Tintype by Lisa Elmaleh

The Keezletown Strutters are Roy Pilgrim and Aviva Steigmeyer.

Roy hails from the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas where he started playing music in 2001. His first music obsession was ragtime blues, which led to playing mandolin and fiddle in the New Orleans jug band The Drunken Catfish Ramblers. Since 2010 he has been concentrating on the fiddle and learning traditional music of Arkansas, Texas, Mississippi, Georgia and Alabama.

Aviva is from Washington State where she began playing old time music in 2005. She lived in Virginia from 2008 to 2014 and plays guitar, banjo, and fiddle. She is also a guitar maker and print maker.

Together the duo has been playing since they met at Clifftop Appalachian Fiddle Festival in 2012. They spent their first year together playing music and recording two albums in the small town of Keezletown, Virginia, and now live in Fayetteville, Arkansas.

The Keezletown Strutters are inspired by the early American string band music of the 1920s and 30s. They can be heard playing their variety of fiddle breakdowns, rags, two-steps, and songs at farmer’s markets, square dances, and other community get-together’s across the nation.