Look out, it's time to bust out and cut loose with the Berkeley Old Time Music Convention! Kicking off the festivities in fine style tonight with some of the most soul-stirring music around are youthful Appalachian ballad singer Donna Ray Norton, famed fiddler Rich Hartness, and the Bay Area's own irresistible Todalo Shakers, reuniting for their first public concert in years.

The granddaughter of legendary fiddler Byard Ray, and daughter of ballad singer Lena Jean Ray, 25-year-old singer Donna Ray Norton was learning the haunting ballads of her native Appalachia even before she could talk. In Donna's own words, "Some people's families are ballerinas, or some people play football, or some people are cops. Ballads are our thing; this is what we do." This is her first ever performance outside of her home region.

Rich Hartness grew up in a musical household in Rocky Mount, NC. His guitar style and his prize-winning fiddling, known for its drive and lightness, was learned directly from old masters including fiddlers Tommy Jarrell, Ernest East, Old Man Luther Davis, Melvin Wine, Wilson Douglas, fretless banjo picker Dix Freeman, and guitar finger picker Chester Macmillian.

Taking their inspiration and most of their repertoire from the early jug and string bands and blues singers who played up and down Beale Streeet in Memphis in the 1920s and '30s, the Todalo Shakers provide an irresistible blend of harmony, swing, and stomp. W.B. Reid plays the banjo-guitar and fiddle, Frannie Leopold plays guitar, Eric Thompson mashes down on mandolin, tenor banjo, and guitar, BOTMC Festival Director Suzy Thompson wails on fiddle, and Steven Strauss bows the bass in an extremely funky manner.