David Budin

As a teenager in the late 1960s, Cleveland Heights native David Budin performed in rock bands and as an acoustic solo artist, opening shows for such artists as Linda Ronstadt (with the Stone Poneys) and Tim Buckley at Cleveland folk venues, including the legendary La Cave. He moved to New York City in early 1968, and played in a New Jersey-based group called the Gift, which was one of the bands whose members eventually evolved into Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band.

While in the Gift, David got to jam onstage with Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin and many others, and open shows for artists including the Grateful Dead and the Lovin’ Spoonful. In 1969, David left the group to sign with Sire Records as a recording artist, songwriter, arranger and record producer. As a solo artist he played in concerts with Canned Heat, John Hammond Jr., Kenny Rankin and others, and produced albums by artists including blues legend Otis Spann. David also worked as a comedian and a comedy writer in New York.

David returned to Ohio and played in several rock and folk groups, under the name Baxter Shadowfield, and continued to produce records, write songs, arrange music, perform and write comedy, and promote and produce concerts. He began to concentrate on music journalism in the early 1980s, and eventually became the editor of Northern Ohio Live and then Cleveland Magazine. He is now a free-lance magazine writer, focusing on pop culture and especially pop music, writing for regional and national publications.

David returned to music, part-time, in 1998. A few years ago, he wrote an orchestral arrangement for Graham Nash’s “Teach Your Children,” which Nash performed with a 90-member orchestra. In 2007, he co-produced his brother Noah’s second CD, Metaphor, which is available now. In October 2008, he and his brother Noah, and Long Road’s Kevin Richards performed with Peter Yarrow (of Peter, Paul & Mary) in a concert in Cleveland.

Raymond De Forest

Ray DeForest is a legend in the Cleveland-area music scene. An acclaimed expert on the electric bass, washtub bass, upright bass as well as bass vocals, Ray started playing bass in 1968. He has studied the instrument at Cuyahoga Community College, and privately with Cleveland Orchestra principal bassist Harry Barnoff.

He has performed with such notable area groups as the Mr. Stress Blues Band, ACO, Aces and Eights, Princess Ladia and the Natural Facts, and with national acts, including jazz trumpeter Clark Terry, the Odean Pope Sax Choir and early rock pioneer Johnny Johnson, Chuck Berry’s pianist.

Ray is the epitome of the working musician and can be found playing somewhere nearly every night and most afternoons. When he's not playing, he's teaching at the Fairmount School of Music.

Charlie Lewis and Celia Hollander Lewis

Celia, a native of Shaker Heights who now lives in Athens, Ohio, has performed as a vocalist and multi-instrumentalist all over the country for the past 30 years. Charlie, a native of Kentucky who lives in Athens with Celia, has been performing as an actor and musician in Ohio and the surrounding region for the past four decades.

In the mid-1970s, Charlie and Celia met as members of a joint project of the School of Theater and the Ohio Valley Summer Theater known as the "Appalachian Green Parks Project." This group performed traditional Appalachian folk songs and dialogue based on the culture and history of the region in Ohio State Parks. There was a documentary movie made on the group, and an album was released for public sale. Music was recorded for the Ohio Department of Natural Resources for a public service film titled Sweet Ohio and the group made an appearance on ABC Television’s Make A Wish.

Charlie continued to play in folk and bluegrass groups and Charlie and Celia have been performing as the duo Charlie and Celia off and on for about 20 years, appearing frequently in southeast Ohio. They performed in 2007 in a series of concerts with a reunion of the Appalachian Green Parks Project, co-sponsored by Ohio Valley Summer Theatre and Ohio University, with help from the Ohio Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts. Both Charlie and Celia have been presenters/ instructors at the Southeast Ohio Dulcimer Festival that takes place in Stewart, Ohio. Celia is also a practicing Board Certified Music Therapist. Together they have recorded and released two CDs: Snapshot and The Happiest of Holidays.

