At age nine, Christopher Clymer Kurtz ordered his first guitar from a Sears catalog for $25. Later, he first recorded original songs with his brother Zachary, who played their $50 drum set. In high school, Christopher and two friends formed a country and rock band that performed four times. In college, Christopher pursued a social work degree and founded a bluegrass band which the university sponsored on a ten-day, sixteen-gig tour through four states. While volunteering for a prison arts program, Christopher played guitar with a country band in the medium security facility and sang with a community and inmate choir. Christopher currently teaches English to seventh graders and is a writing contributor for Varied Consulting Group.
Maria Clymer Kurtz began singing before she learned to talk, and later studied piano for nearly a decade. She played the lead role in her high school’s production of The Sound of Music. She picked up the guitar in college while studying Spanish and music. During the summer of 1996, Maria sang in a female vocal trio that performed in Georgia. Maria has seized every opportunity for choral singing, from middle and high school choirs, to district, regional and all-state chorus competitions, to university chamber singers, to a community chorale, and most recently with the local choral society. She has performed with two previous bands: Blue Maybe and Clymer Kurtz and Dill. Maria works in home and garden management, teaches adult English language learners in her spare time, and is a translator for Varied Consulting Group.
Acoustic-electric guitars, drums, and bass topped with intense vocals built on eclectic backgrounds in classical and jazz training, bluegrass radio, Mennonite hymns, and rock harmonies make for dynamic, increasingly original set lists (with fun covers thrown in) for our performances at coffee houses, farmers markets, church gatherings, restaurants, community centers, weddings, and house concerts in and around Rockingham County, Virginia.
