About Bernice Lewis

Bernice Lewis has been a national touring artist for three decades. Her performing resume includes almost every grassroots and established venue in the U.S,, including the Kerrville Folk Festival, the Winnipeg Folk Festival, the Kennedy Center, Uncle Calvin’s, etc. She’s been performing at house concerts since the very beginning of her career, and finds them to be the most satisfying environment for connecting with audiences and sharing her gifts.

She is a Singer/Songwriter, a published poet, a producer and recording artist with six albums to her credit, and an educator extraordinaire. She has worked with Dar Williams, Bobby McFerrin, Rosanne Cash, Guy van Duser, Peter. Paul, and Mary, Dixie Chicks, Christine Lavin, Patty Griffin, Patty Larkin…the list is endless. For five summers, she was Campus Bard at the The Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, NY. She has also taught and performed at Kripalu Center for Yoga and Esalen Institute. In 2009, she was awarded an Artist in Residence position by the National Park Service. She is a Research Associate of Music at Williams College in Williamstown, MA, where she currently teaches songwriting and Performing. She also teaches at Colorado College, as well as at schools, song camps, and retreat centers. Her writings and recordings will be archived in the Southwest Collection at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, TX. She’s had a thirty-year daily yoga practice, loves good coffee, and her religion is the Grand Canyon.

About Brian Kalinec

Texan Brian Kalinec has been called “a combination of Woody Guthrie, John Steinbeck, James Taylor, and Rodney Crowell in the stories he tells” in a review in music magazine Rootsy. He has also been described by Robert Bartosh of Roots Music Report “one of the most creative songwriters from the Texas music scene”. Those comments perfectly sum up Brian’s drive to write songs with purpose. When he returned to performing after a twenty year absence, songwriting became his primary focus. As a result of his efforts, Brian has received a considerable recognition here and abroad, in events such as a winner of the Songwriter Serenade Competition and the Big Top Chautauqua Song Contest, and second place in the Woody Guthrie Song Contest and a finalist in the UK Songwriting Contest, to name a few.

Brian is known not only for his songwriting but as a guitarist as well, having garnered nominations for both Songwriter of the Year and Musician of the Year in the Texas Music Awards in the recent past. He has appeared at the Kerrville Folk Festival, and venues such as Uncle Calvin’s in Dallas, The Bugle Boy in La Grange, and as a featured guest on Rich Warren’s Folkstage on WFMT in Chicago. Brian and his wife Pam own Berkalin Records, a label which is home to a number of well-respected folk and Americana artists.