Performers Bios 2021

Rick Dougherty doesn’t remember a time when he didn’t sing, and his beautiful tenor voice has garnered him compliments from Judy Collins, Chet Atkins and Tom Paxton, to name just a few. It has also led to a long and wide-ranging career in music. As a youth he performed solo throughout the West, developing a versatile finger-style guitar technique to accompany himself and expanding his repertoire from folk to standards and jazz. He graduated Sonoma State University in 1987 and in the following thirteen years directed 37 operas, and was the arranger for two a cappella groups.

In 1990 he became a member of The Limeliters and performed with them until 2003 when he left the group to sing with Glenn Yarbrough as part of the “This Land Is Your Land” folk tour. At the end of the tour in 2005, he was invited to join The Kingston Trio with whom he performed nationwide until late 2017.

Rick continues to perform across the country and conducts workshops on voice and guitar. He recently published “Sounding Good on One Guitar,” a guitar manual for beginning to advanced intermediate players which has received excellent reviews.

He is currently working on a CD which, at the rate things are going, should be finished just before the polar caps melt.

In the Fall of 2018, Rick announced that he and George Grove would be teaming up with Jerry Siggins, a fabulous lead baritone, to form a new trio, The Folk Legends, now called the Folk Legacy Trio. They performed several shows in the Fall of 2018, and are back on tour in 2019.

I am thrilled to announce that George Grove and I have teamed up with Jerry Siggins, a fabulous lead baritone, to form a new trio, the Folk Legacy Trio (briefly called, The Folk Legends). Of course you all know that George and I were most recently members of the Kingston Trio; George was with them for a few weeks short of 41 years, and I for 12.

Jerry was a member of the Dapper Dans, the famous barbershop quartet that performed at Disneyland for fifteen years in California, Florida and Tokyo. He then sang for five years with an Irish band, and for the past 27 years he has been singing lead with the famous 50s group, The Diamonds. Jerry brings all that experience and his wonderful voice to the new trio and we can’t wait for you to hear how those harmonies ring out.

We’ll be performing what George calls the “Great American Folksong Book,” singing music that will span then entire Folk Era; from the Weavers, Merle Travis and Tennessee Ernie Ford in the early 50s through the commercial success of such groups as The Kingston Trio, Peter, Paul & Mary, The Chad Mitchell Trio and The Brothers Four as well as solo performers Tom Paxton, Judy Collins, Joan Baez, Gordon Lightfoot, John Denver and many others.

It will be wonderful to expand into this broad range of music with such powerful vocals and we hope you’ll have a chance to hear us once we start touring.

Released From Quiet is the Singer Songwriter IndieRock Duo from Bellevue, WA, consisting of Chris Kendziorski (guitar/vocals), and Mary Yeager (cajun/vocal/ukulele).  Songs of the road, out of this world love, and introspection weave their way into RFQ songs.  Sung with gravelly angst & groovy rhythms, this duo is sure to kick up a variety of emotions that remind us to live this life we love and love this life we live.

Chris was born and raised in southern Japan.  Living as a civilian near Sasebo U.S. Naval Base, his Dad was a math teacher.  After graduating high school, Chris moved to the states and attended Berklee College of Music in Boston, MA.  Feeling too far away from his home in Japan, Chris moved to Hawaii and Oregon before finding a place that finally felt like a new home in the Pacific Northwest.

Mary began her journey in the sticks of Alaska.  Her first venture out of the Last Frontier was in a VW bug along with 6 siblings, her Mom and a cat – on a road trip down the unpaved AlCan (Alaska-Canada) Highway to Seattle, Washington.  Her travels have found her living on islands at sea level all the way up to 10,200 ft. elevation in Colorado.  Once she found herself back in the Pacific Northwest, she began to focus on her drumming and songwriting.

Colorado acoustic folk band Pennies on the Track is in it for the love of Music and friendship.  They find one of Life’s greatest joys is singing harmonies and sharing songs written from the hearts on their sleeves.  Sprinkle in a few tunes from across the folk-bluegrass-country-rock songbook, and there’s something for just about everyone!

PB&J is the bluesy trio made up of Steve Peterson, Steve Beck and Jim Moore. All have played at Tumbleweed in the past, either solo, or in the bands Vinyl Transit and/or G-Cleftones.  Steve Peterson will be doing a workshop again this year on the CAGED chord system

Otter’s Holt are Barbara and David Denz, who met in graduate school in Oregon, and have been part of various permutations of traditional folk music groups in Oregon, Alaska, Maryland, Washington, and Canada for the past thirty-eight years.  Their preference as a duo is “eclectic Celtic music” that follows the Celts through their times and influences across Europe and North America, and the seas in between.

Noah Boys are Emmy award winning children’s performer and singer/songwriter Tim Noah and his son Jude Noah.  They perform some original tunes on violin and mandolin from the porch at the Pond Beyond.

Tim and Jude have been playing music with each other for 20 years since Jude picked up the violin at age 7.

Nathaniel Chapman is a singer/songwriter and recording artist native to the Pacific Northwest.  In 2015, he released his debut album “From Higher Ground To The Other Side,” and has recently released his second album through BentBeat Productions.  He is excited to be able to share his music with the Tumbleweed Music Festival!

Mo Mack, I confess, is a nickname. Legally I’m known as Morris McClellan. I mention it to introduce two older brothers, who dragged me into music. Mike, some five years my senior, was doing a credible imitation of Leadbelly when he was 15. He left the family three years later to embark on the life of a folk singer, after having indoctrinated the middle brother Bill in the joys of Bluegrass and old-timey music. Later, Bill made me learn to play the guitar, so he’d have someone to keep the rhythm while he played banjo, mandolin or fiddle. The three of us still play together when we can, and you never know what’s coming next: Cajun, Hawaiian, Gospel, Bluegrass, Blues, Dixieland, R&R, a Corrido of Mike’s or some strange hybrid Bill has thought up.

Once hooked, I delved into all forms of the blues and country, discovered Jimmie Rodgers, the Singing Brakeman, and fell hard for Honky Tonk music, Chicago Blues and early Rock & Roll. Anything close to the roots grabbed my attention. I was also listening to pop radio and was a dedicated Lovin’ Spoonful fan. As for schooling, it took me ten years and six different colleges, but in 1976 I finally escaped from the University of California at Santa Cruz with a degree in the History of Country & Westem Music and went to LA to start a band and be a songwriter.

By 1982, I had built a recording studio in my basement, and a friend of mine and I recorded an album called “A Collection of Favorite Christmas Carols.” We called Lewis Ross, who played all the parts, the “new American Guitar Ensemble.” It was the start of a business that came to be called the Revere-Lifedance Company.  This delightful Christmas album sold well enough for me to start a record label and a distribution company. We introduced the idea of playing music in a non-record retail store which the store would carry for sale. It came to be called “In-Store Play & Sell” marketing. It was a good run through the late 80’s and early 90’s, but then the internet began to happen, and the music business changed. Besides, I was selling primarily instrumental music, and where had my song-writing dreams gone? When the opportunity was offered by my partners to buy me out, it made sense.

I released my first album, “New & Used Tunes,” in 2000. For the next 10 years I worked with a couple of folk trios that performed around Portland. The second trio with John and Cynthia Boelling formed the basis for my second album, entitled “Dancing in the Light,” released in 2014. I continue to perform when and where I can, though the Covid pandemic interrupted that for all of us.