Bio
The Ozark Highballers began playing as a band in May of 2014 while busking at the Fayetteville, Arkansas farmer's market. Since then they have played at the Brooklyn Folk Festival, the Ozark Folk Center, the St. Louis Folk and Roots festival, and the Stephen Foster Old Time Weekend in Florida.
Clarke Buehling is a well-respected and renowned banjo player. His forte is classic banjo and he has file cabinets full of sheet music from the late 1800s to prove it. His previous band, the Skirtlifters, has been a staple of Ozark string band music since the 1980s. Clarke's expertise extends to include the earliest stroke and finger-style minstrel banjo playing. www.buehlingbanjo.com
Roy Pilgrim is a Fayetteville native who began playing music with neighbors at the age of eight. He is an avid student of early American fiddle music, and he is also a horse logger. He and Aviva live and garden on their farm just south of Fayetteville, Arkansas. He has recently recorded 10 segments of “Fine Fiddlers of the Ozarks" which is broadcast on Ozark Highlands Radio and focuses on popular and less known musicians and fiddle tunes from the Ozark Mountains.
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Seth Shumate is a versatile harmonica player who applies techniques of the pre-WWII harmonica masters to complement, often note for note, the melody of the fiddle as well as performing a well-developed rhythmic style of backup playing drawing on the old-time expertise of players like Dave Rice and Mark Graham. Seth's grandfather and great-grandmother both played harmonica in the Arkansas Ozarks of Stone County.
Aviva Steigmeyer was born in Washington State and lived several years in Virginia before moving to Arkansas in 2014. She plays guitar, cello, sings and sometimes fiddles in the band, and is also a print-maker, gardener, and builder of early 1900s-style parlor guitars. Her guitars and prints can be found at www.preservationguitar.com
