About the Staff – Fall
Fall Weekend Staff – 2025 (Oct 3 – 5, 2025)
Stringrays
Rodney Miller, fiddle, plus Max Newman, guitar, plus Stuart Kenney, bass and banjo, equal The Stringrays!
Rodney Miller
A long-time New Hampshire resident (living now in sunny California), Rodney is well-known as both a traditionalist and an innovator, with a playful style and soulful tone. He is one of the foremost proponents of New England style fiddling having played for the legendary callers Ralph Page and Duke Miller. However over the course of his forty years of playing, Rodney has leaned into other musical worlds including swing, that have resulted in revisions of traditional tunes and the introduction of more contemporary ones. His exploratory style has laid the foundation for current young musicians. He has toured the world, performed, and taught at hundreds of music and dance festivals, and recorded numerous albums, among them the acclaimed New England Chestnuts, Airplang, and Airdance albums. He has composed nearly 200 tunes. And he’s also a respected luthier, having trained in Europe. Most importantly, Rodney Miller is a dance musician. As historian Mark Mathews has explained, ”he possesses the ability to create a perfect atmosphere in which music and movement fuse together to propel heart, mind and soul into a state of personal and communal ecstasy. It can’t get any better than that for dancer or musician.”
Stuart Kenney
Happy-go-lucky Stuart Kenney has a reputation of playing any kind of music with anyone. This makes him one of the most in demand bass and banjo players on the contra dance scene. As a teenager, Stuart could be found on dance floors around the Boston area and became known for his enthusiasm and crashing balances before the swings. In part, what makes Stuart such a strong musician is his nuanced understanding of all aspects of the dances. While playing for many bands and musicians (including Cajun legend Dewey Balfa), Stuart is best known for more than a decade of playing bass for Wild Asparagus, and his many years working with Rodney Miller, as a founding member of both Airdance and the Stringrays. When he isn’t playing coast to coast, Stuart is home in Western Massachusetts, playing and hosting dances at the Guiding Star Grange in Greenfield.
Max Newman
Max grew up in Fairbanks, Alaska, first sitting in the corner of a log cabin listening to Irish jam sessions and later sitting in on a session, playing the bagpipes while his father played guitar. Fortunately for all of us, by age 11, he came to prefer the guitar to the bagpipes, and within a few years, he was both dancing and playing for his local contra dances. His world enlarged when he was accepted to Harvard University in the early aughts. While there, he revived the school’s monthly dance series and found time to play and dance in the Boston area. He started graduate school at MIT but then instead turned to his passion playing guitar and mandolin. A dozen years ago he joined Stuart and Rodney to form the Stringrays where he alternately plays rhythm and melody on his guitar. He moves between chord improvisations and a variety of rhythms, and he and Rodney double lead, exchange solos, or trade four-bar phrases. He spoke for the band when he explained “every note that you are playing has to serve the dance; this is why the Stringrays are so much fun to dance to.”
Dog Paw
Dog Paw appears nightly at their home in Spokane (after clearing the table but before pie and ice cream). Sally Jablonsky is a “bilingual” fiddler, fluent in both southern and northern tunes. A top-drawer old-time fiddler, she can also plays jigs! Sally has been surrounded by folk music and dance her whole life; she and her family were foundational members of Family Camp at Lady of the Lake. Sally has played and taught at the Festival of American Fiddle Tunes, the Portland Old Time Gathering, and the John C. Campbell Folk School. Eugene Jablonsky, Sally’s dad, is “multilingual,” and plays all kinds of music on bass and guitar—jazz, salsa, western swing, tango, classical, Broadway shows, Celtic, and klezmer. He is Spokane’s go-to bassist. Liz Dreisbach plays clarinet, tin whistle, recorder, and banjo-uke. She cut her teeth playing English country dance music, contra dance music, and all kinds of couple dance music. She was one of the founding members of the Claremont Country Dance Orchestra (CA), the first English and contra dance group on the West coast. She was also the program director of the Northwest Folklife Festival for many years before moving to Spokane, and the experience naturally led to her obsessions with klezmer music, Celtic music, and John Philip Sousa. Eugene and Liz have appeared on A Prairie Home Companion playing klezmer music with the Kosher Red Hots.
Susan Petrick
Now living in California, Susan Petrick came to contra dancing while in college and graduate school in the Boston area during the late 1970s/early 1980s, a golden era of contradancing. Years later, she was drawn to programming dances, first helping a caller, and later stepping in front of the microphone herself. After two decades, Susan is now a regional treasure who has called for festivals and dance events across the country, and is known for clear teaching, expert pacing, and efficient guidance. As a cognitive psychologist, Susan specialized in improving user experiences. Rest assured we are in good hands when she is calling! www.spetrick.com
William Watson
For the past thirty years, William Watson has traveled the country, and beyond, sharing his love of contras as both a dancer and a caller. This genial gentleman has earned a reputation for lively, interesting evenings of contra dances, alternating challenging dances and easier ones, able to fine tune the degree of difficulty. He is an empathetic and careful teacher — he recognizes the importance of the the walk through, its success dependent on clarity and pacing, and most importantly for him, “appealing to different learning methods.” For the past twenty years, William has also been dancing and teaching BalFolk, a French traditional dance. Much like contras, BalFolk includes both traditional and contemporary dances along with spirited music. Having grown up in Austin, TX, where he learned to dance and call, William now lives in Beaverton, OR. At Lady of the Lake he will offer workshops in contras and BalFolk.
