Patrick Aranda

Patrick Aranda is one of ragtime's most entertaining and talented performers. He plays a mean piano, sings, performs on trombone, tuba, and who knows what all (not necessarily all at once), and has a huge ragtime repertoire, including the most difficult and flashy novelty-style rags, plus classic rags, Harlem stride compositions, and favorite tunes from the Tin Pan Alley era. 

Fans can currently see him perform at Disneyland as main Street's Ragtime pianist on Fridays and Saturdays. He also plays piano with various traditional jazz groups including Auntie Skinners Lucky Winners Jazz Band, and The Burgundy Street Jazz Band.  

He is a Music Professor at Chaffey College in Rancho Cucamonga, where he directs the Jazz Band and Concert Band, as well as teaching classes ranging from theory and musicianship to History of Jazz. He also stays busy directing at least three musicals a year. 

He made his Sutter Creek Ragtime Festival debut in 2002 and has been invited back by popular demand ever since. In 2003 he was among the modern ragtime composers we honored at our Festival, having created  several of his own ragtime pieces, including one inspired by his Sutter Creek debut. Patrick is a favorite headliner at Orange County's annual RagFest and The Ragtime Corner of the Sacramento Jazz Jubilee.  He has also been featured at the West Coast Ragtime Festival in Sacramento. 

In his spare time, Patrick plays trombone in his brother's Salsa band; performs with several Southern California Dixieland groups, and, has finally recorded his own solo CD.  Visit Patrick's website at: www.PatAranda.com

Jack and Chris Bradshaw

Jack and Chris Bradshaw, ragtime piano duo artists from Gilroy CA, are bringing their unique sound to Sutter Creek again this year.  Jack's four-hand arrangements of popular rags, cakewalks, marches and novelty numbers are played with a sparkle reminiscent of old-time piano rolls. This lively pair has also appeared at the West Coast, Scott Joplin, Blind Boone, RagFest, Shaniko, Cascade, and the Fresno Flats Ragtime Festivals. plus The Ragtime Corner of the Sacramento Jazz Jubilee. They have also performed numerous concerts in places such as Portland, and Gresham OR, the South Bay area of CA, Lubbock, TX, in Sun City, Scottsdale and Tucson, AZ, and at the Old Town Music  Hall in El Segundo, CA.

Jack also plays classic and new ragtime solos to round out their programs. Jack and Chris each hold advanced degrees in music and perform regularly at Sacramento Ragtime Society and South Valley Music Makers meetings.

Tom Brier

Tom Brier, affectionately dubbed "Hot Rod Tommy," used to be California’s greatest ragtime secret until the summer of 2001, when he made his debut to tremendous applause (and much jaw-dropping) at the Scott Joplin Festival in Sedalia, MO and the Blind Boone Festival in Columbia, MO. In his early thirties, this composing genius and pianist extraordinaire, hails from Oakdale, a Central Valley farming community south of Sacramento. He currently lives in Sacramento where he works as a programmer/analyst for the County of Sacramento. Tom caught the ragtime bug when his parents purchased a Schubert mechanical player. He was only 4, but when he started picking out tunes he heard on the piano rolls, his parents immediately found him a piano teacher. Soon Tom was notating his own music and by age 11, he had composed nearly a dozen rags. Today he has over 160 ragtime compositions to his name, all remarkably original but clearly demonstrating his depth of understanding of early ragtime subtleties. In 1985, at age 14, Brier made his first appearance at the Sacramento Ragtime Society meeting, blowing everyone away with his signature rapid-fire left hand runs. Since that time, Brier has been a mainstay at the Ragtime Corner of the Sacramento Jazz Jubilee, the West Coast Ragtime Festival, and recently our Mother Lode Ragtime Society gatherings. He has recorded six CDs, has a vast ragtime sheet music collection, is noted for performing and popularizing extremely rare but wonderful rags, and for inspiring pianists to attempt to keep up with him.

Marty Eggers

Marty Eggers  is well known on the West Coast as a top-notch ragtime pianist and bassist. Marty's music career began in Sacramento where as a teenager he helped found the Sacramento Ragtime Society in 1982. He has played with numerous San Francisco Bay Area jazz and ragtime groups, most notably John Gill's San Francisco JazzBand and the Black Diamond Jazz Band. His talent and versatility have led him into several varied and prestigious engagements, from recording with traditional jazz legend Bob Helm to touring Germany with Hal Smith's Rhythm Cats to playing in backup bands for both Leon Redbone and Butch Thompson. Marty is also a skilled composer and arranger of ragtime and traditional jazz.

