Mark Dvorak

Mark Dvorak is the third son of four, born to a working class family on Chicago's southwest side. After reading Anthony Scaduto's biography of Bob Dylan in high school, his interest in American folk music was born. Soon the recordings of Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly and Pete Seeger found their way into his collection. He purchased his first acoustic guitar while working in a xylophone factory in LaGrange, Illinois, and enrolled in classes at Chicago's Old Town School of Folk Music after a summer of traveling the country by motorcycle.

In 1981 he performed at the Fox Valley Folk Festival in Geneva, Illinois for the first time, and later that year opened a performance venue, "The Old Quarter Coffee House,” named after the legendary Houston club where Townes Van Zandt recorded a live album in the early seventies.

In 1986 Dvorak joined the faculty of the Old Town School of Folk Music in Chicago. He soon became embedded in the Chicago acoustic scene, collaborating with many dozens of artists and students, befriending Old Town founders Win Stracke, Frank Hamilton, Eddie Holstein and many others. Dvorak continues to be an integral member of the Old Town School faculty, where he is artist-in-residence.

Mean Mary

Mary James, youngest of six children, was born in Geneva, Alabama, though her family lived in Florida, a couple miles below the Alabama line. Her mom (author, Jean James) and dad (WWII veteran, William James) lived a very nomadic lifestyle. On one occasion they packed up the family (Mary was four at the time) and moved from Florida to North Minnesota, near the Canadian border, to rough it in the wilds.