About

Annie Erbsen is a lifelong multi-instrumentalist in several styles of music, an artist, cooking instructor and Marketing/Data Analytics lead Native Ground Books & Music.

Born & raised in the mountains of Asheville, NC, Annie started playing the fiddle about as soon as she could walk in a straight line, and grew up playing old-time music with her dad at square dances and old-time fiddlers conventions, and baking in wood stoves with her mom. Following in the family tradition (after taking a detour to become a medical physicist), Annie plays guitar, fiddle, banjo and bass in a number of bands around the southeast, and teaches cooking classes with her mom (Barbara Swell of Log Cabin Cooking) at the John C. Campbell Folk School. Annie and her parents together run Native Ground Books & Music, a small publishing company focused on traditional American music, cooking & folklore.

Although she grew up immersed in old-time, Annie lived in Ireland for a couple of years to study Irish fiddling, toured around the country playing for contra dances with Annie & the Orphans and Schrodinger’s Cats, played in a bal folk band while she lived in Italy, and since 2015 has been playing almost exclusively with early jazz and swing bands around the United States. You can usually find her playing rhythm guitar or banjo with bands including The Low-Down Sires, Michael Gamble & the Rhythm Serenaders, Megan & Her Goody Goodies, The Jason DeCristofaro Quartet, Russ Wilson’s Famous Orchestra, The House Hoppers, and more.

In her spare time (ha!), Annie likes to blacksmith, do pottery, paint watercolors of battle cows, bake pies, garden and play with her daughter. She is based out of Asheville, North Carolina.