He also appears with the Tichenor Family Trio (Trebor Tichenor, Virginia Tichenor, and Marty) and performs as a soloist at least once a month on Tuesday evenings at Pier 23 in San Francisco and Wednesday evenings at the Straw Hat Pizza Parlor in Rancho Cordova, CA.

Terry Waldo describes Marty as having "..an encyclopedic knowledge of the ragtime and early jazz repertoire ..."

Marty is married to ragtime pianist Virginia Tichenor (see below) and is a past  president of the West Coast Ragtime Society.

Heebee Jeebees Bub Sullivan, Petra Sullivan,  and Robyn Drivon

The Heebee Jeebees offer an array of contemporary and classic rags, including Latin tangos and waltzes, plus ragtime and novelty songs. The group consist of:

Petra Sullivan, piano
Bub Sullivan, mandolin/cünbus/vocals
Robyn Drivon, tuba

Among the pillars of the Sacramento Ragtime Society, the Sullivans have been part of the ragtime world for over 20 years. They have had the rather unique pleasure of being interviewed and performing in China for Shanghai television.

A Sacramento native, Petra has a degree in Music and teaches violin and piano. Bub, originally from Chicago, also studied classical piano as a child, then later took up string instruments before discovering ragtime

The Sullivans are very pleased to have Robyn Drivon (since 2002) round out the group with her excellent and tasteful musicality. Robyn is Counsel for Yolo County. In 2006, she moved from Stockton to Woodland.

Frederick Hodges

Frederick Hodges, of Berkeley, CA was groomed for a career as a concert pianist but was happily lured away from his path after he found a stack of turn-of-the-century sheet music in his grandmother’s piano bench.  Repeated exposure to the rollicking ragtime rhythms of player pianos and 78 rpm phonograph records sealed his fate and he set out to master the ragtime playing styles that had captivated him.

While still an undergraduate at UC Berkeley, he was hired as pianist for the Royal Society Jazz Orchestra, for which he has played for 20 years. He also performs with the Peter Mintun Orchestra, with jazz ensembles, and as a soloist. He appears at least once a month on Tuesday evenings at Pier 23 in San Francisco and Wednesday evenings at the Straw Hat Pizza Parlor in Rancho Cordova, CA and he is a much applauded featured performer at the Sacramento Jazz Jubilee's Ragtime Corner and West Coast Ragtime Festival.

Brad Kay

Brad Kay, pianist, cornetist, composer and musicologist, has played in and led bands in Los Angeles since 1965, when he began performing at Shakeys' Pizza Parlors. Music has been his consuming passion since childhood, starting with ragtime, developing into a love for all great American music, especially the hot jazz of the 1920s. He was a sideman in the Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo  (1974-77); led his own band, The Majestic Dance Orchestra (1975-79, 1991-94), which recreated hot orchestral music of the 20s and 30s. In his septet, The Uptown Curmudgeons of Swing (1995-97), he evoked some of the great pianists of the era such as Fats Waller, Duke Ellington and George Gershwin (among many), but was essentially himself in his heatedly optimistic solos.

Classic ragtime was Brad's first inspiration, and his entree into composing. A folio and cassette of some of Brad's original ragtime compositions, "Seven Rags" appeared in 1994.

One of his more curious composing projects was providing background music for celebrated writer Harlan Ellison's reading of his famous short story, Jefty Is Five.

Brad has arranged and performed for film soundtracks, including Martin Brest's "Hot Tomorrows," (1976); Richard Elfman's "The Forbidden Zone" (1982); Tim Burton's "Nightmare Before Christmas" (1994); and Jon Zeiderman's "Artifacts" (2001).

As a music researcher, Brad has made several important discoveries, including new and previously overlooked 78 rpm records by Bix Beiderbecke and Louis Armstrong, as well as the phenomenon of "Accidental Stereo," which resulted in true stereo realizations of music by Duke Ellington and Sir Edward Elgar, among others, recorded in the early 30s! He has produced LP and CD reissues of great and overlooked artists such as vaudevillian Jane Green and pioneering bandleader James Reese Europe. He has contributed to many reissue CDs out of his vast collection of original 78s.

