Andy Kruspe is a freelance percussion instructor and bodhrán player from Huntsville, Alabama. He owns and operates The Irish Drum Center, LLC at Lowe Mill ARTS & Entertainment.

This studio is dedicated to teaching the bodhrán in-person and online, and it regularly serves over 35 students per semester. He has performed with several artists throughout the southeastern United States, including Black Market Haggis, Doon the Brae, Mithril, The Astronauts of Albania, and Milltowne.

Andy is also active as a traveling bodhrán teacher and clinician. He has taught at several workshops and clinics in the United States and abroad, including The O'Flaherty's Irish Music Retreat (Midlothian, Texas), The Fiddle and Pick Irish Music Weekend (Pegram, Tennessee), The Craiceann International Bodhrán Summer School (Inis Oírr, Ireland), Colaisde na Gàidhlig/The Gaelic College (Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada), and Búla Buzz’s Bodhrán Buzz (online from Portlaoise, Ireland). Andy has also written four method books for the drum- First Steps: A Beginner’s Guide to the Bodhrán, The Bodhrán Primer, Playing the Tune: Techniques for Accompanying Irish Traditional Music on the Bodhrán, and In Session + One (with Scottish bodhrán player Martin O’Neill).

You can find out more about him at www.andykruspebodhran.com.

Annabelle Bugay is a percussive dancer based in Richmond, Virginia. Specializing in sean nós (old-style) Irish dance and Cape Breton step dance, her intensely rhythmic style reflects her deep love for North Atlantic step dance traditions.

Annabelle began Irish dancing at the age of six under the An Cor Rud School of Irish Dance in her hometown of Richmond, Virginia. She achieved open championship status before stepping away from the competitive circuit to pursue her love of percussive improvisation and social dancing. She spent two years in Limerick, Ireland, where she began learning the sean nós style, before moving to Sydney, Nova Scotia, to complete her BA in Music and Folklore at Cape Breton University.

In Cape Breton, Annabelle refined her piano accompaniment skills and began picking up Cape Breton steps at square dances, house parties, as well as from friends around the island. Her time on the island also highlighted the power of social dancing as a source of community bonding and trust. Inspired by these experiences, Annabelle opened her dance school, North Atlantic Steps, in the spring of 2025, where she now teaches percussive dance to adult dancers of all ages and abilities.

Over the years, Annabelle has had the privilege of learning from many dance masters, such as Lisa Burgess, Liam Scanlon, Nic Gareiss, Mats Melin, Linda Block, Michael Donnellan, and Courtney Jay, among many other friends and square dance partners in Cape Breton. She is also featured on Isla Ratcliff’s debut album The Castalia (2021) and the live recording of Sunnseitn Bordun (2019) in Kremsmünster, Austria. 

Claire Shirey is a multi-instrumentalist and champion Irish dancer living in Cookeville, TN. She began her Irish music education within the Atlanta Irish Music School starting on fiddle then adding the concertina shortly after. While competing in the Midwest Fleadh, Claire studied under Alex Boatright qualifying for the All-Irelands multiple times. Claire began taking lessons from John Williams the past couple of years, being heavily influenced by his style of concertina playing.

Currently Claire is the Director of the Nashville Irish Music School and primary teacher. She began the program in 2019 and continues to teach the fundamentals and history of Irish Music in the Nashville Area. She is a graduate from the University of Georgia with a degree in Communications Studies and a certificate in Music Business.

Dylan Foley is one of the great fiddle players of our time, a four-time All-Ireland Fiddle Champion, delighting audiences from Lincoln Center to Irish Television channels RTE and TG4. Dylan was recently featured in a Television series "Mr. Mercedes" starring Brendan Gleeson.

Foley travelled with Mick Moloney in 2013, to Vietnam as part of Irish Aid. He teaches and performs at the major Irish music summer camps on both sides of the Atlantic. A member of The Yanks, the hot trad band that has been called "the next Irish American dream team."

Dylan is committed to passing on the tradition, as it was graciously passed to him, by the incomparable Rose Flanagan, Fr. Charlie Coen, and others.

