Meet our 2026 Ola Belle Reed Songwriters Retreat Instructors!
GRAMMY Award Winner, Cathy has won the John Lennon Songwriting Contest, International Songwriting Competition, Mid-Atlantic Songwriting Contest and has recorded 48 albums in her 48 year career, mostly with partner Marcy Marxer. Influenced by folks like Tom Paxton, Alice Gerrard, Pete Seeger and Ola Belle Reed, she writes what she wants in whatever style suits her from bluegrass to swing and from folk to rock. She has been nominated for 12 consecutive GRAMMY Awards and her two GRAMMY’s say “Artist, Engineer, Producer”, but the title she likes best is “Social Music Conductor.”
Raised in Chicago, Rachel Baiman made her way to Nashville at 18 with the dream of being a professional fiddle player and has since released three solo records and an EP, alongside session and side-person work with Kacey Musgraves, Kevin Morby, and Molly Tuttle among many others. As a songwriter, she has garnered a reputation for her specific brand of political and personal lyricism, which Vice’s Noisey described as ‘Flipping off Authority one note at a time.”
Common Nation of Sorrow, Baiman’s 2023 LP, was called one of “The Best Albums of the Year (So Far) by The Boston Globe, awarded 4 stars from American Songwriter, and deemed a “Tremendously and remarkable record” by The Amp. On the heels of an album release year that saw her play more than 130 shows across the globe, Baiman in making 2024 her “Year of collaboration” with a series of A Side/B Side mini release projects featuring some of her favorite songwriters including Pony Bradshaw, Caroline Spence, and Nicholas Jamerson. If Common Nation of Sorrow was a novel, this year’s releases feel more like short stories, just long enough to make you want more.
Matthew S. Parsons is a songwriter, poet and educator from Olive Hill, Kentucky. He composed the title track on Bronwyn Keith-Hynes’ 2025 Grammy-nominated album” I Built a World.” Parsons grew up in a bluegrass family and has performed widely, both as a solo artist and with his band Whistle & Fish. For more than a decade, he has taught songwriting and traditional music through Morehead State University, Berea College, Hindman Settlement School’s Appalachian Writers Workshop, and community programs across Appalachia, helping writers and musicians discover their voices and hone their craft. He is the author of the poetry books “Mountain Roosters” and “Holy Land.”
You may have seen Parsons perform at Kentucky Arts & Letters Day, Appalachian Songwriters Weekend, The Bluegrass Jamboree, Bernie Sanders’ Fighting Oligarchy Tour, WDVX Blue Plate Special, Country Music Highway 23, The Down Home, The Appalachian Food Summit, or the Ford Foundation Annual Dinner.
He has toured both domestically and internationally with acts like Sarah Kate Morgan, The Local Honeys, The Price Sisters, The Woodsheep, and The Berea College Bluegrass Band, and has performed alongside industry legends like Peter Rowan, Tim Stafford, Al White, Raymond McClain, Dale Ann Bradley, Bronwyn Keith-Hynes, and many more.