Local 1000 Executive Board 2010

President:

John McCutcheon

John McCutcheon is a native of Wisconsin who, as a twenty-year-old college student, ventured into the Appalachian South in search of a big dose of traditional music and never returned. Getting involved in union (Miners for Democracy) and regional issues (anti-strip mining movement, community empowerment and self-determination) introduced John to the hands-on practice of organizing and culture as a political tool. He became involved in the early efforts of to organize musicians co-founding the Southern Mountain Musicians Co-op and served on the charter board of Hey Rube!, the first effort to nationally organize folk musicians. He was a charter member of the New Deal organizing committee, the mother organization of Local 1000.

He was elected President of Local 1000 in January of 1998. He has written extensively for the International Musician and was the charter co-chair of the AFM’s Diversity Council. And, not just incidentally, he tours internationally playing a mixture of original and traditional music. John lives in Avondale Estates, GA and has two musician sons.

Vice President:

Tret Fure

Tret Fure’s career spans 4 decades. She began her professional work at the age of 16, singing in coffeehouses and campuses in the Midwest, moving to Berkeley where, after performing weekly on the campus of UC Berkeley where she attended college, she discovered that music really was her life. At 19, she moved to LA to pursue a songwriting and musical career. Within a year she was performing as guitarist and vocalist for Spencer Davis, touring with him and penning the single for his album “Mousetrap”. She went on to record her own album in 1973 on MCA/UNI Records, with the late Lowell George of Little Feat as her producer. With the success of that release, she opened for such bands as Yes, Poco, and the J Geils Band.

While recording her second album, Tret became interested in sound engineering, learning the trade and becoming one of the first women engineers in LA. Over the course of her career she has engineered and produced countless recordings by a variety of artists, including her own work.

In the early 80s, Tret left the mainstream music industry. Armed with a fierce desire to retain full artistic control, she began exploring the independent side of the industry and soon discovered the blossoming genre known as Women’s Music. She has been a major player in that field ever since, recording with and producing some of the best of women’s music including the legendary “Meg & Cris at Carnegie Hall”. Now after 4 acoustic releases on her own label, Tomboy girl Records, she has re-established herself in the folk world winning the 2004 South Florida Folk Festival Singer/Songwriter Competition in 2 out of 3 categories. 2004 also brought her recognition with the prestigious Jane Schliessman Award for Outstanding Contributions to Women’s Music.

Fure also markets of her own line of clothing named after her popular song “Tomboy girl”. In addition, she has produced a series called Music & Comedy in Madison and has hosted the successful festival, Tomboy girl Fest. An accomplished cook, Fure has also published a cookbook, Tret’s Kitchen, featuring her own recipes. Along with bridging the marketing, production, and music worlds, Tret serves as Vice President on the executive board of the Local 1000 Traveling Musicians Association–a union geared toward helping traveling musicians find security and longevity.

Canadian Vice President:

Ken Whiteley

Ken Whiteley is one of Canada’s pre-eminent performing artists. He’s been called a “playing encyclopedia” for his vast repertoire, command of a wide variety of styles (including blues, gospel, swing, folk and his own compositions), and his prodigious ability on over a dozen instruments . His songs have been covered by half a dozen artists and his walls are adorned with a dozen gold and multiple platinum records, but it is the immense joy that communicates from all his musical endeavors that make his work so unique.

Secretary-Treasurer:

John O’Connor

John O’Connor began his involvement in the labor movement right out of high school when he went to work in the factories of Waterloo, Iowa. An interest in folk music and Woody Guthrie led to a twenty-five year career as a folk singer and a cultural educator, performing in concerts, coffeehouses, schools and colleges, union education programs and political action events. John recorded three albums with Flying Fish Records, one of them with the political quartet, ‘Shays Rebellion’, and a CD on the Chroma label. He also recorded a CD produced in conjunction with Collector Records called “We Ain’t Gonna Give It Back”, which is regarded by many as one of the best collections of original songs on the American labor movement. His songs have been recorded by numerous singers from around the English speaking world.

John was the impetus behind the New Deal Committee which led to the founding of Local 1000. Along with Charlie King, John McCutcheon and others he led the campaign to win a non-geographically based local in the AFM. He became Local 1000’s first President before handing the reins over to John McCutcheon.

John currently works for the New York State Nurses Association as a full time organizer. He is also an award winning poet with work published in such literary journals as Columbia Review, Atlanta Review and Peregrine.

Eastern U.S. Representative:

Debra Cowan

Cowan was once asked what kind of songs she writes. Her reply? “Bad ones. Besides, there are so many good songs out there written by others and they should be sung.” Her captivating warm alto carries each folk song she chooses with such emotion that you’ll forget that they were written by others. She performs a cappella and with guitar in the great tradition of folk singers like Joan Baez and Judy Collins, with a clear vocal that calls forth the ghosts of long past but can also offer a more modern urban landscape. In her newest release “Fond Desire Farewell”, she’s taken contemporary and time-honored public domain songs and put them in a modern setting.

As a young girl she idolized Julie Andrews and in her teens discovered Jethro Tull and Steeleye Span. At the age of 21 she needed escape out of a small Midwestern town so she threw darts at a map and ended up in northern California where she attended college, sang in bars, and eventually found work as a math teacher. She continued her discovery of folk with English singers like Sandy Denny and Scottish singers like Ray Fisher.

