Scott Odena started playing guitar at about age 11 and also played trombone
in the school band. He received his first dulcimer for Christmas in 1987
and because no one was teaching at the time it sat in the closet for the
next two years. When he did start taking lessons on the dulcimer he placed
3rd in his first competition in the Texas State Dulcimer contest and a
year later in 1991 he placed 1st on the Texas State Dulcimer contest and
3rd in the National Competition. In 1992, Scott won the Southern Region
Dulcimer Championship in Mountain View, Arkansas and then won the National
Dulcimer Championship in Whinfield, Kansas in September of 1992. Along
with lap dulcimer and guitar, Scott plays banjo, mandolin and a few other
odd instruments. Scott plays banjo with the Arkansas Country Dance Society
band on Friday nights in North Little Rock, AR. Scott also teaches workshops
and has performed at the Ozark Folk Center in Mountain View, AR; Lone Star
State Dulcimer Festival, Glenrose, TX; Memphis Dulcimer Festival; Winter
Festival of Acoustic Music, Irving, TX; Appalachian State University, Boone,
NC; and many others.
Chris grew up in Arkansas and learned to fiddle from his father with the Peterson family band and from Ken Blessing while sawing out dance tunes for the Arkansas Country Dance Society dances in Little Rock. Currently he battles the forces of graduate school at the University of Texas in Austin in pursuit of a master’s degree in Acoustics. In order to balance out the effects of engineering studies, Chris breaks out the fiddle quite often and joins the Austin dance bands, meets up with Peterson’s Original Ragtime Band
(http://members.aol.com/mntharmony/ragtime.html – new CD for 1998!), and convenes with his folk/rock band WAGON (http://www.wagon1.com – High Tone Records and Glitterhouse Records) for songwriting and touring. Over the past 25 years, he has played a wide assortment of gigs and dances all over the USA and throughout Europe.
David is Professor of Math and the Director of the Ozark Institute at the
University of Central Arkansas in Conway. He and his wife Donna have taught
clogging for twenty-one years. In 1978 he started what is now the Arkansas
Country Dance Society. He is a past president, a dance leader and musican
and the director of the Cadron Creek Cloggers. He is the leader of the
"Peterson's Original Ragtime Band." and is a craftsman of musical instruments. David has written a book on Arkansas Country Dances and has been involved in producing dance videos for educational TV and was awarded a grant to write lesson plans for dance in the Arkansas schools.
Donna is a secretary in the Philosophy department at the University of
Central Arkansas in Conway. She is a musican in the Arkansas Country Dance
Society Band and is a past Secretary/treasurer of ACDS. She is a musician
and singer in the "Peterson's Original Ragtime Band."
Grover played the bass with the Petersons from 1985 until he retired
from the band in 2003. That is
also when he started playing with the Arkansas Country Dance Society. He has
played an assortment of instruments since the age of 8 and has played with the
Dallas Symphony Orchestra and various bands throughout the years. He has
performed at Six Flags Over Texas at Arlington, TX; Silver Dollar City in
Branson, MO; Riverfest at Little Rock, AR and the Scott Joplin Ragtime
Festival at Sedalia, MO. Grover has also played for Scottish Dances at
Batesville, Dallas, Little Rock, Memphis, Nashville and Atlanta. Grover has
played at the Ozark Folk Center at Mountain View, AR since 1986 and is
currently playing fiddle with the Bon Temps Cajun Band..
Send Email to band at RagtimeBand@GroverSmith.com
by clicking
here.
This page updated on September 29, 2003
© Mountain Harmony Music Co. 1997