Biographies

Cathy Barton and Dave Para have created dynamic performances acclaimed for 25 years for their variety and expertise in vocal and instrumental music. They have celebrated the musical traditions and folklife of Missouri and the Ozarks in festivals, clubs, concert halls, schools and studios across the U.S. and Europe. Their audiences are as diverse as their repertoire.

A versatile duo, Dave and Cathy play several stringed instruments including hammered and fretted dulcimers, banjo, guitar and Autoharp, as well as "found" instruments like bones, spoons, mouthbow and leaf. Their concerts present a range of music from the lively dance tunes they have collected in their home region to old ballads to new songs. They have conducted several instrumental workshops as well as those about songs from the Civil War, from American rivers, old gospel songs, children's songs and Christmas music.

Much of their Missouri music has been collected from some excellent and noted traditional musicians like fiddlers Art Galbraith and Taylor McBaine, gospel singer Thelma Conway, and collectors Max Hunter and Loman Cansler.

In their mission to introduce new audiences to folk music, Dave and Cathy have participated in the artists-in-education program for the Missouri Arts Council since the early 1980s. They have done folk arts residencies and assembly programs in schools across the state. They also created and serve as artistic directors of two annual folk festivals, the Big Muddy Folk Festival, in their hometown of Boonville, and the Boone’s Lick Country Folk Festival, in Arrow Rock, Mo.

A recognized master of the frailing banjo style Cathy has twice won the Tennessee Old-Time Banjo Championship. The late Roy Acuff often called her his "favorite banjo player" because her playing reminded him of earlier country music sounds. Cathy can also be credited for some of the growing interest in the hammered dulcimer in the Midwest. In the mid-1970s, she introduced it to the Walnut Valley Festival in Winfield, Kan., and has since provided a number of current players with their first hearing of the instrument.

While earning college and graduate degrees in humanities and folklore, Cathy worked as an assistant folklorist at the Ozark Folk Center in Mountain View, Ark. She also toured with Ramona (Mrs. Grandpa) Jones and played at her dinner theater there for a number of seasons.

Dave Para took his sister's guitar to classes at the Old Town School of Folk Music in his hometown Chicago and rekindled his childhood interest in folk music. While attending college in Cathy's hometown of Columbia, Mo., Dave managed the Chez Coffeehouse, a focal point of folk music in Central Missouri for 20 years. There he started accompanying several fiddlers and began playing in local string bands. He has since been noted often for his expert and distinctive back-up guitar style.

"We would like to recommend Cathy and Dave Para highly as professional entertainers. They are both very dependable and quite knowledgeable of the music they perform. We have been in the entertainment world for some 50 years, and we know of no one that cares about music as much as these two young entertainers."

-- Grandpa and Ramona Jones.

Of their ten recordings, the first few and most recent few were-self produced. In 1982 the Walnut Valley Occasional called their "Ballad of the Boonslick" album "the finest acoustic music heard this year." The release of their "On a Day Like Today" album in 1986 for Folk-Legacy Records was a special achievement. This small, family-run record company renowned for exceptional recordings of important traditional and contemporary folk musicians has greatly influenced Dave and Cathy and helped to inspire their study of traditional music in their own community. Teaming up with the company's founders, Sandy and Caroline Paton, they produced an album of lesser known Christmas music, "'Twas on a Night Like This," which the American Library Association named a Notable Recording in 1990. They have appeared on several other recordings with the Patons, Ed Trickett, Ramona Jones, Bob Dyer, Wade Hampton Miller, Jay Round and Ron Penix, Judy Domeny and Lisa Redfern.

Music from the Civil War on the Western Border