Tom Nechville and Linda Leavitt
Oregon-based Tom Nechville and Linda Leavitt are leading ambassadors of bluegrass in the Pacific Northwest, deeply passionate about the music and its culture.
Banjo designer Tom Nechville will host of Unleash Your Banjo Mojo, this year’s banjo workshop, while Linda will moderate our Women in Bluegrass workshop with Sharon Gilchrist, Megan Lynch Chowning and Ella Korth of The John Hartford Fiddle Tune Project. They will do a duo set Friday afternoon on our Chapel Stage.
Tom has been described by Fretboard Journal founder Jason Verlinde as the “Leo Fender of the five-string banjo” owing to the innovative designs Nechville has created in four decades as a banjo maker. Practically every modern master of the banjo seems to have a Nechville in their collection, including Billy Failing of the Billy Strings Band, Bela Fleck, Noam Pikelny, Steve Martin, Alison Brown and many more, as well as country superstars like Keith Urban.
In a field where Gibson set the gold standard in bluegrass banjo, reinventing an instrument so fundamental to the genre takes a certain fortitude. It’s little wonder that Verlinde calls Tom Nechville “a visionary” or, as Allison Brown has called him, “the mad scientist of the banjo.”
Linda Leavitt is a musician, writer, educator, and event producer. For nearly a decade, Linda co-coordinated Taborgrass, an adult bluegrass education program in Portland, Oregon. Linda teaches bluegrass singing and how-to-jam workshops at festivals, camps and at Nechville Banjos West in Sisters, OR. Linda currently performs with Tom Nechville in The Lois & Clark Expedition. She is onsite coordinator for American Banjo Camp and was a member of the 2024 IBMA Leadership Bluegrass Class.