BIOS

Aaron Combs - Vocals, fiddle, guitar, songwriter

I played my first gig in a bar in Omaha, Nebraska at the age of 18. One year later, I decided to expand my musical horizons by hitch-hiking across the western U.S. with a guitar and a pack. As you can imagine, this resulted in many musical adventures. During this time, I played in several Latin-jazz bands such as the Cocabola and The BBC in Eugene Oregon. I even had the opportunity to build several guitars and violins. In 1980 I decided to get serious about music and studied music at the University of Oregon and later at New Mexico Highlands University. I moved to New Mexico in 1984 and continued to perform locally and in Guatemala. In 1991 I married a wonderful Venezuelan woman, moved to Venezuela and had a couple of beautiful twins. While there I played in a group called Grupo Criollo which was affiliated with the Universidad Simón Bolívar.

After moving back to Albuquerque, I started playing music with various groups including an old-timey bluegrass band, Echo Canyon, and a mariachi group, Mariachi Serenata, and much later, a traditional Western Swing group called The Curio Cowboys. I recently had the great honor to jam with the hillbilly-jazz fiddle legend Vassar Clements at the 2003 Albuquerque Folk Festival.

Bill Dufault - Vocals, mandolin, songwriter and guitar

I grew up in and around the Boston area listening to 60’s and 70’s type music. I started playing drums at the age of 15 and played in a high school rock and roll band. We did songs from Steppenwolf, Eric Clapton, Jethro Tull etc..

In 1977 I drove my $300 Ford Futura to Colorado and ended up in New Mexico. It wasn’t until I went to the Telluride Bluegrass Festival in 1984 that I realized that I wanted to learn to flat-pick and play bluegrass music.

After that, I was in and out of bluegrass jams and bands throughout the late 80’s and 90’s. 1990 was a special year for me. I bought my first mandolin and celebrated the birth of my daughter.

While at work at UNM, I would occasionally see a guy I thought looked like John Cleese from Monty Python. As luck would have it, this guy (Tony Smith) was a bluegrass musician with connections to a bluegrass band called the Fiasco Brothers. After two years of playing with the “bros”, we branched off and formed our own band called the “Swampcoolers.”

Jon Bryan - banjos, ukuleles, vocals and tunes

I have been a fan of country string band music since I was barely tall enough to see over the top of my uncle's pedal steel. I was raised a Baptist (twice on Sunday, plus Wednesday night prayer meeting), singing at the top of my lungs, fanning my own cool breeze in the humid Oklahoma summer.  My first (analog) computer was a player piano. I really loved threading the rolls and studying the workings, but my legs were too short to reach so I sat on the floor and worked the pedals by hand. When the elementary school started a band, I became the tuba player by default, being both the largest and the latest to the first rehearsal. My musically-inclined kin moved to California, so I taught myself a little guitar, played tuba in the band, and sang in the school choir. I made a half-hearted attempt at a college musical education, tried my hand at uranium mining and 105mm cannon marksmanship, but eventually returned to (digital) computers. I took up the banjo in earnest about fifteen years ago when TV got too bad to watch. I haven't noticed it getting any better lately.

Tony Smith - Acoustic guitar, vocals and songwriter

I had a mid-life crisis at age 40. I didn't go buy a new car or get a new wife but I did buy a new guitar. Without knowing much about bluegrass music or the local bluegrass scene, I managed to meet and start playing with an established band in Albuquerque called the Fiasco Brothers Bluegrass Band. Those guys had the patience of Job to put up with me for the first several years. I was like a band fungus…something that just wouldn’t go away. In the process of learning tunes I came to the realization that I could write and compose music also. One thing led to another and eventually I migrated with a few others to form the “Swampcoolers”. My favorite guitar is a Pimental acoustic dreadnought made here in Albuquerque New Mexico.

Art Jarvis - Bass, vocals

I started with guitar, playing rock & roll in high school.  I played drums in college and the navy but also started playing bass in college in North Carolina after being introduced to bluegrass.   I played with Jimmy Cox in the Maine Grass in New England during the  early 1970's but took a musical sabbatical to fly airplanes for Southwest Airlines for 25 years.  Then I dusted off the bass and have been playing locally with several bluegrass groups for the last 3 years.

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