Since 1997, he has led a piano trio, plays cornet and piano and records with Janet Klein and Her Parlor Boys. His major passion these days has been composing, racking up over 1,000 pieces since November, 1998. Some of the best of these are heard on his debut album of piano music, "We Gotta Start Meeting Like This" (2000).

Currently, Brad is developing his solo entertaining ability, performing Sunday afternoons at the Unurban Cafe in Santa Monica. He plays and sings from a vast repertoire of the century's popular music, veering from vaudeville routines to romantic ballads to hot instrumentals, lacing them together with wit and a powerful yen to delight his audience.

Last year Brad was collaborating with the late beloved singer Susannah McCorkle on an album of meditation/healing piano music. 

Brad has also conducted seminars on jazz and early pop music for Elder Hostel and has done volunteer gigs for community programs such as Angel's Flight. 

Carl "Sonny" Leyland

Carl "Sonny" Leyland blew everyone’s socks off at our 4th Sutter Creek Ragtime Festival (when he was lesser known) and has subsequently done the same at just about all the prestigious festivals in the country, including the Scott Joplin and Blind Boone Festivals in Missouri, the West Coast Ragtime Festival in Sacramento, Orange County’s RagFest, plus the Sacramento and San Diego Jazz Jubilees.  We’re lucky he loves us and agreed to thrill us with a return appearance this year. His ability to recreate obscure and primitive styles in the genre of barrelhouse, blues, and boogie woogie, combined with the originality and soulfulness of his own music, makes him one of today’s most exciting pianists. Plus he sings!

Born in the south of England in 1965, Sonny took up piano at age 15.  His inspiration was the boogie woogie music of Albert Ammons, Pete Johnson & Meade Lux Lewis. Fascinated by this style, Sonny traced it back to its Barrelhouse roots, incorporating the stylings of Jimmy Yancey, Cow Cow Davenport, Little Brother Montgomery and other notables into his own playing. In 1988, Sonny headed for New Orleans, where he lived for 10 years, appeared at the world-renowned New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, and furthered his exploration of piano genres, including Blues, country, R&B, rockabilly, Rock and Roll, and, of course, traditional jazz and ragtime. He has toured in Europe and the United States as a solo act and with bands such as Anson Funderburgh and the Rockets and Big Sandy and His Flyrite Boys. Following a trip out west in 1995, Sonny relocated to California. He now resides with his wife in New Cuyama, CA. Sonny has several CDs to his name, his most recent with the Carl Sonny Leyland Trio, featuring Carl, Hal Smith on drums, and Marty Eggers on bass.

Stevens Price

Stevens Price, owner of the Sutter Creek Ice Cream Emporium, is the founder, director, and producer of the Sutter Creek Ragtime Festival, greatly assisted by the creative genius of his talented wife, Jan ("Ah Sweet Sue") Price, reigning star of the Dill Pickle Ranch Ragtime Melodrama. After hearing his dad perform "boogie woogie" on the family piano, Stevens began picking out music by age 12 and was soon playing boogie and other styles as a self-taught artist. Then he went to college as a music and drama major, where he decided to take piano lessons. Needless to say, he had to unlearn certain techniques. When he discovered ragtime, Stevens became a regular at the Maple Leaf Club meetings in Los Angeles. He still remembers playing Scott Joplin's "Maple Leaf Rag" with six other club members on six pianos. At the Ice Cream Emporium, Stevens plays whenever possible for the enjoyment of the customers, and due to the success of the Sutter Creek Ragtime Festival, his ice cream parlor has become the ragtime center of the Mother Lode and home of the Mother Lode Ragtime Society.  Recently Stevens has taken to composing ragtime and has at least seven ice-cream flavored toe-tappers to his credit. Stevens is active with the Sacramento Ragtime Society, has performed at the Ragtime Corner at the Sacramento Jazz Jubilee, and is the pianist and chief shtick artist of the Dill Pickle Ranch Ragtime Melodrama crew.

