Susie and Joe have been playing and singing together since the early 80s. They performed together in The Piedmont Hepcats (along with Ted Ehrhard and Allen Cottrell) and in The Radio Rangers (with Carl Jones and Nowell Creadick). They now rejoin forces to remember old songs and sing some new ones.

Susie Crate likes to think she has come full circle in her storytelling and singing. After a decade of singing and storytelling in the Piedmont Triangle from the early-80s to early-90s, Susie began traversing the globe, mostly in the direction of Siberia where she ended up building an academic career researching cultural adaptations to change overall and specifically to climate change. Now she has returned to her home in Bynum to begin the next chapter of her life and she brings stories and songs both old and new.

Known around the world for his clawhammer banjo playing, Joe Newberry is also a powerful guitarist, singer and songwriter. The Gibson Brothers’ version of his song “Singing As We Rise,” featuring guest vocalist Ricky Skaggs, won an  IBMA “Gospel Recorded Performance” Award. With Eric Gibson, he shared an IBMA “Song of the Year” Award for “They Called It Music.” A longtime and frequent guest on A Prairie Home Companion, he was a featured singer on the Transatlantic Sessions 2016 tour of the U.K. with fiddler Aly Bain and Dobro master Jerry Douglas, and at the Transatlantic Session's debut at Merlefest in 2017.  In addition to performing solo, he plays in a duo with mandolin icon Mike Compton, and also performs with the dynamic fiddler and step-dancer April Verch.  "