Steve has played banjo for many years, but ThisBigStringBand's new CD release marks his debut as a recording artist. He lives in Chicago with his wife and three sons and works as a librarian for the Chicago Public Schools.
Jim is a founding member of the Michigan acid country outfit Les Tabourets Laches. In the 1990s he spent time in the Austin, TX bands Busted Still and The Stonecutters. An itinerant teacher, he is currently to be found in North Florida.
David lives in Illinois and Wisconsin where he is currently in his fifth year teaching at the Oshkosh Suzuki Music Program. He started as a Suzuki student in the '60's-70's and began studying alternative styles from blues to jazz to Irish fiddling in the 1980's. At that time, David spent much of his career commuting between New York and various cities in France and Switzerland, playing with some of the top "busking" bands of that period including the Rhythm Pygmies and The Overexcited. In 1989 he visited Thailand for the first time and began almost a decade of playing fiddle in Thai "country and eastern" band, Banjoman and Friends, which was the leading acoustic string band in Chiangmai. Twelve years and roughly half a dozen albums later, David decided to strike out on his own with his solo debut CD "Thais to the Irish: fiddle tunes from the street", a collection of fiddle tunes from America, Ireland and Thailand. In 2001 he returned to the U.S. to begin a new career teaching violin and fiddle at the Aurora (IL) Suzuki Violins program. A year later, he began hitting the American fiddle contest circuit and quickly piled up the ribbons and trophies from contests in ten states of the Union. He was the Indiana State Hot Fiddle Champion 2004, was Nevada State Adult Division Champion two years in a row (2003-04), and he captured fifth places in his divisions at both the Clifftop (WV) festival (2002) and the National Old-Time Fiddlers' Contest (NOTFC) in Weiser, ID (2004). He was a judge at the 2005 NOTFC, and he also served as a judge for the American String Teachers Association (ASTA) Alternative Styles Awards in 2006-07. David has taught fiddling at Suzuki workshops in Wisconsin, Iowa and Missouri, and at the South Carolina and Colorado Suzuki institutes. He is a member--usually in good standing--of ASTA, the Suzuki Association of the Americas (SAA), the Suzuki Association of Wisconsin (SAW) and the National Old-Time Fiddlers Association (NOTFA).