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The Cliffhangers are (from left to right) Karen Falkowski, bass, Brendan Doyle, banjo, Rusty Neithammer, guitar, Jody Platt, tenor guitar, and Mark Simos, fiddle.

THE CLIFFHANGERS: On the Edge Champion fiddler Mark Simos leads a great, full-steam ahead "campground" string band of friends from the Clifftop Festival in traditional old-time fiddle tunes, ranging from familiar jam and dance tunes to the obscure and archaic.

The Appalachian String Band Festival held each August in the beautiful secluded hills near Clifftop, West Virginia, has become a favorite summer pilgrimage for the old-time music community, where like-minded folks from far away find each other and lose themselves in blissful exploration of the old tunes. In this fertile setting, the Cliffhangers’ unmistakable "campground sound" emerged: Mark's infinitely creative fiddling; Brendan's percussive and fluid banjo style; the woody bumblebee texture of Jody's unique tenor guitar picking, matching the fiddle tuning for tuning, line for line; the solid rhythmic groove of Rusty's humming guitar locking step with Karen's elegant elephant stride bass. The Cliffhangers are a powerful Old-Time band of today, with a sound clearly on the edge of yesterday and beyond.  ~ Rich Hartness

Hi! These are the web pages / work in progress for the Cliffhangers, a group of musical friends who have assembled each summer at Clifftop's Appalachian String Band Festival. We just released our CD, On the Edge, on 5-String Productions and this is the place to come for all kinds of behind-the-scenes extra information and goodies.

Sorry if you looked for these pages before and didn't find them, that's my bad! But we're here now - so please check back often as we will be making lots of updates to these pages in the coming months, with chord charts, answers to questions about sources, intimate personal details of the band, product news, and more. Also check out the companion webpages for Clifftop Notes Vol. 1, an album of original tunes composed at Clifftop by Mark Simos, fiddler in the Cliffhangers. Both of these sites are part of Mark's own Devachan Music site with lots of information about his work as a songwriter, tunesmith and composer, guitar accompanist, teacher and 'modal philosopher.'

Please join our mailing list! We will send you exclusive links to some extra goodies like free MP3 downloads—field recordings from Clifftop sessions, extra tunes, tunes captured at the moment of inception, and more! And watch for the release of Clifftop Notes Vol. 2: Big Ears, in the coming year...

- Mark Simos