructional videos and countless webinars on fiddling and improvisation, Katie is also an innovator, creating a modern curriculum for a traditional American art form. (Last update 2023)
Cara Luft
Juno award winner Cara Luft is that rare artist steeped in folk and traditional roots music almost from birth, yet willing to alter the fabric, stretch the boundaries and fearlessly bend genres and styles. As a founding member of The Wailin’ Jennys, she released several albums with them, and more after she set out on a solo career, and even more as a member of the duo The Small Glories. She’s a fine songwriter, singer, guitarist and banjoist. Admittedly, she had a pretty good head start, growing up in a folk music household with her dad, Barry Luft, who’s been called “the Pete Seeger of Canada.”
Of her and her work, we’ve read: “you don’t want to be without this disc” (Wildy’s World), “a consummate performer” (Americana UK), “Cara’s warm alto vocals are sinfully sweet” and “Luft is the perfect blend of lightness and gutsy rock chick” (PopMatters), “Cara knocks our socks off with her best recorded work to date” (No Depression). One writer’s only complaint was that Cara was Canadian and not American, stating “we can’t claim her as a national treasure.” OK, that’s enough, but there are many more.
Yes, she can teach. Yes, she can work with you on both your playing and songwriting. But mostly, she’s just about as much fun as anyone we’ve ever seen. (Last update 2018)
Ann Luna
While “that thing’s bigger’n she is,” Anne Luna is a true presence on stage and makes playing the bass look easy. Her playing is graceful and elegant, yet precise and hard-driving with a sweet tone that enhances and complements any group she plays with. She is equally at home playing bluegrass, folk, country, western, and even Irish traditional music and jazz.
Anne has extensive recording and performance experience having recorded on over 20 albums with a number of distinguished musicians including Alan Munde, Kenny Maines, and Amanda Shires. Most notably, as a member of The Hard Road Trio along with her longtime musical collaborators Steve Smith and Chris Sanders, Anne released 3 critically acclaimed albums between 2012 and 2019.
As an accomplished and enthusiastic instructor, Anne’s energy and easy-going manner create a welcoming learning environment for students of every background and experience level. She has been featured in both the publication and in their online lesson archive of Bluegrass Unlimited. Jason Heath featured Anne on both his Contrabass Conversations podcast and on his YouTube channel (Double Bass HQ). Her own YouTube channel features an instructional series, “Bass Bites”, with an ever-growing, enthusiastic audience. (Last update 2024)
Lewis Mock
Lewis Mock is a multi-instrumentalist/vocalist who began performing professionally at eight years of age.
In 1990 he became the house guitarist at the Broadmoor International Hotel and Resort in Colorado Springs, where for almost twenty-seven years, he performed nightly. He has opened for many internationally known artists, and has performed with award-winning artists: Melissa Manchester, Maureen McGovern, Suzy Bogguss, and Debbie Boone, and the John Denver Band.
He is a multiple award winning songwriter. He has performed on award-winning national television commercials and movie soundtracks. His licks have been published in Guitar Player Magazine. For ten years he was a Professor at the Colorado Springs Conservatory teaching guitar and musicianship, and is a regular instructor at the Colorado Roots Music Camps. He is a 2018 inductee into the Kansas Music Hall of Fame.
Lewis is currently recording, writing, and performing with the Colorado bluegrass powerhouse, the Red Mountain Boys. (Update 2024)
Cosy Sheridan
Cosy Sheridan first appeared on the national folk scene in 1992 when she won the songwriting contests at The Kerrville Folk Festival and The Telluride Bluegrass Festival. The Boston Globe dubbed her “one of the best new singer-songwriters in the United States.”
She is a veteran touring performer of the folk coffeehouses from Boston to Seattle, as well as The Cowgirl Hall of Fame, Carnegie Hall and on the Jerry Lewis Telethon. “You can’t make it into double digits, and continue touring for twenty or so years, unless you know what you’re doing, and do it well,” wrote The Chicago Examiner.
Her 2021 CD A Beautiful Sound charted in the Top 10 on the folk radio charts, as did her 2018 release My Fence & My Neighbor. Her CD Pretty Bird was listed among Sing Out Magazine’s Great CDs of 2014.
When the pandemic hit she came off the road and now reaches her audience through her weekly Tuesday morning livestream concerts. She plays a percussive guitar style backed backed up by bass player Charlie Koch.
Cosy teaches classes in songwriting, performance and guitar at workshops and adult music camps across the country. She is the director of Moab Folk Camp in Moab, Utah.
Doug Smith
Doug Smith, winner of the 2006 International Fingerstyle Guitar Championship, weaves together folk, classical, jazz and contemporary forms into a unique, flowing fingerpicking style recalling the playing of Chet Atkins, Leo Kottke, Michael Hedges, and Alex de Grassi. Of his playing, Billboard writes “Inviting melodies… stunning fingerpicking”; Fingerstyle Guitar magazine raves “Smith’s fretboard brilliance continues to dazzle.”
He’s been heard nationwide on radio and TV, including The Discovery Channel, Martha Stewart Living, CNN, TNN, ESPN, and Encore. He also played guitar on the soundtracks for the movies Moll Flanders, Twister, and August Rush.
Doug has released six of his own albums, and in 2005, he earned a Grammy award for his role in the album Henry Mancini: Pink Guitar along with a Who’s Who of fingerstyle guitarists including Laurence Juber, Pat Donohue, Ed Gerhard, Mark Hanson and William Coulter. (Last update 2018)
Steve Smith
Steve Smith is not only known as one of this country’s top mandolin players but also as an outstanding educator. Along with his work with the Roots/Bluegrass group, The Hard Road Trio, Steve has been on faculty at a host of camps. He’s appeared at some of the country’s largest festivals and venues including Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, High Mountain Hay Fever, RockyGrass, Swallow Hill, the Freight and Salvage, Oklahoma International Bluegrass Festival, the Big Horn Mountain Festival, and the Minnesota Old-time and Bluegrass Festival. With the Las Cruces (NM) Symphony, he has performed works of William Grant Still, George Gershwin and George Crumb and music from the show “Chicago.”
In his thirty years of touring, he’s also performed in Ireland, Germany, France, Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Cuba and the US Virgin Islands. He has also performed in musical theater in Cotton Patch Gospel (multi-instrumentalist, vocalist and actor) and the Robber Bride Groom; he composed and performed the score for a production of the Sam Sheppard play “Curse of the Starving Class.”
Steve has appeared on over 30 albums as performer and producer with musicians including Jim Hurst, Mitch Perry, Tim May, banjoist Bill Evans, Alan Munde and Tim O’Brien. His music has been heard on countless radio stations across the US and on the Discovery Channel, The History Channel and even the Weather Channel. (Last update 2018)
Assistant to the Director
Charlie Koch
Charlie Koch has trained horses, sailed across the Atlantic more than once, and fronted an R&B band. He skippered a race boat for Buckminster Fuller. He whipped in for a fox hunt in Ireland and saddle-broke young horses on a breeding farm in France. He taught tennis, skiing, and horseback riding. He trained as a body-oriented psychotherapist. These days, he tours playing bass for singer/songwriter Cosy Sheridan.