Poor Ellen Smith performs pure acoustic Americana music in an earthy, edgy and elegant style. The band’s repertoire balances classic and original material to a dense and compact listening experience. While their instrumental and vocal work is mature and mellow, it also opens spaces for fresh undertones and hot jamming. At a Poor Ellen Smith concert you will hear the music happen. This gutsy finesse of the band’s performances and the musical individualism of all four band members speaks to all who love hand-crafted American roots music.
Barry Bryan bass guitar and vocals
Armin Hadamer guitar and vocals
Steve Galbraith guitar and vocals
Howard Parks harmonica and vocals
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Band Member Bios
Barry Bryan, from Shepherdstown, West Virginia has been playing guitar and bass in bands throughout the Washington DC area since the early 1970’s. His earliest most successful band was Hickory, which included Steuart Smith, who is the now the lead guitarist with The Eagles, and the late Dave Allen. As an acoustic guitarist, he joined The Fast Flying Vestibule, an old-time string band later to become the Irish musical group Celtic Thunder. The band performed in the D.C. area and performed twice at The Old Time Fiddler’s Convention in Union Grove, NC. In the mid 1980’s Barry was a member of country singer Willie Samples touring band. Based in New Jersey – the band toured extensively on the road, often opening for many nationally known acts. After playing bass and guitar with singer songwriter Steve Warner’s band The Rolling Coyotees, Barry joined forces with the late Jay Votel, and Betty Joe & Scott Rockwell to form the bluegrass band Allegheny Uprising which later included Melissa Wright of the Acoustic Burgoo. As a sought after musician, he has played bass and guitar behind numerous musicians including Lydia Martin, The Martin Family Band, Brunswick, MD guitar legend Gary Free, Bill Hanger, and Boston singer songwriter Laura Vechonie. Barry joined Poor Ellen Smith in the summer of 2009, taking on the role as the band’s bass player. When not playing music you can often find Barry in his role as a beekeeper - tending to his many beehives located throughout the Blue Ridge Mountains of West Virginia.
Originally from western New York, Steve Galbraith is a guitarist and singer who has played venues throughout New York and the northeast, most extensively with a psychedelic trio called Spawn. More recently he fronted Mad Maudlin, a Celtic folk band out of Columbus, OH. In addition to the guitar, Steve plays the mandolin and bagpipes. A poet and songwriter, he pens most of Poor Ellen Smith’s original material. Steve and Armin first met at a bluegrass jam hosted by Barb Diedrich, DC’s First Lady of the bluegrass bass, where they discovered their power of mutual musical inspiration.
Hailing from Cologne, Germany, Armin Hadamer has been a life-long student of the guitar playing of Norman Blake, Doc Watson, Clarence White and Tony Rice. He and his wife, Susanne Koehler, performed as the New Minstrels of the Rhine throughout the United States and has played concerts at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, the Old Mansion at Strathmore Arts Center, the Augusta Heritage Center in Elkins, WV, the New England Folk Festival, the Summersville Bluegrass Festival, and many universities across the US. Armin is also a historian of traditional American music with a number of scholarly publications and workshops to his credit.
From Washington, DC, Howard Parks is a harmonica player and singer whose influences on the harmonica range from country harmonica wizard Deford Bailey to multi-instrumentalist Howard Levy. He spent his formative playing years with the Cambridge Harmonica Orchestra, including shows at the Kennedy Center’s Very Special Arts Festival, the Adams-Morgan Day Festival, and the Cambridge River Festival. These days he is delighted to be exploring a broad range of folk music as applied to the harmonica through Poor Ellen Smith.