Atlanta Area Friends of Folk Music
(AAFFM)
Scots-Irish Music Program February 28, 2026
SCOTS-IRISH MUSIC
FREE COMMUNITY EVENT: SCOTS-IRISH MUSIC
A folk song, like a person, may well have a place on a family tree. Scots-Irish Music, a free public program, will explore the roots and branches of one immigrant group’s traditional music. The event will take place Saturday, January 24, 2:00 pm, at Legacy Park Auditorium, 500 South Columbia Dr, Decatur. It is sponsored by Atlanta Area Friends of Folk Music (AAFFM) and the Frank Hamilton School, in partnership with Irish America 250: The South and the Scots-Irish. Irish America 250 is a national organization dedicated to educating the public about the contributions of the Irish to American history and culture.
The 90-minute program will explore how the traditional Scottish, English and Irish ballads and dance tunes brought to colonial America by immigrants from Ulster were preserved and modified in Appalachia. AAFFM President Emeritus Chris Moser will moderate a discussion with Agnes Scott College ethnomusicologist Tracey Laird, balladeer Maggie Hunter and musician Mick Kinney. After the panel discussion Hunter will perform Old World versions and Appalachian variants of selected ballads and explain how and why they changed in this country. Kinney will do the same with fiddle tunes.
Chris Moser has been researching Scots-Irish (aka Scotch-Irish) history and culture for three decades. The veteran filmmaker is currently raising funds to produce a PBS documentary, THE SCOTS-IRISH – A MUSICAL HISTORY.
Dr. Tracey Laird is a Professor of Music at Agnes Scott College in Decatur. Laird is an ethnomusicologist specializing in Southern traditional music. She has authored or edited six books, the latest being Dolly Parton: 100 Remarkable Moments in an Extraordinary Life.
Maggie Hunter of Athens GA has been a singer in the Warblers (bluegrass), the Solstice Sisters (folk), the Humdingers (folk) and Maggie and the Mason Jars (Western swing, jazz, bluegrass). She hosts the weekly WUGA public radio show Just Folks, spanning a wide and varied range of folk music.
Mick Kinney is a versatile musician and educator who plays fiddle, country lap steel, swing guitar, old time banjo, Cajun accordion, and ragtime piano. He has taught at Swannanoa Gathering Old Time and Swing weeks, Mars Hill University’s Blue Ridge Old Time and Roots of America, Festival of American Fiddle Tunes, Alabama Folk School, and many other residencies. In addition to collecting and preserving Georgia traditional music, he records and performs with his sons as the Griddle Lickers and Hickhoppers and is on staff of the Frank Hamilton Folk School in his local Atlanta area.
For more information: chrismoser [at] bellsouth.net
Fiddler’s Green March 21, 2026
KALA FARNHAM / THE IRISH BROTHERS
KALA FARNHAM
Kala Farnham crafts contemporary folk songs with roots and wings, weaving age-old truths into modern grooves. The 18th Connecticut State Troubadour and award-winning artist has earned national recognition as a 2020 Falcon Ridge Folk Festival Emerging Artist, 2019 Rose Garden Performing Songwriter Contest winner, two-time Great American Song Contest finalist, and an Official Showcase Artist at both the Northeastern and Southeastern Regional Folk Alliance Conferences, among other accolades. She has shared the stage with legends such as Don McLean and Tower of Power, folk troubadours such as Lucy Kaplansky and David Wilcox, and more.
Drawing on a background in classical piano, musical theater, and therapeutic sound, she offers a signature reinvention of the folk tradition— infusing fairytales, historical fiction, and narrative medicine into vivid portraits of the human experience. Her intimate, interactive performances—featuring soul-stirring vocals and mystical folk harp, piano, and guitar—invite listeners on a transcendent journey that lingers long after the final note fades.
CHASING THE LIGHT
“Captain” George Hergen and Sandyman Flynn make a unique team. Sandyman comes from the mountains of Western North Carolina, while the Captain hails from the canyons of New York City. The two started performing together more than 35 years ago when they worked “suit” jobs at IBM. Both draw from their Irish heritage for material. Their music practically maps the Irish cultural integration into the “new country” – from traditional Irish ballads to original songs of love, drinking, revolution and redemption.
