Atwater-Donnelly is an American

folk music Folk music is a music genre that includes traditional folk music and the contemporary genre that evolved from the former during the 20th-century folk revival. Some types of folk music may be called world music. Traditional folk music has b ...

group from

Rhode Island Rhode Island (, like ''road'') is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is the List of U.S. states by area, smallest U.S. state by area and the List of states and territories of the United States ...

consisting of Aubrey Atwater, Elwood Donnelly, and occasionally other musicians and dancers. They have toured throughout the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

and internationally, playing

guitar The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected stri ...

banjo The banjo is a stringed instrument with a thin membrane stretched over a frame or cavity to form a resonator. The membrane is typically circular, and usually made of plastic, or occasionally animal skin. Early forms of the instrument were fashi ...

Appalachian dulcimer The Appalachian dulcimer (many variant names; see below) is a fretted string instrument of the zither family, typically with three or four strings, originally played in the Appalachian region of the United States. The body extends the length of ...

tin whistle The tin whistle, also called the penny whistle, is a simple six-holed woodwind instrument. It is a type of fipple flute, putting it in the same class as the recorder, Native American flute, and other woodwind instruments that meet such criteria. ...

limberjack Jig dolls are traditional wooden or tin-plate toys for adults or children. They are dolls with loose limbs that step dance or 'jig' on the end of a vibrating board or platform in imitation of a real step dancer. In London they were frequently o ...

, and other instruments.Druckenmiller, Tom. "Atwater-Donnelly The Blackest Crow."

Sing Out! ''Sing Out!'' was a quarterly journal of folk music and folk songs that was published from May 1950 through spring 2014. It was originally based in New York City, with a national circulation of approximately 10,000 by 1960. Background ''Sing Out ...

. 48.2 (Summer 2004): p125 In recent years, they have also performed as The Atwater-Donnelly Trio, with Cathy Clasper-Torch. Atwater and Donnelly met as volunteers at the Stone Soup Coffeehouse in Rhode Island in early 1987, and started playing together a few months later. They specialize in traditional American folk music and Celtic folk music, but write and play their own songs as well. Their performances have been featured on ''

All Songs Considered ''All Songs Considered'' is a weekly online multimedia program started in January 2000 by NPR's ''All Things Considered'' director Bob Boilen. At first, the show featured information and streaming audio about the songs used as bumper music on '' ...

'' and Fiona Ritchie's ''

The Thistle & Shamrock ''The Thistle & Shamrock'' is a weekly American syndicated radio program, named after the national emblems of Scotland and Ireland, specializing in Celtic music. It is heard on 380 National Public Radio (NPR) stations, and is available internatio ...

'' on public radio. Atwater regularly runs workshops at places like the

John C. Campbell Folk School The John C. Campbell Folk School, also referred to as "The Folk School", is located in Brasstown, North Carolina, along the Cherokee County and Clay line. It is a non-profit adult educational organization based on non-competitive learning. Origin ...

, as well as performing and teaching clogging and flat-footing dance, derived mainly from dance steps learned in Appalachia and the southeast U.S. They were one of the earlier musical groups to be on the web, after one of their fans worked with Atwater to put a site up in 1995. They have released 13

album An album is a collection of audio recordings issued on compact disc (CD), Phonograph record, vinyl, audio tape, or another medium such as Digital distribution#Music, digital distribution. Albums of recorded sound were developed in the early ...

s, several books of

poetry Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings i ...

, and two songbooks. Atwater was selected to serve as

Artist-in-residence Artist-in-residence, or artist residencies, encompass a wide spectrum of artistic programs which involve a collaboration between artists and hosting organisations, institutions, or communities. They are programs which provide artists with space a ...

at the

Grand Canyon National Park Grand Canyon National Park, located in northwestern Arizona, is the 15th site in the United States to have been named as a national park. The park's central feature is the Grand Canyon, a gorge of the Colorado River, which is often consider ...

in May–June 2011.

Albums

Atwater-Donnelly

* ''Labor and Love'' (1988) * ''Culled from the Garden'' (1991) * ''Like the Willow Tree'' (1994) * ''Where the Wild Birds Do Whistle'' (1997) * ''And Then I'm Going Home: Atwater-Donnelly Live'' (2001) * ''The Blackest Crow'' (2004) * ''When Winter Calls'' (2005) * ''The Halfway Ground'' (2007) (with Cathy Clasper-Torch, Heidi Cerrigione, John Cerrigione, Uriah Donnelly, and Kevin Doyle) * ''The Weaver's Bonny'' (2009) (with Cathy Clasper-Torch, John and Heidi Cerrigione, Uriah Donnelly, and Kevin Doyle) * ''Each Other's Story'' (2011) (with Cathy Clasper-Torch, John and Heidi Cerrigione, Kevin Doyle, Paul Dube, Morgan Santos, and Alex Krepkikh) * ''The World Is Old Tonight'' (2016) (with Cathy Clasper-Torch, John Cerrigione, Uriah Donnelly, Kevin Doyle, and Torrin Ryan) * ''The Boat You Row'' (2022) (with Cathy Clasper-Torch, Erin Lobb Mason, and Torrin Ryan)

Atwater solo

* ''Simple Sentences'' (1992) * ''Daily Growing: Aubrey Atwater Live in the Classroom'' (1999)

DVD

* ''Going Up Home: The Passion of Atwater-Donnelly'' (2007) ** This documentary was written and directed by Aubrey and Elwood's youngest son, Uriah. It explores their biographies and shows their effect on others.

References

External links

Atwater-Donnelly home page
*

AllMusic.com page AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databas ...

* - photo and video montage from the recording of ''The Halfway Ground'' and its release concert * {{DEFAULTSORT:Atwater-Donnelly American folk musical groups Appalachian dulcimer players Musical groups from Rhode Island