Atlanta Area Friends of Folk Music
(AAFFM)
Fiddler’s Green January 17, 2026
RON HIPP / FRANK CRITELLI
RON HIPP
Ron Hipp is an acoustic fingerstyle guitarist/ singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. A native of Atlanta, he has been playing music, both as a solo artist and in various band combinations, since his early teens. His rich baritone voice, consummate fingerpicking, and mesmerizing songs make his shows a memorable experience.
Ron has also graced many recording projects by other artists over the years as a studio musician. His CD titled “Two Hearts” received international folk/Americana radio airplay and glowing reviews from press and concert presenters. Ron performs ~solo~ at Fiddlers Green Coffeehouse about once every two to three years, so this will be show you don’t want to miss!
outoftherainmusic.net
FRANK CRITELLI
A true Johnny Appleseed of the music community, Frank Critelli has a gift for turning any venue into fertile ground for love, connection, and song. When he’s not traveling and sharing songs, Critelli tends gardens at a quiet Convent. In a previous life, he was an English teacher in the Connecticut Public School System. And somewhere in between, he poured drinks and philosophy at two of Connecticut’s best rock clubs—listening, learning, and living.
His songs draw from these deep and varied wells, and reflect the world outside and the journey within—stories gathered on the road, wisdom earned from joy and ache, and a lifelong inner dialogue. With a voice as lived-in and loving as his presence, Frank Critelli is the velveteen rabbit of folk singer-songwriters—worn soft by experience, and all the more beloved for it.
Scots-Irish Music Program January 24, 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
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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