Born in West Belfast, Northern Ireland, uilleann piper and whistle player Eamonn Dillon has toured and recorded both as a solo artist and with a varied group of performers, touring shows and bands. Working between the US, Canada and Europe, his music has been featured on several film and television programs around the world. He has performed and recorded as a featured artist in both traditional, theatrical, and mixed genre ensembles, including Needfire, John McDermott, (The Irish Tenors,) Celtic Bridge, King James, Sarah Packham, and Palmoa Faith, among others. He first learned the tin whistle from his father, and Tara Diamond, before getting his first set of uilleann pipes, made by the great master Sean McAloon, who mentored him while starting out.

Hannah Harris is a fiddle player and educator dedicated to helping musicians develop a confident, authentic lilt in Irish traditional music—no matter where they’re starting from. After earning her Master’s degree in Ethnomusicology from University College Cork and becoming certified to teach traditional music through the Royal Irish Academy of Music (RIAM), she founded her online fiddle studio to support players who, like her, came to Irish music from outside the tradition and wanted their style to feel both true and uniquely their own.

Today, Harris teaches fiddlers around the world through her popular Tune Library—an extensive resource for building repertoire and absorbing the real feel of Irish music—as well as her free Sunday Irish Fiddle Newsletter. Her mission is simple: to give players the tools, confidence, and guidance they need to develop a style they’re proud of and enjoy a lifelong journey with the fiddle.

Richard Hearn is a dynamic accompanist based in Baltimore, Maryland.  He cut his teeth on Irish music while living in Europe, and toured internationally with several Irish and Scottish music projects before returning to the US.  He regularly tours with his trio, the East Coasters.  In addition, he has toured and performed with internationally acclaimed musicians, including Billy McComiskey, Steph Geremia, Sarah Collins, and duo Jocelyn Pettit and Ellen Gira.

Richard is the director of the Baltimore Irish Tenor Banjo Summit, Assistant Director of the Baltimore Irish Trad Fest, and Executive Director of the Baltimore Irish Music School.  He is the guitar and tenor banjo/mandolin teacher at the Baltimore Irish Music School, and has been on the instructional staff at MAD week in DC, Folksounds Elmstein in Elmstein, Germany, CelticFest Mississippi, The Irish Weekend in Ismaning, Germany, The O'Flaherty Irish Music Retreat, and the Celtic Folk Weekend in Waldmünchen, Germany.

London-born flute and whistle player John Skelton is probably best known to American audiences from his work with The House Band, with whom he recorded eight albums on the Green Linnet label.

He has also released a solo album, One At a Time, and Double Barrelled, a highly regarded album of flute duets with Kieran O’Hare, as well as a series of tune collection books, A Few Tunes, A Few More Tunes, Yet More Tunes and Some Breton Tunes.

John has performed at most of the major folk festivals in North America, Europe and Australia. He is an experienced teacher, and has taught at summer schools in the United States, Europe and Africa, In addition to his background in Irish music, John is also well-schooled in the music of Brittany. He also plays the ‘Piston’ (Low Bombarde), the ‘Veuze’ (the bagpipe of eastern Brittany) and the ‘Gaita Gallega’ (Galician pipes).

Jonathon Srour capped a successful competitive Irish dance career with a top 5 finish at the World Championships and also won the North American Senior Belt Championship 3 times, tying the all-time record. This competition was open to all men and women in North America, aged 17 and over. He has toured the world with Michael Flatley’s Lord of the Dance, Feet of Flames, Magic of the Dance, and Echoes of Ireland including the countries of Taiwan, Israel, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and the Netherlands. During the summers of 2010 and 2012, he performed in the Busch Gardens show, Celtic Fyre. He spent time in New York as a pivotal member of the Brooklyn-based fusion dance septet, Hammerstep, which received unprecedented reviews on NBC’s America’s Got Talent. Seeking to effectively and uniquely give back to the dance community, he is currently one of the only double fellowship-trained reconstructive foot and ankle surgeons in the country and has started building a private practice in the Nashville area. Jonathon is also an avid piano and wooden flute player, having qualified for the All-Ireland Fleadh several times and has performed with the John Whelan Band, The Green Fields of America, and Mother’s Pride, with Gabriel Donohue, Marian Makins, and Haley Richardson and was a member of the 2015 New York Ceili Band which performed in Sligo at the All-Ireland Fleadh. He now teaches with the Nashville Irish Music School.

