The Berkeley Old Time Music Convention cooks up yet another irresistible lineup, featuring the legendary fiddle innovator Benton Flippen with Paul Brown and Frank Bode, youthful duo Caleb Klauder & Sammy Lind, and fabulous fiddler Rayna Gellert. This evening is guaranteed to plant a grin on your face and a song in your heart!

Benton Flippen comes from a generation of great players at the epicenter of Southern mountain music (among his contemporaries were Tommy Jarrell, Fred Cockerham, and Earnest East.) Born in 1920 in rural Surrey County, North Carolina, Benton started playing banjo and fiddle as a teenager, and developed a distinctive fiddle style marked by slides, blue notes, and strong rhythmic fiddling. Benton is joined tonight by clawhammer and two-finger banjo player Paul Brown, who studied banjo with the great Tommy Jarrell; and soulful singer and powerful guitar player Frank Bode, who has been a part of Surrey County's old time music scene for decades.

Caleb Klauder and Stephen "Sammy" Lind (Foghorn Duo) have performed all over the globe as part of Portland's Foghorn Stringband, and have also worked with Dirk Powell, Riley Bauguss, and Kevin Burke. Their playing on mandolin and fiddle is polished and intricate, and their intertwining vocal harmonies evoke the Carter Family and Stanley Brothers. Although the duo's repertoire is mainly traditional, Caleb's stellar originals fit right in next to any classic. Caleb and Sammy have just released their first duo CD, "Lonesome Song."

Rayna Gellert has spent most her life immersed in the sounds of rural stringband music, gospel, and old ballads. She took up old-time fiddle in 1994 when she moved to North Carolina. Since then she's been pretty busy winning prizes at the Clifftop, WV Appalachian String Band Music Festival, recording two influential CDs of fiddle tunes (Ways of the World and Starch and Iron), and touring as an accompanist to the Green Grass Cloggers. She also performed as a guitarist and singer with the famed Freight Hoppers, before joining the acclaimed string band, Uncle Earl.