Crooked Stovepipe is based in St. John’s, Newfoundland, the oldest city in North America and we’ve been playing bluegrass and traditional music since 1973. We have been featured at the Nova Scotia Bluegrass and Old Time Music Festival, Canada’s first and longest-running bluegrass festival, the Blueberry Bluegrass Festival in Stony Plain, Alberta, and the Evangeline Bluegrass Festival in PEI. We’ve been one of the headline bands at the Mount Pearl Bluegrass and Old-Time Country Music Festival, Newfoundland’s first festival featuring bluegrass music, since its beginning in 2005.
Neil grew up in the western United States and cut his teeth on bluegrass in Indiana in the 1960s, where he helped manage Bill Monroe’s Brown County Jamboree and played in the house band. He even got to play a few times with Bill Monroe–enough to put his name on Blue Grass Boys belt buckle #120. Neil moved to St. John’s in 1968. In 1985 he produced Bluegrass: A History, the definitive book on the roots and development of bluegrass.
Ted grew up singing and playing Newfoundland and country music in Heart’s Content, Newfoundland, discovering bluegrass in the early ‘70s. He’s been singing lead with the band ever since.
Dave is Ted’s son and no stranger to musical performance or to bluegrass. Dave also plays guitar, bass and banjo, lending his talent to the St. John’s music scene. He also runs O’Brien’s Music Inc, Newfoundland’s original traditional music store in St. John’s.
Matt is a graduate of MUN School of Music and hails from Conception Bay South. When not teaching or playing music he works on the family farm in CBS.
Carole, a native of Saskatchewan, is the newest member of the band. Carole moved to Newfoundland a few years back to attend MUN, and loved it so much that she decided to stay! Along her many travels, Carole has collected and encompassed a number of tunes and fiddle styles, but still considers the Old Time fiddle music she grew up with to be the essence of her playing.
Colleen Power is an award-winning, bilingual singer/songwriter and performer living in St. John’s, and a prolific and creative force in the Newfoundland and Labrador music scene. Always engaging, Colleen comfortably embraces diverse musical styles, with lyrics ranging from heartfelt to comedic, political to personal. She is a multi-talented, uniquely diverse musician with strong Newfoundland content and themes. Colleen is currently host of the Bell Fibe TV miniseries “Sing Me Home”, where she explores six communities in the province with fascinating place names and creates a song for each episode. She is a past commissioned songwriter for CBC Radio One NL, and has written songs for several films and private entities.
Colleen has been performing live regularly, both solo and with her band for nearly three decades and looks forward to performing more live shows and touring her new projects in the future. Colleen’s music, along with her eighth solo project, Tales From Downtown West is available at http://www.SingSongMusic.ca.
Photo credit: Chris LeDrew
Craig Young hails from the southwest coast of Newfoundland and Labrador. He has worked with many country artists, including Jason McCoy, Eli Barsi, Gord Bamford, George Canyon, Carolyn Dawn Johnson and Terri Clark as well as living and recording as a session player in Nashville for eight years. While there he also embraced bluegrass music and has taken a deep dive into that genre. He has won four Canadian Country Music Association awards in the All Star Band- Guitarist category.
Craig’s album “Black Diamond Strings” was released July 2013 to much acclaim, winning the MusicNL award for Country, followed with the album “Charlie’s Boogie”, a collaboration with guitar slinging, gypsy jazzer Duane Andrews, which won an East Coast Music Award in 2014 for the “mostly” instrumental album.
Known for his guitar prowess and powerful vocals, Craig has recently moved back west to perform and teach, building a studio where he records and produces projects for other musicians. He is currently touring Alberta and BC and working on a new solo project, due out in the coming year.
For the past 36 years, Jean Hewson and Christina Smith have been ambassadors of Newfoundland culture, bringing the music and songs of their Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador to festival, concert and folk club audiences in North America and Europe. They are the recipients of the Ernie King Tradition Bearer award from the Celtic Roots Festival, Goderich, Ontario. Their music has been broadcast nationally by the Canadian Broadcasting Coorporation, and their CDS Like Ducks! and August Gale (Borealis) have received multiple nominations and awards.
Over the past 20 years, award winning singer-songwriter Chris Picco has established himself as one of Atlantic Canada’s most dynamic and diverse musicians both as a solo artist and as front man for St. John’s based rockers, The Long Distance Runners.
Since 2004 Chris has recorded and released eight critically acclaimed records. His most recent, Split Down The Middle (2023) has earned him a MusicNL nomination for Rock Artist of The Year. His most recent LDR record received several ECMA, Juno and MusicNL nominations in 2016/17 and in 2013 Chris’ solo record The Beach earned him a MusicNL Male Artist Of The Year Award. He has worked as both a session musician and producer and has shared the stage with artists ranging from Wintersleep, Said the Whale, Mother Mother and The Wooden Sky to Jim Cuddy, Bob Snider, Ron Sexsmith, Kyp Harness, and Ron Hynes.
Currently, Chris is busy songwriting, producing and performing material from his new record Split Down The Middle available everywhere you get your music.
Claire Porter is a singer/songwriter who has been described as a mix between Judy Garland and Tom Waits. She writes music about detritivores, love stories and tiramisu.
She was born in Newfoundland, learning folk storytelling traditions. She committed a couple of years to hitchhiking and learning travelling songs. She moved to Montreal to learn jazz and refine her powerful stage presence. In 2012, she started playing with Claire Porter and the Stouts in the downtown circuit in Montreal.
Charlie-Rose Neis has been writing music since she could talk. Luckily for her, her best friend Sydney Oliver is able to help bring the dream to life. They started off as two friends just jamming with each other, and became an official duo a few months ago. They’re both headed to grade 10 this year, at Holy Heart of Mary and Holy Spirit High School.
Catherine Wright is a storyteller, multi-arts practitioner and arts educator who
divides her time between St John’s and Port Kirwan, Newfoundland.
A versatile performer, Catherine has presented folk and fairy tales, personal
narratives, ballads and recitations to a broad range of ages from preschoolers to
seniors; at schools, festivals, theatres, galleries, outdoor venues and online in her
over 30 years of performance experience. Her most recent show, Shrouds and
Stays: The Ballad of Jane Wright, is an ancestral tale of shipwreck interweaving
storytelling, songs and movement.
Catherine is past president of St John’s Storytelling and current provincial
representative for Storytellers of Canada (SC-CC).
Friends, there are artists, fiddlers, side musicians aplenty.
There is only one Carole.