Raspberry Jam Band

The Raspberry Jam Band consists of:

Julie Austin - vocals/percussion

Katie Biggs - Sign Lady

Tom Brier - piano

Mark Meeker - tuba

George Preston - euphonium/vocals

Mary Preston - violin/percussion

Julia Riley -flute/piccolo

Kitty Wilson - percussion

Formed in December 2005, the band has become part of the ragtime scene in the Sacramento and Sierra foothills areas.  They have participated in the Ragtime Corner of the Sacramento Jazz Jubilee, West Coast Ragtime Festival, and have been featured at Auburn Concert Band performances. They perform at the Sacramento Ragtime Society and The Mother Lode Ragtime Society meetings. 

Interested in playing diverse works from classic ragtime to contemporary works, the group's byword is variety.  Eclectic in nature, the Raspberries especially seek out obscure or seldom performed rags and feature the works of various contemporary composers. The addition of slide whistles, kazoos, costuming and props add an element of whimsy to their performances. Often featured is "The Sign Lady", who announces the numbers in unique and interesting ways.

Julia Riley, Mark Meeker, George Preston, and Mary Preston also perform as the Ragtime Rascals Rampage in the Auburn area and are members of the Auburn Concert Band.  Another subset of the Raspberries (Tom Brier and the Saloon Sweeties) includes Julie Austin, Tom Brier, Mary Preston, Julia Riley and Kitty Wilson.  Vocalist Julie Austin performs as a soloist accompanied by Tom Brier and Julia Riley.

John Remmers lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan and recently retired after many years of service as a faculty member in mathematics and computer science at Eastern Michigan University. He's been playing classical piano from early childhood and ragtime since the early 1970s, when he became entranced by the musical form upon hearing Joshua Rifkin's recordings of Scott Joplin's piano rags. After a swing into harpsichord playing and early music in the 1980s, John's musical focus returned to ragtime in the 1990s, and he became a frequent after-hours performer at ragtime festivals around the country.

Since he retired from his day job, John's involvement with ragtime has intensified. He has been featured on the programs of the Scott Joplin Festival, West Coast Ragtime Festival, Sutter Creek Ragtime Festival, Lake Superior Ragtime Festival, Blind Boone Festival, and the Ragtime-Jasstime Festival in Alexandria Bay, New York. He has appeared as guest soloist for the Classic Ragtime Society of Indiana and has competed in the Old-Time Piano Playing Contest in Peoria, Illinois. His first CD was just released.

Hal Smith

Drummer Hal Smith became interested in ragtime in the 1950s when he discovered 78s by Johnny Maddox, Marvin Ash and others in his father’s record collection.

Though Hal did not become a pianist, he has enjoyed playing ragtime on drums since he took up the instrument in 1963. Since then he has been privileged to play with legendary pianists such as Wally Rose, Pete Clute, Knocky Parker, Burt Bales, Dick Wellstood, Trebor Tichenor, Bill Mitchell, Ralph Sutton and Dick Hyman.

In 1987, Hal became the regular drummer with the Butch Thompson Trio. He joined the the Ray Skjelbred Quartet in 2002 and the Carl Sonny Leyland Trio the following year. In addition, Hal continues to drum alongside such notable pianists as Paul Asaro, John Royen, Jeff Barnhart, Neville Dickie.

He has also worked with many of the best contemporary traditional jazz bands—including the South Frisco Jazz Band, Original Salty Dogs, Dukes of Dixieland, Jim Cullum Jazz Band, Grand Dominion Jazz Band, Black Eagle Jazz Band, Silver Leaf Jazz Band, Hall Brothers Jazz Band, Soprano Summit, Banu Gibson, Climax Jazz Band, Waldo’s Gutbucket Syncopators and dozens more.

Hal’s own bands have spanned a wide range of musical genres from San Francisco style jazz (Down Home Jazz Band, Frisco Syncopators) to swing (Rhythmakers, Roadrunners, Hal’s Angels) to Rockabilly (the Hayriders—his current band). All told, Hal has recorded over 160 LPs, CDs, tapes and videos.

Currently, Hal continues to work with Butch, Sonny and Ray, plus the Yerba Buena Stompers, Bob Schulz’s Frisco Jazz Band and occasionally with the Titanic Jazz Band. For special occasions, He assembles “Blue Voo”—a Kansas City-style swing sextet that includes Sonny on piano and vocals and Hal’s wife June on acoustic rhythm guitar. In addition Hal plays Country and Western with the Cash Kings and Big Rig Deluxe and blues with Blue Largo, the Robin Henkel Band and the Johnny Rover Blues Band. 

