-- Matt Watroba, Sing Out Magazine

Steve and Cindy have been performing together for 20 years, bringing together their love of traditional music and their wealth of original songs. Accompanying themselves with guitar, concertina and banjo, their live performances are known for rich harmony, compelling songs and a good dose of humor.

Steve Gillette has been writing songs since the 1960's. His songs have been covered by Ian and Sylvia, John Denver, Garth Brooks, Linda Ronstadt, Tammy Wynette, and many others. But Steve's own versions are some of the best, with his warm baritone voice and his unique finger-picking guitar style (using a flat-pick and two fingers). Steve has many solo and duo (with Cindy Mangsen) recordings available. His most recent solo album, Texas and Tennessee, was named one of the Top Ten Folk Albums of the Year by Tower Records. Steve has conducted songwriting workshops all over the US and Canada, and is on the Board of Directors of the Kerrville Folk Festival. He is author of the book Songwriting and the Creative Process, a standard text in songwriting groups.

Cindy Mangsen is "one of the finest singers in American folk music" (Come for to Sing). Accompanying herself on guitar, banjo, concertina, or mountain dulcimer, Cindy is known for her compelling interpretations of traditional ballads, as well as for her own writing and her wonderful ear for harmony. She has recorded several solo albums (Songs of Experience received the Editor's Choice Award from Crossroads), as well as collaborations with Steve Gillette, Priscilla Herdman, Anne Hills, and Michael Smith. Her latest solo album, Cat Tales, is devoted to "songs of the feline persuasion." Cindy has led singing and ballad workshops at the Augusta Heritage Center in West Virginia and The Woods in Ontario, Canada.

Steve & Cindy's web site

Lou and Peter Berryman were both raised in Appleton, WI, and began playing music together in high school during the sixties. During the following nomadic decade, Lou studied classical voice and music theory in college while Peter continued an unfocused fascination with surrealist art, beatnik poetry, and jug band music. Early influences of American and British musical comedy and folk music fed a growing songbag of their original songs. Their brief marriage in the early seventies resolved into a lifelong friendship, and by the late seventies and early eighties they were honing their skills playing regular weekly concerts at a music club in Madison, becoming full-time musicians and songwriters in 1979.

During those early years they were motivated to write new songs every week, many about the history, cheese, beer and strange politics of their home state. By the mid '80s they were traveling all across the country, still writing and singing, but now with a broader perspective, finding that the quirks of their home state were not so much Midwestern as human. In these twenty-five years of performing together, Lou and Peter have produced almost twenty albums and three songbooks worth of hilarious, quirky, yet oddly profound songs, rich with word play and interesting images.

Lou and Peter have released almost twenty recordings and are working on their fourth songbook. Pete Seeger, Tom Paxton and Tom Lehrer count themselves among their fans. Their work has appeared in numerous compilations such as the popular RISE UP SINGING songbook, in periodicles like SING OUT! Magazine, and in many audio collections. Berryman songs are being sung around the world by a legion of professional musicians including Peter, Paul and Mary, Garrison Keillor and Peggy Seeger, as well as shower singers everywhere. They have appeared numerous times on such national programs as MPR's A Prairie Home Companion and NPR's Weekend Edition, and tour across North America throughout the year.

Lou and Peter live about a mile from each other in Madison, Wisconsin, with their respective spouses of almost thirty years, Mark Hodgson and Kristi Seifert.

NOTE: If you're a fan of acoustic music, you will also enjoy An Evening with Scott Ainslie