I've been playing and teaching my driving clawhammer banjo style for more than 45 years.  I'm the co-founder of the nationally-touring Hotpoint Stringband, with whom I have recorded five albums, and I've collaborated on too many other musical projects to count. A track from my solo CD was featured on an episode of the acclaimed HBO series Deadwood.  More than 6,000 subscribers enjoy my YouTube banjo channel, and my banjo instructional Patreon has more than 600 paid subscribers.  In my younger days,  I won the Ohio State Banjo Contest nine times, and am very proud to have placed in the contests at the Appalachian Stringband Festival (Clifftop) a number of times (3rd in Banjo, and First Place in both the Traditional Band and NeoTraditional Band contests.)

I love teaching banjo, and especially love working with beginners and with folks making the transition from learning note-by-note from an instructor or tablature to learning tunes from recordings or "on the fly" at jams.  Check out my lessons page for more info.

I live in Athens, Ohio, and am lucky to be the wife of a fiddler (Mark Burhans) and also the mother of a fiddler (Ry Burhans.) I grew up in Arizona, Wisconsin, Karachi Pakistan, Massachusetts, Addis Ababa Ethiopia, and then, after 9th grade, moved to the college town Athens in the Appalachian part of Ohio.  I feel deeply rooted here but have not lost my love for travel, and have dragged a banjo with me to India, Nepal, Australia, Costa Rica, Portugal, England, France and Germany, and have taught banjo workshops in many of those countries.