Event | Concerts and Performances The Creek Rocks Perform Old-Time Music from the Ozarks

The exciting old time duo The Creek Rocks, the recipients of the 2024 Artists in Resonance Fellowship from the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, are bringing old songs back to the Library in shiny new arrangements! Accomplished singer and banjo player Cindy Woolf and veteran guitarist and singer Mark Bilyeu established the group in 2015. Much of their work has been interpreting the traditional music of the Ozarks region. The Artists in Resonance Fellowship provided Cindy and Mark the opportunity to immerse themselves in the field recordings of folklorist Sidney Robertson Cowell, who in December 1936 and January 1937 visited communities in the Missouri and Arkansas Ozarks. On August 21, 2025, the duo returns to the Library of Congress at the invitation of the AFC to perform some of the materials they learned here. Says Bilyeu of the event, “We get to take these songs Sidney Robertson recorded on a repeat journey of sorts, from the nation’s capital to the Ozarks and back again.”

The Cowell recordings also serve as the source material for The Creek Rocks’ current album-length recording project, which will be the culmination of their fellowship tenure. Their debut recording, "Wolf Hunter," was a similar project, featuring sixteen songs gathered from two well-known folk song collections, those of Max Hunter of Springfield, Missouri (Mark’s birthplace), and John Quincy Wolf of Batesville, Arkansas (where Cindy grew up).

In July 2023, The Creek Rocks performed at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival on the National Mall in Washington. As part of the festival’s focus on the Ozarks region, Cindy and Mark performed throughout the festival’s two-week duration. They are also regular contributors to the Ozarkian Folk Chronicles podcast, hosted by Curtis Copeland and Hayden Head. For each episode Mark and Cindy perform a song chosen from one of the many Ozarks folk song collections. May 2025 saw The Creek Rocks release "Firefly," a four-song EP featuring songs written by their friend Nancy Ryan.

The Homegrown Concert Series is part of AFC's ongoing public programming highlighting the fields of folklife, ethnomusicology, oral history, and related disciplines; foregrounding its archival holdings; and fulfilling its congressionally mandated mission.

Free and open to the public, but tickets are required.

Accessible seating is available upon request. Please request ADA accommodations at least five days in advance by contacting 202-707-6362 or ada@loc.gov.