Travis Stuart, Micah Spence, and Deb Shebish play hard driving Old-Time Music. Based in North Carolina and Georgia, they combine their distinctive old-time styles to create a powerful and nuanced trio of fiddle, banjo, and vocals. Stuart, Spence & Shebish headlined the 2024 Rootsinphytaa Bluegrass festival in Finland.
Travis and Deb were granted the prestigious 2023 North Carolina Folklife Apprenticeship Grant and Travis Stuart is the recipient of the 2019 South Arts Folk & Traditional Arts Master Artist Fellowship. This dynamic trio breathes new life into traditional Old-Time music.
A Bethel native and Haywood County resident, Travis Stuart is a banjo player who has been performing old time music rooted in Western North Carolina for over twenty years. The backbone of bluegrass, old time string band music carries a legacy that is inescapable, and from his earliest days growing up, Stuart was steeped in that legacy. Playing his great-uncle Austin Stamley’s banjo, Stuart has mastered a local old time style and shared it around the United States and Europe, touring and recording alongside his twin brother, Trevor. As far as his music takes him, Stuart remembers to bring it on home, working to preserve and pass down Western North Carolina’s old time music to the next generation through teaching and mentoring. He has facilitated workshops and classes for Junior Appalachian Musicians and East Tennessee State University’s Bluegrass, Old Time, and Country Music Studies program. Travis Stuart is the recipient of the 2023 North Carolina Arts Council Folklife Apprenticeship as a mentor on Haywood County Old-Time music repertoire to Deb Shebish and was awarded the 2019 South Arts Folk & Traditional Arts Master Artist Fellowship.
DEB SHEBISH is a dynamic, nuanced, and versatile fiddler. Her playing conveys a distinctive style with an effortless mastery and infectious joy. Deb was awarded the 2023 North Carolina Arts Council Folklife Apprentice Grant to study Old-Time music under Travis Stuart of Haywood County, North Carolina. Deb fell in love with Old-Time and Irish fiddling in Bloomington, Indiana in 1998 and was greatly influenced by the musicians she met there. In 2000, she met Joe Dawson, (1928-2012), an old-time fiddler from south-central Indiana who grew up deeply immersed in the traditional music of the area. She loves to share his unique style and repertoire that she learned at Joe's weekly living room jams. Deb has toured nationally and internationally at venues including: Nashville's Ryman Auditorium with Mairead Ni Mhaonaigh and Ivan Goff, the United States Air Force Academy, Villanova University for the Irish Ambassador to the US, the Kelly House in Philadelphia for the Prince of Monaco, Waterford, Ireland Tall Ships Festival, Bangor, Maine's Celtic Crossroads Festival, and the Leith Folk Club in Scotland.
North Georgia native Micah Spence has been surrounded by Old-Time music his entire life. His father Jack, an avid 78rpm record collector and himself a musician, exposed him to traditional music from the 1920’s and 30’s and built his musical foundation by teaching him the fundamentals of American string-band music. After studying traditional music at East Tennessee State, Micah has toured nationally and internationally and as a fiddler for the Freight Hoppers. Micah has won numerous southeastern banjo and fiddle contests including first place banjo in 2017 at the Appalachian String Band Festival in Clifftop, West Virginia. A versatile multi-instrumentalist who is equally at home on banjo, fiddle and guitar, Micah adds commanding vocals to traditional ballads and blues.