Guitar and violin duet Johnny Bonneville & Fiddlin Phil Swaby give a new life to some old songs on this CD. Paying tribute to Pete Seeger's Song book, "America's Favorite Folk Ballads" the duet covers six not so well known folk songs and six

12 MP3 Songs
FOLK: Folk Blues, BLUES: Acoustic Blues



Details:
Johnny Bonneville is better known for having done just about every job in the music business for almost 20 years, but the entertainer inside him just wants to sing. Johnny began his solo career as a "Busker" street performer and open mike musician after writing songs and being the front man for Washington DC's "Burning Spirit" (circa 1980's). Besides music, traveling has always been one thing Johnny keeps doing, and many of his songs reflect upon this theme.

Fiddlin' Phil Swaby has been a musician who has taken music seriously since a very young age, having taken his first world tour in the late 1970's with the DC Youth Orchestra. Phil is known locally a great improvisational violinist and performer of live music who has appeared with jam bands such as; the Recipe, Jamnation, Tempus Fugit, Liquid Lobster, and folk musicians; Raccoon and Steven Gellman. In addition to this, Fiddlin' Phil has recently been included on several CD's released by artists such as Cattail Road, Jack Couldn't Make It, and Joe Norris.

Johnny & Phil met during the first day of 5th Grade the Maret School in 1975 and continued to be close friends throughout High School while attending School Without Walls. One day several years ago Johnny invited Phil over for dinner and pulled out a classical guitar. This was the first time the idea came about that they might someday play music together. But several years past before once again after dinner, Johnny pulled out the guitar and asked Phil to help him work on some arrangements for a couple of traditional folk songs he had recently collected. This time the energy and ideas were unstoppable and soon Johnny & Phil found themselves performing weekly at DC's legendary Grog and Tankard, a right of passage for every DC rock musician during the past few years. After 18 months of continuous weekly gigs the duet decided to make a studio recording of the music they had been performing at the Grog.

This recording project began in January 2001and resulted in a 12 song CD titled, "Songs About Devils, Farms, and Trains". At this time, the duet managed to record 7 songs from their Georgetown performances for a 2nd CD titled, "Live At The Grog And Tankard". Johnny also made a Cameo appearance in Paul Bishaw's new film, "It's a Wonderful Horrible Life", which premiered in late 2001.

During 2002 the duet continued to mix and record tracks for their CD and began performing at a string of shows with JB Beverley and the Wayward Drifters. They also brought their recordings to Airshow Mastering to work with Grammy Award winning sound engineer, Charlie Pilzer. "He really took his time to educate us about mixing and mastering", said Johnny, "I feel like a proud daddy every time I hear how good that CD Sounds."

Johnny took a hiatus from performing during 2003 to fulfill a 1-year contract as House Manager of the Olney Theatre, while Phil began to working with the Idle Time Band. "I felt the experience was an excellent opportunity for me to expand my management skills of a live performance", said Bonneville, " Phil even got to work with me for a couple of months during our production of The Miser."

That pretty much brings things up to date, Johnny and Phil are performing together again, and are looking forward to playing some good music together while getting the word out about their recordings. "Our goals should be pretty simple right now." explained Phil, "Promote our CD, work on the sales and distribution of our music and stick pretty close to home this spring. But we'll be playing some festivals and making at least one lap around the country this summer."
We hope to see you there.

Guitar and Violin Duet
Johnny Bonneville & Fiddlin' Phil Swaby