He is President and assistant director of America’s Finest City Dixieland Jazz Society in San Diego—the organizers of the San Diego Thanksgiving Dixieland Jazz Festival. He also teaches drums at the AFCDJS Adult Jazz Camp.

His articles have appeared in the Mississippi Rag, American Rag, Just Jazz (U.K.) and the Bulletin of the Hot Club of France.

Hal has several hobbies, including the Old West and the War Between the States. But hobby #1 is Railroads. He is a member of nine railroad historical societies, collects railroad books, DVDs, videos and memorabilia and has traveled as far as Shreveport, just to watch trains.

Keith Taylor

Keith Taylor began playing ragtime in 1972. Until that time, his musical background was classically oriented. Earning a Bachelor of Music degree in piano and a Masters in composition, including studying composition in Paris, France, he continues to perform and compose both types of music. For many years he taught instrumental music in the Los Angeles Public Schools. He currently lives with his wife in Azalea, Oregon where he freelances as a composer and a pianist. Since boyhood, Keith has traveled twice a year to the Mother Lode to photograph the historic towns and to play every saloon piano he finds — tuning and repairing them while he's at it — a very popular fellow! In 1998 he dropped by the Sutter Creek Ice Cream Emporium, where he discovered another piano and Stevens Price, someone he hadn't seen since the two met at The Maple Leaf Club in Los Angeles 20 years earlier. Keith was the inspiration behind Stevens' decision to organize the Sutter Creek Ragtime Festival of 1999, and that was such a success, Keith returned home and re-organized the Cascade Ragtime Society which now sponsors an early April Ragtime Festival in Roseberg, Oregon. Keith, along with Tom Bopp, is also responsible for initiating the Fresno Flats Vintage Music Festival held each February in Oakhurst, CA. Keith’s latest undertaking is the Annual Shaniko Ragtime and Vintage Music Festival held in a wonderful ghost town in Oregon each September.

Virginia Tichenor

Virginia Tichenor has been consumed by ragtime her entire life. She is the daughter of Trebor Tichenor, the noted ragtime scholar, pianist, collector and founder of  the St. Louis Ragtimers. She studied music at the St. Louis Community Association for the Arts and took advanced training from concert pianist, John Phillips. Always at the crossroads of the ragtime revival, her parental home houses the world's largest library of ragtime sheet music and piano rolls. Virginia grew up with legends like Eubie Blake, Max Morath and Butch Thompson chatting in her own living room. Her father is advisor-confidant for most of the ragtime community, so Virginia often heard new rags when they were forming in the minds of their composers. The topic of her college research project? The ragtime revival, of course!   In 1998, Virginia released her first solo recording, a CD entitled Virginia's Favorites. It includes four two-piano duets with her father, Trebor. It was so popular, the family has since released two other CDs, "The Tichenor Trio" which includes Virginia's father and her multi-talented husband, Marty Eggers, and most recently, "Ragtime Reunion - Tichenor Family Five" featuring Virginia, her dad, her husband, her brother, and her sister-in-law. She is the Vice President, and past President, of the West Coast Ragtime Society.

Town Square Harmonizers

Town Square Harmonizers will perform at the Festival on Saturday.  For additional information, go to their website at: www.townsquareharmonizers.com

Wearing dresses and hats reminiscent of the ragtime era, “Washboard Kitty” plays her embellished washboards with thimble-tipped “tap dancing” fingers, adding brushes, cymbals, bells and castanets as needed for musical accent. Kitty began playing her unique instrument several years ago with the Los Trancos Woods Community Marching Band in Palo Alto CA, and still participates regularly in various Bay Area parades with that colorful band. Through band colleagues she learned about, and subsequently joined, the Sacramento and West Coast Ragtime Societies and has been contributing tasteful percussion in performances with various well-known ragtime pianists ever since.

Playing both washboard and washtub/bucket bass, Kitty is a member of the Peninsula Banjo Band in San Jose CA, and the Raspberry Jam Band from Auburn CA. She participates in large washboard concerts annually at both the Sacramento Jazz Jubilee and the Monterey Dixieland Festival. She has been a welcome repeat performer at the West Coast and Sutter Creek Ragtime Festivals, as well as the Scott Joplin Ragtime Festival in Sedalia, Missouri.