Allie and Frank Lee.
North Carolina musicians Frank and Allie Lee will perform at the Coffeyville Community College Spencer/Rounds Performing Arts Theatre at 10:30 a.m. on Tuesday, October 15th, as part of the CCC Humanities Project. The performance is free and open to the public.
Frank and Allie (Bryson City, N.C.) are a clawhammer-playing duo. They swap banjos back and forth, mixing in guitars and harmonicas to accompany their harmony singing on favorite old time songs from the southeast. While they identify as an old time duo, they are known for using the label broadly, including blues, bluegrass, and spiritual songs in their performances.
Having made a name for himself as the syncopated, melodic player in The Freight Hoppers, Frank is a national treasure when it comes to clawhammer. He has an instructional DVD on Homespun and released four albums with The Freight Hoppers whom he toured North America and Europe. His ability to match a fiddler note-for-note is particularly unique. In the duo, Frank plays not only steel string banjo but also a low-pitched nylon string, fretless banjo.
Allie’s jumpstart into clawhammer came when she studied it for a week at John C. Campbell Folk School. Later that year, she met Frank in a banjo workshop, which led to her taking his class at Augusta Heritage Center a few years later. She played banjo and wrote songs in her band The Whipstitch Sallies, and was featured in the Banjo Babes calendar for 2016. Allie enjoys playing banjo to accompany her singing, Frank‘s fiddle playing, and Frank’s nylon string banjo playing.
Frank and Allie have taught banjo workshops across the country and in France with Allie teaching beginning and intermediate players, and Frank teaching advanced players. They also host a bi-annual old time music retreat called the Banjo-Fiddle Frolic in their town, which will next be held Nov 1-3, 2019.
Frank & Allie’s most recent album is Roll On, Clouds (2018), available through their website at www.frankandallie.com.