Sandy is a former songwriter on Music Row (Tree-Sony/ATV) in Nashville. He was a founding member of the band Cullowhee, which toured nationally and internationally for ten years in the 70s and 80s. George started singing and playing after his first visit to New York’s Greenwich Village in the mid-1960s. He honed his craft by traveling throughout Ireland with the great Tommy Makem. The pair received the name “Irish Brothers” following a performance at The Folk Alliance several years ago in Memphis, Tennessee.
Sandyman Flynn sandymanflynn.com
George Hergen: https://youtu.be/SBYxax1nhs8
Welcome! This site lists information about folk music and related activities in the greater Atlanta area and the Southeastern U.S. It contains:
- General and recurring information in an expanded directory format
- Links to other folk resources
- See the EVENTS Tab for Fiddler's Green and other AAFFM- sponsored concerts, workshops, and pickin' parties, as well as other events of interest in and around Atlanta.
In email blasts, you'll find details about current events and information on member-only activities like our famous "get-togethers". If you'd like to host a pick-'n-grin, let us know! See the EVENTS tab for upcoming concerts and pickin' parties.
Contact us at membership@aaffm.org to host a pickin' party, join our organization, find out about an upcoming concert, party or workshop, or to submit listings to the website.
See the 'History' tab for the history of the organization.
AAFFM sponsors a local monthly coffeehouse, Fiddler's Green, that features concerts that included traditional music, singer-songwriters, poetry and storytelling. As of August, 2016, it is held at First Existentialist Congregation of Atlanta. AAFFM Membership benefits include the email blasts (our mailing list will always remain private) and discounts on AAFFM sponsored concerts. Annual membership dues are $15 for individuals and $20 for families, $35 sustaining members. E-mail membership@aaffm.org for membership information or click HERE for our Membership Application.
AAFFM Needs YOU
Chris Moser, President
AAFFM
John McCutcheon
Smoke Rise, GA
April 7, 2019
Dear Friends,
I got a call, early on in my years of performing, from Betty Smith, a friend I’d met at the Folk Festival of the Smokies, inviting me to come do a show in Atlanta. A follow up call from Don and Laeta Smith sealed the deal and, sometime in the 1970’s I appeared in Atlanta for the first of many times. My host was a freshly-formed group, The Atlanta Area Friends of Folk Music. What I found was a devoted clutch of folk music lovers who not only presented concerts, but sponsored all sorts of events that encouraged people to play music themselves, to share the love of this music that is the root of all the world’s music. To get involved with the music, with one another, with the world.
Having this lovely relationship with Atlanta played a part in my decision to move here in 2006. And I thank you for that.
Over forty years later, AAFFM is still sponsoring events that are meeting places for Atlantans of all stripes and a watering hole for that wandering herd of performers still plying the boards out there. I get to see some of my far-flung fellow performing pals as a result of these. And I thank you for that.
But groups such as AAFFM do not magically sustain themselves. Communities must commit to survive. And in this age of hyper-tribalism it’s more important than ever to reach out, to stand up, to say, “This is the kind of community, the kind of world, I want to be a part of.” You’ll never see the musicians AAFFM brings into our intimate gatherings at the Fox or on Netflix. No, you have to go out, sit shoulder-to-shoulder with others and have that experience live and in person. You can learn how to play, how to sing, how to harmonize in jam sessions not sponsored by YouTube. And, in the process, help build a community that improves the lives of individuals and the collective community life of Atlanta.
Pete Seeger would have been 100 years old this year. He taught us what we could feel like, what we could do if we risked adding our voice to the others in his audience, if we dared to harmonize with a roomful of strangers. But we had to make the move.
So, my fellow Atlantans, make the move, risk, dare, and join me in continuing to support the Atlanta Area Friends of Folk Music. And for that I thank you, as well.
Take it easy, but take it!
Become an AAFFM Member!
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