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The WHITE MOUNTAIN SINGERS have a long and impressive history. Reformed in 1981 after a ten-year retirement, Steve Fiott and Scott Fisher recreate music that was THE form of entertainment in the early 1960's, but with a taste of today and tomorrow thrown in. They sing the folk standards but with arrangements and interpretations that are all their own. One of Steve's compositions, BOOTED IN BOSTON became a large regional hit in the summer of 1983. It detailed Steve's $475 experience with the notorious Denver Boot in the home of the MTA. Their two latest albums, SUNRISE and SONGS OF YESTERDAY on Folk Era Records, have been named top-ten folk albums in the United States by two major music-industry magazines as well as hot popular releases in BILLBOARD. They are the first active popular folk group to have a concert video cassette and Compact Disc on the market. ROUND THE BEND was released on Folk Era in late summer of 1986 to rave reviews and excellent sales.
It isn't a rare sight to find Sold Out signs at their concerts from New Hampshire to Oregon and all stops in between. For the past two years, Coca-Cola has sponsored two extremely successful tours by the group with audiences as large as 32,000 people. A quote from a recent article in the Kingston Korner Newsletter says it all. "What I feel is most important in this recent Folk Revival are the new songs, and at the fore of this material are THE WHITE MOUNTAIN SINGERS, they were just sensational!!" Steve, Scott and their bass player, Bob Smiley, are proud of their successes, and are grateful to people everywhere who have given them their support.
Rick and Ron Shaw began their musical careers while undergraduates at the University of New Hampshire in the early 1960's. Joining forces with three fellow classmates, they formed a group called The Tradewinds and in 1962 walked away with top honors at the first National Inter-Collegiate Music Competition held at Lycoming College in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. Not long afterwards, they changed their name to the Brandywine Singers and soon became internationally known.
The Brandywine Singers continued until 1966 when Rick was drafted and Ron joined the successful Pozo Seco Singers on Columbia Records. Ron left the group two years later about the same time Rick was returning from the service. They both taught school for a time before deciding to give show business another try, this time as THE SHAW BROTHERS.
In the fall of 1972, the Brothers were asked to help form a group to record the now-famous Coca-Cola jingle, "I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing" The group became The Hillside Singers and the record one of the biggest international hits of all time.
Two years later, in 1974, they were offered their own contract wtih RCA Records and subsequently travelled to London, England, to record their album, "The Shaw Brothers — Follow Me." They have remained a duo ever since.
Over the years, the Brothers have performed at hundreds of colleges and universities as well as most of the major night clubs, state fairs and festivals from coast to coast. They have appeared with such major stars as Bob Hope, Johnny Mathis, Joan Rivers and Bill Cosby and on numerous network TV shows including the Mike Douglas Show, the ABC Hootenanny Show, and ABC's Wide World of Entertainment. They also tour extensively abroad performing in such countries as Canada, Great Britain, Japan, South Korea and Hong Kong. They are indeed "New Hampshire's musical ambassadors to the world."
DAVE GUARD is best remembered as the leader of the original Kingston Trio from 1957 to 1961, while his group was awarded six gold albums and two Grammies. Next he led the Whiskeyhill Singers on the Academy Award-winning soundtrack of "How The West Was Won." Then he moved with his young family to Australia where he worked as a studio musician and later hosted his own national TV series, Dave's Place. He went to Sweden and studied composition with jazz theoretician George Russell, then returned to the U.S. and authored the pioneering book, Colour Guitar. He taught this method in California schools for seven years then researched and produced two works of folklore: Deirdre (a Celtic legend) and Halemano (a legend of Hawaii). He spent a year performing in conjunction with The Modern Folk Quartet, then toured with his own quintet, The Expanding Band. He produced an album by Hawaiian slack-key-guitar virtuoso Gabby Pahinui which won the Honolulu equivalent of a Grammy. Following The Kingston Trio And Friends Reunion TV special in 1981 he travelled the country as a fundraiser for PBS. He then wrote Musi-color, a thesis integrating tonal patterns in sound and color for computer-driven synthesizers. Recently he was editor of two yoga magazines, lived in India, having studied the music of that subcontinent for seven years. In 1986 he moved to New Hampshire and resumed his folksinging career. Says Dave Guard of his various pursuits: "I'd Rather Be Surfing."