Debra started performing in California 35 years ago and began touring in 1998, with frequent stops in the US and UK, from folk clubs to festivals like the New Bedford Summerfest and the Dunbar Folk Festival in Scotland. That led her to where she is now, a full-time singer who bridges the old and new with a refreshing stage presence — she may start with a moving ballad like “Rainbow,” a profile of one woman’s courage, and segue into “Johnny Be Fair,” about a poor lass who can’t marry anyone in town because, well, she’s related to everyone.

Debra’s shared the stage with artists as varied as Richard Shindell and John Renbourne. She’s performed in many prestigious UK folk clubs and for six months in the late 90’s held a residency at Sandy’ Bell’s Bar, Edinburgh’s premier folk music pub, following in the footsteps of Scottish musicians such as Dick Gaughan and Aly Bain. She was a 2002 formal showcase artist at the Northeast Regional Folk Alliance. This performance led to two appearances on the nationally syndicated live radio show Folkstage, hosted by Rich Warren. Her earlier recordings Dad’s Dinner Pail and Other Songs from the Helen Hartness Flanders Collection and The Long Grey Line brought her praise from both the US and abroad. In 2006 her version of “Walloping Window Blind” was featured in SingOut! Also that year, her rendition of Richard Thompson’s “Has He Got a Friend For Me” was included in the Free-Reed Records box set RT-The Life and Times of Richard Thompson.

Mid-Western U.S. Representative:

Sandy Andina

Veteran performing songwriter Sandy Andina (a Local 1000 member since 2004) calls Chicago her home for the last 30 years, although she does most of her performing these days in other states all around the Midwest and beyond. She started as a solo folksinger and singing comedian, but has also played bass in various rock bands. She resumed her solo career in 1998, and rejoined forces with Madison, WI-based longtime singing and comedy partner Stephen Lee Rich as Andina & Rich in 2001. In 2004, she formed SASS! with fellow performing songwriter Susan Urban and added traditional and eclectic song interpreter Kate Early in 2005 to form the SASS! Trio. (All Sandy’s partners are Local 1000 members as well). Sandy plays acoustic and electric rhythm guitar, bass guitar, mountain dulcimer, autoharp, and has occasionally been accused of committing attempted banjo. Since 2002, she’s performed in the annual Chicago Bar Association’s “Christmas Spirits” Broadway/vaudeville revue (which runs for a week every December).

Sandy is also President of the Board of FARM (Folk Alliance Region Midwest) and media liaison for the Chicago Songwriters’ Collective. An avid political volunteer since childhood, she’s proud to be the daughter of two union shop stewards (AFSCME and CWA) and niece of three members of AFM Local 802. Sandy owes an immeasurable debt of gratitude to her dedicated predecessor as Midwest Board member, Deborah Van Kleef, and hopes to follow in Deb’s tireless footsteps in service to her brothers and sisters in solidarity and song.

Western U.S. Representative:

Steve Eulberg

Steve Eulberg is an award-winning multi-instrumentalist and singer-songwriter, based in Colorado. He has sung and composed for religious communities, union halls, picket lines, inter-faith retreats and mountain-top youth camps, as well as the more familiar venues: clubs, coffeehouses, bookstores, festivals, benefits and showcase concerts.

Born and raised in the German-heritage town of Pemberville, Ohio, Steve was exposed to a variety of music at home. He studied piano and trumpet, and taught himself ukelele, guitar and harmonica before graduating high school. Steve first heard hammered and mountain dulcimers during his college years. He built his first mountain dulcimer while studying History at Capital University, and his first hammered dulcimer as a seminary intern in Denver. These instruments enabled him to give voice to the Scottish, English and Irish traditions to which he is also heir.

Founder of Owl Mountain Music, Inc., Steve teaches and performs extensively in Colorado and tours across the US and the UK. He is a five-time winner in the National Mountain Dulcimer Championship and three-time finalist in the National Hammered Dulcimer Championship held annually at Winfield, Kansas. Steve hosts the annual Colorado Dulcimer Festival every February and recently earned a Master of Music Education degree from the College of Fine Arts at Boston University with a focus on teaching folk music on folk instruments.

Before becoming a full-time musician, Steve worked as pastor and musician in a Kansas City, Missouri church with African-American, Latino and European-American members, where music was a primary organizing tool. Since 1997 he, his wife, Connie Winter-Eulberg, and their two children, have lived nestled beside the Rocky Mountains, in Fort Collins, Colorado. In 2007 became fully vested in the AFM pension!

Office Manager & Business Rep: Amy Fix

Amy Fix is the Office Manager and Business Representative for Local 1000. When she’s not working hard for Local 1000 members in the New York office, she is busy nurturing her budding career as a singer-songwriter (thanks to stuff she learned from Folk Alliance workshops and all of the wonderful role models of Local 1000!).

After performing her original songs around NYC for 10 years with guitarist/arranger Sam Fenster, she finally put out a CD called “Spoon.” Reviews of “Spoon” have compared Amy’s voice to Joni Mitchell and her songwriting to Suzanne Vega.

“Spoon” serves up sassy lesbian comedy songs (see upcoming recordings for the bisexual plot twist), sweet innocent ditties, and raw ballads full of the pain and transformation of overcoming sexual abuse. Heal and play, that’s all these mighty little songs want to do! Amy brings her healing and humor to clubs and colleges in the Northeast, and an ever-widening circle of folk fans, both straight and gay.

For more information, see her website: www.amyfix.com