Camp Staff
Cosy Sheridan, Music Director
Cosy Sheridan first appeared on the national folk scene in 1992 when she won the songwriting contests at The Kerrville Folk Festival and The Telluride Bluegrass Festival. The Boston Globe dubbed her “one of the best new singer-songwriters in the United States.”
She is a veteran touring performer of the folk coffeehouses from Boston to Seattle, as well as The Cowgirl Hall of Fame, Carnegie Hall and on the Jerry Lewis Telethon. “You can’t make it into double digits, and continue touring for twenty or so years, unless you know what you’re doing, and do it well,” wrote The Chicago Examiner.
Her 2021 CD A Beautiful Sound charted in the Top 10 on the folk radio charts, as did her 2018 release My Fence & My Neighbor. Her CD Pretty Bird was listed among Sing Out Magazine’s Great CDs of 2014.
When the pandemic hit she came off the road and now reaches her audience through her weekly Tuesday morning livestream concerts. She plays a percussive guitar style backed backed up by bass player Charlie Koch.
Cosy teaches classes in songwriting, performance and guitar at workshops and adult music camps across the country. She is the director of Moab Folk Camp in Moab, Utah.
Dave Firestine, Music Director
Dave pulls out the “take no prisoners” style of playing at every dance – bringing the tunes to their full potential and beyond. He is a tune-meister and music jams are super fun when he is in the driver’s seat.
Originally a drummer, his strong sense of rhythm and syncopation is the foundation of his playing and tune writing, and truthfully he is never happier than when he gets to pull out the laptop drum kit to back swing and honky tonk tunes. Don’t worry, he can access his sensitive side when playing waltzes and beautiful melodies.
Dave is a music vagrant retiree now, but before that, he was Senior Gyzmologist building lightning detection systems. He is currently playing with the dance bands STEAM! (www.dancetosteam.com) and The Privy Tippers.
Dennis LeFever, Program Director
Dennis hails from Woodland Park Colorado and is just the person to help coordinate the variety of logistics in offering offering the Colorado Roots Music Camp program.
Corbin Graber, Executive Director
Colorado Roots Music Camp began in 2006 utilizing the facilities and food service as a guest group of Rocky Mountain Mennonite Camp. With the ongoing success of the camp through the years and growing from one to two camp offerings each year, the transition of management/ownership of Roots Music to Rocky Mountain was a natural one. Colorado Roots Music Camp continues as a welcomed part of the variety of camp programs offered by Rocky Mountain Mennonite Camp throughout the calendar year.
Ellen Frohardt, Office/Mercantile Staff
Ellen hails from Colorado Springs Colorado and is just the person to help you negotiate the details of registering for camp and then fix you up with a suitcase full of music merchandise to take home to friends and family offered by Colorado Roots Music Camp. While she came on to the music scene relatively late, (after retiring from her Human Resource gigs) she makes up for lost time with a humorous approach to life and continuous toe tapping. She will be the first to tell you that the music lives inside even when she is unable to use her voice.
Camp Founders
Charlie Hall
After earning a bachelor’s degree in Music Education with emphasis in French horn, Charlie Hall started out as a member of the 6th US Army Band in San Francisco. When real life reared its ugly head, he found he needed a day job, which he found in computers from 1983 to 2003. From 2003 to his retirement in 2017, he was a full-time guitar, mandolin and bass teacher. He’s taught high school band as well as classes in beginning guitar, fingerpicking, bluegrass guitar, music theory and jamming. Charlie was a founder and driving force of the Black Rose Acoustic Society in Colorado Springs, a favorite destination for roots musicians and roots music fans. He performed for ten years with the popular folk/bluegrass band Black Rose, was a finalist in the 2000 National Fingerpicking Championship and was nominated Bluegrass Guitarist of the Year in 1996 by the Colorado Bluegrass Music Society. With his wife Marianne Danehy, Charlie was creator & co-director of the Colorado Roots Music Camp from 2006-2017. He and Marianne were thrilled to hand off management of the Roots Camp to the folks at the Rocky Mountain Mennonite Camp as well as Cosy Sheridan and Raul Reynoso.
December 11, 2018, we said goodby to Charlie who passed away after a valiant battle with brain cancer. He leaves behind a large legacy of music and education and those who knew him are better for it. May we all carry on his legacy of life, love and life-long music!
Marianne Stovall
Marianne discovered “her people” around 2002; that is, those who played roots music. From 2005 to 2014, she taught violin and fiddling in Colorado Springs, and is a registered instructor with the Suzuki Association of the Americas. Undaunted by two degrees and a former life in Mechanical Engineering and Mathematics, she’s the mother of two nearly-grown kids, William and Anna. Marianne is an excellent teacher and an expert at getting folks started both on violin and fiddle styles. From 2006-2017, along with her husband Charlie Hall, she was co-director of the Colorado Roots Music Camp.