Dance Around Molly
Bios
The members of Dance Around Molly have been playing together for many years.
The band consists of husband and wife team Galt Barber and Janet Herman,
and their long-time good friend Mike Long.
|
Galt Barber
Galt took up fiddle and button box as an adult and made rapid progress
by practicing intensely and taking workshops with some of the finest
visiting Irish players in California and at the Joe Mooney Summer School
in Ireland, the Seattle Scottish Feis, and the Celtic Music Interpretive Centre in
Cape Breton. He is also a self-taught fluent Irish (Gaelic) speaker who
has been profiled in the online magazine Beo, based out of Dublin.
His rousing, energetic fiddle playing is much in demand at gatherings of the
Bay Area "gaeltacht" (Irish-speaking community). For his "day gig," Galt
is a software programmer with the Human Genome Project at UC Santa Cruz.
|
|
|
Janet Herman
Janet holds a Ph.D. in Folklore/Ethnomusicology
from UCLA, where she studied traditional American and Anglo-Irish song
and instrumental music. She has taken extended workshops in
Gaelic singing at the Joe Mooney Summer School in Ireland
and the Seattle Scottish Feis, and is featured as a vocalist
on several recordings.
Active in Irish arts advocacy, she was a monthly host
of the former Eagle's Whistle Celtic show on KAZU public radio, and now is Chair of
the Santa Cruz/Monterey branch of Comhaltas Ceoltoiri Eireann (Irish Musicians'
Association), coordinator of the Monterey Bay Irish Film Festival,
and an instructor and board member for Community Music School of Santa Cruz.
As a folklorist she recently conducted oral histories with legendary
Scottish fiddlers Buddy MacMaster and Theresa MacLellan of Nova Scotia for
the Cape Breton Celtic Music Centre Archives.
|
|
|
Michael Long
Though his main focus is guitar, Mike plays pretty much anything
with strings. He is also an assiduous collector of Irish tunes, and
is the compiler of the King Street Sessions, a hefty
tunebook popular with session players throughout California and beyond.
In addition to his work with Dance Around Molly, Mike for many years
has been the lead musician for English Country Dancers of Santa Cruz.
In his other life, he's an innovator in security holography technology and
a partner in Pacific Holographics.
|
|
|