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2025 Judges

ALLEN SHADD

Bio to Come

 

SHARON BOUNDS

Sharon Bounds is a Champion Fiddler from Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Sharon has won the Alabama State Championship as well as 4 times Mississippi State Fiddle Champion. Sharon has placed in the Top 10 of the prestigious GRAND Masters National Fiddle on 7 different occasions. She teaches music and has played in several different semi-professional bands over the years.


RED HENRY
Red Henry has played mandolin, banjo, fiddle, and guitar since the 1960s. He and his wife Murphy made their living for many years playing bluegrass full-time, and they recorded a dozen band LPs and CDs.

Since 1982, Red and Murphy have taught several thousand people to play with their extensive and successful “Murphy Method” series of bluegrass music-instruction tapes and DVDs, marketed worldwide.

Red has helped judge many contests over the years, including the prestigious national music championships at Winfield, Kansas, the Maryland State Fiddle Contest, the Shenandoah Banjo and Fiddle Contest in Virginia, and the official Georgia State Fiddle Convention. He is always “pulling” for the contestants and hoping that they will play their very best.

 

BILL CUNNINGHAM

Bill Cunningham has been playing music since the age of 12 when he began playing bass at local square dances and on the Georgia Mountain Fair Staff Band with his dad, Fiddlin’ Howard Cunningham. Bill began playing pedal steel guitar at age 15.

Bill served four years in the Marine Corps and played the local clubs around Cherry Point, NC. In 1980, after the Marines, Bill settled in the Atlanta, GA area and continues to play semi-professionally.

Bill was a member of the Georgia Mountain Fair Band for 50 years until the retirement of that band. With the 2008 passing of the production of the Georgia Mountain Fair shows from Fiddlin’ Howard Cunningham to Jim Wood, Bill was the band leader on the GMF Band. Over the years the band has backed many national artists including Ray Pillow, Jack Green, Jeannie Seeley, Melba Montgomery, Hank Thompson, and Johnny Gimble.

Today Bill is a member of The Jim Wood Band and plays casuals in the Atlanta area. He is a featured steel player and often requested bass player on regional and national steel guitar shows. He is President of the Georgia Steel Guitar Association.