ABOUT

DAVID BOYDEN: violin, hardanger d’amore, hardanger fiddle, etc.

David Boyden is a violinist and fiddler born and bred in the San Francisco Bay Area. He attended Ruth Asawa School of the Arts, earned a Bachelors of Music from San Francisco State University, and now works as a freelance musician and educator. In addition to Kaptain Bottletop, he plays fiddles and other such things in groups working in a variety of genres, including (but not limited to) the Pine Needles (bluegrass, rock, jazz), the 29th St. Swingtet (gypsy jazz and swing) and the Hot Licks. In addition to the violin, he plays the hardanger d’amore, an incredible 10-stringed fiddle built by the Norwegian luthier Salve Håkedal, as well as a 7-string electric violin built by John Jordan. He is also studying the hardanger fiddle and the traditional folk music of Norway. From 2012 to 2014, he served as an intern for the Chrysalis Foundation in San Francisco, performing the music of Cris Forster on his original acoustic instruments tuned in just intonation.

LEE CORBIE-WELLS: 5-string violin, hardanger d’amore, vocals

Lee Corbie-Wells has been playing violin since the age of 6. Her father, a music teacher in San Francisco (Lee’s hometown) and her mother, a music teacher in the Oakland Public School District, taught her Celtic and American tunes by ear, fostering her love of folk music. At the age of 11, she began formal training. In addition to her instrumental studies, Lee sang first soprano in the San Francisco Girls Chorus for five years. She started performing solo at Brava Theatre at the age of 14, but soon got heavily into Celtic roots music. At age 18, Lee toured Southern Ireland with her first band, Drowsy Maggie, along with one of her former violin teachers, Alison Stretch. Since then, she has played in numerous Celtic and Americana bands and her also performed at military functions such as house-concerts at Airforce bases in Travis, CA and in Kuwait. Although she primarily pays Celtic and American fiddle music, Lee has taken her years of experience in Blues and folk improvisation and branched out into explorations of Jazz, Swing, Ragtime, and Latin genres. Before Lee was in Kaptain Bottletop, she helped start the Celtic/Americana/Eastern European folk band Moonshine Jelly, where she sings in English, at least half of the Celtic languages (Lee is a huge language enthusiast), Russian, Greek, and various other languages. She also teaches violin and guitar in the Bay Area.

ALEX HAND: guitar, master of flame and resident shredder

Alex Hand graduated in 2011 from the University of Nevada, Reno with a Jazz Guitar Performance degree and has lived in the San Francisco area for four years. He has toured internationally with gypsy jazz, Irish, Balkan and rock groups. He teaches guitar and performs locally with the Alex Hand Band, baroque ensemble Les Ameriquains, Kaptain Bottletop, Istanbul Connection and more.