Josh Dukes is an All-Ireland champion accompanist and a highly sought-after music teacher in the Baltimore/Washington D.C. area. A multi-instrumentalist whose talents embrace the guitar, bouzouki, bodhran, flute, and tin whistle, Josh has established a reputation for providing sensitive, tasteful support for traditional Irish music. As a young high school student, Josh studied the oboe, tenor/alto saxophone, drum set and baritone horn.

Outside of the classroom, he learned the art of ancient rudimental drumming under the tutelage of Dominick Cuccia, a widely respected instructor/performer in the fife and drum community. In 1997, Josh enlisted in the Army and has since earned the rank of Master Sergeant, where he served as one of three Drum Majors for the Old Guard Fife and Drum Corps, “The Official Escort to the President,” the only military unit of its kind. Josh continues to perform Irish music, having shared the stage with such renowned musicians including John Doyle, Paddy Keenan, Billy and Sean McComiskey, Brendan Mulvihill, Skip Healy, Zan McLeod, and Myron Bretholz.

Julee Glaub Weems , a native of North Carolina, studied literature and music at Wake Forest University before following her interest in Irish culture to work with the youth of Dublin.  Her meaningful experiences with the people of Ireland led her to a keener interest in the culture and in particular, to their traditional music.  For nearly seven years, she continued her work in Dublin while sitting at the feet of master players and singers and absorbing everything.  She now performs with her husband Mark Weems in the duo Little Windows, blending Irish and Appalachian songs and tunes with a special focus on tight harmonies.  They both teach at their own music school called the North Carolina School of Traditional Music in Durham, N.C.  Julee especially loves to teach and has been on the staff of the Irish Arts Week in N.Y., the Alaska Fiddle Camp, the Schloss Mittersill Arts Conference in Austria, Camp Little Windows, and was the creator and coordinator of Traditional Song Week at the Swannanoa Gathering for many years.

Aidan O'Hara of Irish music Magazine says, "Julee's relaxed, thoughtful and at times contemplative delivery is in sharp contrast with the tremendous energy and dynamics she has applied to the study of songs on both sides of the Atlantic and her long apprenticeship in mastering styles and knowledge of the songs she sings.  We're all the better for hearing her and she joins that select group about whom I say that if I were a song, I'd want Julee Glaub Weems to sing me."

www.nctradmusic.com s here

Our First Dance teacher ever and our Ceili Dance Caller, Katelyn Dunn fell in love with the rich history, music, and movement of Irish Step Dance at the age of eleven.

She has since competed and performed throughout the US. Katelyn’s love for Irish dance and music only grew as she transitioned from competing to teaching. Now Katelyn shares her passion for dance to people of all ages and abilities through teaching both Step dancing and Ceili dance at workshops and events.

Katelyn is thrilled to be back for another great Tune Junkie Weekend and can’t wait to get your toes tapping at the Friday night Ceili.

Ohio-based multi-instrumentalist Randy Clepper is an acclaimed player/performer of the Irish bouzouki, tenor banjo, fingerstyle guitar, and hammer dulcimer. Originally from Tennessee, Randy’s early musical interests covered folk, pop, rock, jazz, funk, bluegrass and various traditional styles, eventually settling into a deep, lifelong love of Irish music. Randy performs and tours frequently with Atlanta-based fiddler Bella Issakova.  Their new album, “Come in From the Rain”, is currently being released.  Randy also performs regularly with Ohio-based fingerstyle guitarist John Sherman. Their duo recording, “Finally Tuned”, reviewed in Irish Music Magazine and on TradConnect.com (Ireland), was ranked in the top 10 trad albums by Folk Festival, WDCB Public Radio, Chicago. Randy is an in-demand accompanist to a number of first-class trad players.  He is a frequent performer and teacher at Irish festivals across the US, regional Folk Alliance conferences, and online as a Tune Supply artist. Randy is also the host and curator of the Trad Nua Celtic Concert Series at Natalie’s Live Music in Columbus, Ohio.