TRAVIS STUART & DEB SHEBISH

Deb Shebish & Travis Stuart play hard driving Old-Time Music.  Originally from Indiana and North Carolina, they combine their distinctive old-time styles to create a powerful duo of fiddle and banjo.  Travis and Deb were granted the prestigious 2023 North Carolina Folklife Apprenticeship Grant  and Travis Stuart is the recipient of the 2019  South Arts Folk & Traditional Arts Master Artist Fellowship.  

Travis and Deb were a featured artist at the 2026 Festival Herbe Bleu in France, the Green Parrot Festival in Cologne Germany, the 2025 Sweet Sunny South American Old-Time Music Festival in West Sussex, UK where the collaborated with Vera van Heeringen, and headlined the 2024 Rootsinphytaa Bluegrass festival in Finland.  

TRAVIS STUART is a banjo player from Haywood County, North Carolina who grew up steeped in the traditional music of Western North Carolina.  Playing his great-uncle Austin Stamley’s banjo, Stuart has mastered a local old time style and shared it around the United States and Europe, touring and recording alongside his twin brother, Trevor.   As far as his music takes him, Stuart remembers to bring it on home, working to preserve and pass down Western North Carolina’s old time music to the next generation through teaching and mentoring. He has facilitated workshops and classes for Junior Appalachian Musicians and East Tennessee State University’s Bluegrass, Old Time, and Country Music Studies program.   Travis Stuart is the recipient of the 2023 North Carolina Arts Council Folklife Apprenticeship as a mentor on Haywood County Old-Time music repertoire to Deb Shebish and was awarded the 2019  South Arts Folk & Traditional Arts Master Artist Fellowship.