Profile

Craig Edwards
Fiddle

Craig Edwards has been playing and teaching old time banjo for over thirty years. In addition to banjo, he plays fiddle, guitar, mandolin, and button accordion, and performs old time, blues, bluegrass, Cajun, Zydeco, a capella work songs, honky tonk, western swing, and Irish music. Craig began playing guitar at age 9 and fiddle and banjo a few years later while growing up in Staunton, Virginia. Going to the “Stompin’ 76” festival near Galax, VA in the summer of 1976 (which included a who’s who of “roots music” performers of the time) and fiddler’s conventions and contests led him to study ethnomusicology at Wesleyan University, and to visit and learn from West Virginia fiddlers and banjo players Frank George, Ernie Carpenter, Woody Simmons, and Melvin Wine. He’s been performing, teaching, and touring both solo and with a variety of bands ever since.