Kevin Richards

Kevin is the founder and Executive Director of the Fairmount School of Music and its educational outreach arm, Roots of American Music. A multi-instrumentalist and vocalist, Kevin plays electric and acoustic guitars, mandolin, fiddle and banjo. Praised by the Cleveland Free Times as, “one of the most sought-after artist/educators in Ohio,” Kevin gives hundreds of performances annually and has entertained audiences in concerts and schools, and on radio and television for more than 25 years.

His mastery of American roots music has led to collaborations with the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Museum’s education department, including the popular Blues in the Schools and Roots to Rockprograms. Blues in the Schools was chosen by the Musicians Performance Trust Fund as one of the top 10 educational programs in North America and was featured in two films, Keeping the Music Alive, shown on PBS in 1999, and American Roots Music, which appeared on PBS in 2001.

He has released three CDs, The First String Band (1995) and One Night at the Spider (1997), Ragged But Right (2006). He has shared the stage with rock, folk and blues legends, including Jorma Kaukonen, John Hammond, Robert Lockwood, and Livingston Taylor.

Robert Sandham

Bob began playing guitar in the early ‘60s, when his mother brought home a used instrument and connected him with a neighbor, Cleveland folk music legend Dick Wedler, for some instruction. Wedler supplied him with records by Bob Gibson, Tom Paxton and Phil Ochs, and Bob was immediately hooked on folk music. Over the years he has played acoustic, electric, and pedal steel guitars in rock, country, blues, and pop settings, as well as continuing in the folk vein.

In the 1970s, Bob played with legendary Ohio singer-songwriters Alex Bevan, John Bassette and Pat Daily, and others in the region, and spent much time recording and performing in concerts, clubs and coffee houses and on radio and TV. In 2006, he joined Bevan and bassist Paul Hamman in a reunion concert at the Kent Stage, celebrating the 30th anniversary of Bevan's Springboard album.

Bob serves as the pastor of the Little Church in the Vale in Gates Mills.

 

The History of Long Road

David Budin put together the group Long Road with four other folk and rock veterans, for a concert they did in August 2007 at Cain Park in Cleveland Heights.

The show, called "Can't Help But Wonder Where I'm Bound: A 1967 Coffeehouse Concert," is a celebration of the original singer-songwriter movement, from about 1964 to 1969. The premise was that in the middle and late 1960s, you could go to any folk club or coffeehouse in the country and hear performers singing all the same songs – songs by Bob Dylan, Gordon Lightfoot, Tom Paxton, Phil Ochs, Tom Rush, Tim Hardin, Eric Andersen, Joni Mitchell, Judy Collins, Leonard Cohen, Tim Buckley, Bob Gibson and others.

But, for the most part, this music has not been played since around 1970 – partly because, as a result of this original singer-songwriter movement, most performers began writing their own songs, and also because new genres took over, including folk-rock, psychedelic rock, electric blues, and others.

So there are dozens of wonderful songs that are not being played anymore. In this concert, Long Road performed the best of those late-‘60s songs, played with all acoustic instruments, featuring songs by all the above-mentioned singer-songwriters, and others, with comedy and historical perspective by Budin.

That first show sold out, so they did it again in November 2007 at the Kent Stage, one the region's premiere folk venues, located in Kent, Ohio. After that, they started playing other venues, including one of the country’s top jazz clubs (which also presents folk and world music), Nighttown, in Cleveland Heights, as well as more appearances at Cain Park and at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame & Museum (for its Woodstock weekend) and other venues.

Besides adding two new members to the group (see The Band), Long Road had added a lot of songs to its repertoire. And many of those songs are from eras other than the 1960s – but after going through the Long Road “filter,” they all sound like ‘60s songs. That’s why our motto is: Making old songs new and new songs sound old.

Long Road plays infrequently (by design). But check the schedule to see if there is a show in the near (or distant) future.