Mark Dvorak and Ben Bedford

Mark Dvorak
 
When folk singer songwriter Mark Dvorak began his career in music he knew right away he’d be in it for the long haul.  Thirty-five years later Mark is still writing, recording and on the road performing.
 
“At this stage of the game,” said the singer from his home outside Chicago, Illinois, “I feel like I’m doing my best work.”
 
The Chicago Tribune has called him “masterful,” and the Fox Valley Folk Festival describes him as “a living archive of song and style.” In 2012 WFMT 98.7 FM named him “Chicago’s official troubadour.”
 
Mark has given concerts in almost all of the United States and has made visits to Canada, Ireland and Finland. To date he has released twenty albums of traditional, Americana and original song including 2020s Let Love Go On and 2024s Live & Alone.
 
Dvorak has won awards for children’s music, journalism and was honored in 2013 wit the FARM Lantern Bearer Award from Folk Alliance International. In 2008 he received the Woodstock Folk Festival Lifetime Achievement Award.
 
“Very few in the United States embody the folk music tradition more than Mark Dvorak. Anyone who has interacted with him is transported to the core of what this music is ultimately about: Community.”
– Mark Guarino, author “Country & Midwestern”
 
Ben Bedford
 
Ben Bedford is a singer-songwriter, composer, and visual artist.
 
In July of 2010, Bedford was named one of the “50 most significant Folk singer-songwriters of the past 50 years” by Rich Warren of WFMT-Chicago. The list also included Bob Dylan, Townes Van Zandt, Anais Mitchell, Joni Mitchell, and Danny Schmidt. In May of 2018, Bedford was named one of the six Grassy Hill Kerrville New Folk winners at the Kerrville Folk Festival in Texas. He has toured extensively over the past 15 years in North America and western Europe. In January of 2023, he released his sixth studio album, Valley Of Stars, engineered and mixed by David Sinko (Yo-Yo Ma, Punch Brothers, Edgar Meyer) and featuring Ethan Jodziewicz (Aoife O’Donovan, Maya de Vitry, Milk Carton Kids) on bass, Chas Williams (Nanci Griffith) on second guitar, and Kari Floyd on harmony vocals.
 
In 2026, Bedford and his partner Vanessa Lively released Mirroring The Wildness, Lively’s 6th studio album, upon which Bedford wrote or co-wrote nearly half the songs and played guitar and sang on most of the tracks.With his visual art, Ben works in pen and ink and watercolor. Bedford is a member of Perspectives Art Gallery in Petersburg, Illinois.
 
“Ben Bedford isn’t gunning for poet laureate of Illinois but if ever there was an equivalent honor for a singer-songwriter he’d have to be in the running. ”
— Roy Kasten, Riverfront Times St. Louis, Missouri