ABOUT THE NEWSONG ORGANIZERS
-----Gar Ragland (Director)
Currently a dual resident of Boston and West Virginia (with roots in
West Virginia), Gar Ragland is producer, musician and entrepreneur.
Gar is the founder and president of Riparius
Productions, a Boston-based
production company and independent record label. In this capacity Gar
has produced, engineered, and managed a variety of creative projects
ranging from album production to website development to Internet and
e-commerce consulting.
With an academic background in environmental sciences, Gar ran his own environmental consulting firm and worked at Resources for the Future, an environmental and economic policy think-tank in Washington, D.C. In these roles Gar has performed cost-benefit policy analyses and marketing feasibility studies for both the private and public sectors.
A singer, songwriter, guitarist and bassist, Gar moved to Boston in 1997 to study composition and improvisation at the Department of Contemporary Improvisation at New England Conservatory (NEC), studying with Macarthur Genius Award pianist Ran Blake. Recently, he has served as a visiting artist at NEC, both teaching classes and presenting artist development workshops for the Office of Career Development.
As a performer, he’s shared bills with a diverse range of artists such as the Dave Matthews Band, delta blues virtuoso Corey Harris and avant-jazz pianist Ran Blake, his mentor. He has performed at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, the main space of New York's Knitting Factory, New England Conservatory's Jordan Hall and countless roadside watering holes throughout the South.
Gar’s debut solo CD Untethered was released in the fall of 2001. He is a native North Carolinian with roots in West Virginia (both of his parents were born and raised in Charleston), and enjoys spending as much time as possible at his family homestead in Nicholas County, WV.
He has a BA in Environmental Science from University of Virginia.
----Will Carter (Founder, Financial & Legal
Coordinator)
Will Carter is a West Virginia entrepreneur. Will is founder and president
of KI&T Holdings Inc, which operates a family financial advisory
business in Charleston WV. As both an attorney and consultant, he also
provides assistance to public and private sector organizations that
seek help with strategic planning, policy development, and/or implementation
of specific programs and projects.
Will served as Executive Assistant to former Governor Gaston Caperton, advising his administration on government operations and health, education, welfare and environmental policy. He has also served as staff attorney to the Committee on Health and Human Services for the West Virginia Legislature’s House of Delegates.
Will has extensive experience in conceiving and overseeing the implementation of music events and organizations. He is the founder of both the Charleston Jazz Series and the Appalachian String Band Music Festival at Clifftop. Playing both guitar and upright bass, he performs in both old-time and bluegrass Appalachian string bands.
Will holds a bachelor’s degree in history and a master’s degree in American history from Harvard, and a JD from New York University’s School of Law.
He lives in rural Putnam County, West Virginia with his wife and three children.
-----Ron Sowell (Music Director)
Ron Sowell is a singer, songwriter, instrumentalist, performer, teacher,
and producer who for the past 16 years has been a member of the highly
acclaimed Mountain Stage Radio Show on Public Radio International.
Now serving as the show’s musical director, he helps shape the
music that is heard each week across the United States and via Voice
of America all over the world.
He has recorded four albums of original music with two critically acclaimed West Virginia-based bands, Stark Raven and The Pickers. In 1991, he released his first solo CD "Oil and Water." His live performances have taken him across the United States and to Canada, Greenland, Iceland, Germany, Greece, Crete, Turkey, and Ethiopia.
Ron is also in demand as a writer and a producer with 12 albums to his
credit, as well as numerous radio and television commercials. His latest
CD production "Wires and Wood" features mandolin wizard Johnny
Staats, whom Ron discovered and later signed to Giant Records/Nashville.
Ron appears on most of the 25 "Best of Mountain Stage" CD series
on Blue Plate Records, accompanying singers such as Sarah McLachlan,
Victoria Williams, Dave Van Ronk, Michelle Shocked, and most recently
Tom Paxton.
Ron and his wife live in Charleston, West Virginia.
-----Douglas Imbrogno (Minister of Communications)
Douglas Imbrogno is feature editor of the Charleston Gazette and Sunday
Gazette-Mail in Charleston, West Virginia.
Doug recently released a debut CD of his original songs titled "St. Stephen's Dream," with a tribe of musicians under the nom de plume of 'garagecow ensemble.' (Growing up on the shores of Lake Erie, his Italian immigrant dad's family couldn't afford a car, so they kept a cow in their garage. The family later ate the cow, but that’s another story.) The CD is both a performing songwriter’s beloved offspring, featuring all original tunes, but also the soundtrack to a piece of live performance theater to be staged hither and yon. See www.garagecow.com.
Douglas is also publisher of the web journal Hundred Mountain, an independent Buddhist-oriented "journal of the spirit and the arts" on the Internet (www.hundredmountain.com), but soon to return as a blog. He is a cum laude graduate of Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, with a degree in English.
Douglas lives in Barboursville, West Virginia with his wife and two children, plus Mister Puzzlesocks, one the best named cats east of the Mississippi and one of the snooziest.
----Gary Reynolds (Network/Guerilla Marketing Coordinator)
Gary Reynolds is a musician and a former music educator; Gary decided
to leave the field after being fired in 2004 from his private school
music teaching post over the in-class use of lyrics to the John Hiatt
song "Little Head.” Proficient on several instruments, he
performs with the Contrarians, a Celtic-based contradance band, is
apprenticing part-time with an instrument builder/repairer/restorer,
and in 2005 produced Whitewater Whirl, a new WV contra dance weekend.
Gary has performed in numerous ensembles and as a studio musician, and has served as a producer, music director, arranger and conductor on numerous projects. He has performed as both a classical and bluegrass musician in Europe and Japan, and has songwriting credits which include songs on two recordings with the Michigan string band the Raisin Pickers, which won the 1995 non-traditional band contest at the Appalachian String Band Festival at Clifftop.
Prior to moving to West Virginia, Gary worked for five years as lead salesperson for a Michigan telephony vendor. He also conducted architectural survey work for the Michigan Bureau of History, which resulted in the inclusion of a historic building in the National Register of Historic Places. Gary has a bachelor of music degree (cum laude, Theory and Composition) from University of Massachusetts at Amherst and a BS in Historic Preservation from Eastern Michigan University.
He is a proud parent of two children, and currently lives the country life in Beauty Mountain, West Virginia with his wife, three dogs, way too many cats, chickens and guineas, a mess of sheep, various equines, and four retired llamas.
NOTE: Have a suggestion for spreading the word about NewSong to some music-related website or group? Suggest it to Gary at gary@newsongfestival.com
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“A composer lets me hear a song that has always been shut up silent within me."
---Jean Genet
"Music, in performance, is a type of sculpture. The air in the performance is sculpted into something."
---Frank Zappa