Slim Harrison

About the Artist

  Slim Harrison - Sunnyland Music: Biography   For over 40 years, Slim has performed at Schools and Festivals, Hoedowns & Throwdowns all over North America and around the world.  Considered a "Self-taught" multi-instrumentalist, storyteller & Barn Dance caller, Slim says he, "learned a little bit from everyone I met as I traveled around this great country and around the world!" His greatest joy is sharing the music & dances of America and the world with children & adults.  Slim has had the privilege of performing with Pete Seeger & Tao Rodriegez (at the Kennedy Center), Bud & Ola Belle Reed, John Jackson, Patsy Montana, Blind Rev. Pearly Brown, Ella Jenkins, Keter Betts, Jean Ritchie, John "Kinderman" Taylor, Ralph Lee Smith, Guy Davis, Bill Spence and numerous other musicians at festivals, conferences, hoedowns, house concerts & street corners. Slim is at home on the Main Stage or back porch, leading a march at the White House with Caesar Chavez or a small town "Jugband Parade" with his children's participatory jug band, "The Sunnyland Band". He builds banjos & dulcimers in his workshop at Sugartree Farm & leads workshops with special needs children making stomper-doodles or whammy-diddles.  He has called dances in his barn and 2 Inaugural Barn Dances, as well as a country wedding in Estonia, an “Americana Hoedown” in New Delhi, India, and even a barn dance for the 1980 U.S. Olympic team.  He often plays the fiddle or banjo while calling and invites folks to join in with washtub bass, washboards & skiffle-boards, stumpf-fiddles, jugs, etc.  He has been backed up for hoedowns by professional and semi-professional bands including The Barnstormers, Piney Mountain, Fiddlestyx, Double Decker, South Mountain, Wherligig, Critton Hollow, The Corndodgers, The Sunshine Skiffle Band, New and Used Bluegrass, and many others over the years. Slim is a "Master Artist" with the Wolf Trap Institute for Early Learning through the Arts and "Artist in Residence" with MD & PA State Arts Councils - in the Artists in Education & Touring Artists Programs.