"What's the name of your band?"
May: No band. It's just us.
"How do you want that listed?"
May: It's just us, Gary and I.
Gary: unless there's other people. then it's "just us and other people".

and so it was.

We don't do many shows in a year anymore, but it's mostly an inertia from having small children; we haven't hit many festival or jamboree stages for the past few years, but still manage the occasional Chesley Opry and at least one of us will make most every Hillcrest Coffee House. We like the smaller venues and festivals.

Special moments? Lots come to mind, our youngest wandering up to the stage mid-set to "tell mama a secret" during our Songbird Cafe gig at the Durham Art Gallery, or the Thornbury fest when we thought we were doubly cursed playing inside the Hockey Arena AND opposite the Good Brothers ... and then a huge troup of our fans from the jamborees came filing in with lawn-chairs to catch our show. Or the young girls at Eaglewood who gave May the garland of flowers that I think is still on the dash of the car, even though those girls are all grown up and probably in college by now. There's the lunchtime gigs we did at Toronto's Good Shephard shelter too, a place where folks understand first-hand every Hank Williams song you can remember, or the many years doing the CFOS Children's Fund Broadcast, or ...

How could you possibly capture any of that in a sound file?

We're not big fans of The Biz, so frankly, we don't really care one way or the other; folks were playing music for each other long before the lawyers and promoters thought they could make a buck off it, and we'll be here long after they've gone bust.

Now, whether Internet will change the music, that's a more interesting question and the great global free-flow exchange that happened during the post-war radio years is going to seem like stone-ages when we look back at the cross-creativity that will happen once you and I and everyone else using sites like SoundClick get the chance to step around all them lawyers and A&R reps and get ourselves networked and influence each other. There's a looming rennaisance about to explode.

Why on earth would we want to make a 'record' -- but what we would want is a partnership recognizing the modern reality of the flow-motion of network publishing ...

it happened like this ...

In 1995, May and Gary were regular features at Toronto's Free Times Cafe and on the city's open stage circuits. They were invited to play at NxNE (North by North East) and were featured at the Harbourfront Water's Edge Cafe in Toronto for the 1996 Asian Heritage celebrations.

In the summer of 1996, after hearing them at the Kokomo's Open Stage and all night long at the infamous Campground-E, Tim Harrison invited them to the main stage at the Eaglewood Folk Fest. May and Gary were featured performers at the 1997 Eaglewood, the one Canadian folk festival you don't want to miss. Following their success in 1997, they were invited back for the 1998 Eaglewood to join the exclusive "Two years in a row" club!

Since 1995, the two have lived up among the dunes and forests of Sauble Beach in the Bruce Peninsula. Gary and May have two children, Nolan Man-Hon and Kaelin Man-Bok, who lately have slowed down the performance schedule.

keywords, yeah. I never know what to say because it's not really up to us, it's up to the folks who listen to us and if you ask me, sites like SoundClick should recognize that. There may be elements of a southern folk-rock Emmy-Lou Harris and Ry Cooder sort of thing, but we're not southern folk, so the tradition is all different. And we change what we do depending on where we play, obviously very different for a largely urban folk-fest crowd than for a largely senior country music opry. We're acoustic, we're just plain folk, we're not pyrotechnical or grand fiddle champions, we're just plain folks with a few songs about things that are on our minds that we like to share with a few friends and if anyone thinks they could do it better than us that's just fine because they should be playing and singing right up here with everyone else. It's a perfectly human thing to do.

Together.

Guitar, mandolin, appalachian dulcimer, banjo, harmonica, fiddle, dobro and anything else we can get our hands on ...

All our music is 'share friendly' meaning you are allowed to rip it, burn it, give it as presents, anything you like provided it's a personal use and non-commercial. Some of the songs are copyright under CASH (composer and songwriter assoc of Hongkong), some are OpenContent or CreativeCommons and we really don't mind you singing them because that's why we play them for you.