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Mark Simos & Friends
Watertown, MA, USA

"John Bloom"
Mark Simos - fiddle
Brendan Doyle - banjo
Jody Platt - tenor guitar
Rusty Neithammer - guitar
Karen Falkowski - bass

Mark Simos is a songwriter, tunesmith and composer, dance fiddler, and guitar and piano accompanist, who weaves a lifetime's love of many traditions—Irish, Southern old-time, New England, Quebeçois, bluegrass, and Klezmer among others—into innovative musical forms.

Two of his songs appear on the Grammy® Award-winning Best Bluegrass Album New Favorite by Allison Kraus and Union Station. Mark's original songs have been recorded by other respected artistssuch as, Laurie Lewis and Tom Rozum, Kate Brislin and Jody Stecher, the Del McCoury Band, Peter McLaughlin, Ranch Romance and Freyda Epstein.

Mark has fiddled and ivory-pounded for contra dances, square dances, English country dancing, Morris dancers and midnight waltzathons; he has instructed the unwary in fiddling, guitar and piano accompaniment, tunewriting and songwriting, and strange theories of modal harmony; at dances, private workshops, festivals, and fiddle and dance weeks such as Pinewoods, Ashokan, Lark in the Morning, Centrum Festival of American Fiddle Tunes, Fiddlehead, and Lady of the Lake. His fiddle tunes, waltzes, and other pieces of "traditional music from imaginary countries" are played by dance musicians around the country, and have been recorded by traditional bands such as Childsplay, the Hillbillies From Mars, Laurie Andres, and the American Cafe Orchestra.

www.devachan.com