Michael Lille & Justin Roth
Michael Lille is a Virginia native and award winning singer/songwriter who has traveled the globe and shared his music and love of adventure with friends and fans for nearly 5 decades.
Lille is a winner of the 1993 Kerrville new-folk songwriting award as well as a first place winner in the Telluride Troubador competition in 1996. In addition to his solo work, Lille is a member of The Sherpas (with fellow new-folk winners Tom Prasada-Rao and Tom Kimmel), SGGL, the popular DC/Charlottesville-based quartet, and Man from Tuesday with San Diego based songwriter Andy Lund. Lille was also one-third of The Famous Unknowns with fellow VA musicians Robbin Thompson and Lewis McGehee.
During Michael’s years in Nashville he opened shows for Alison Krauss, Bob Dylan, Warren Zevon, Leo Kottke and Little Feat, and his four solo projects feature guests such as Alison Krauss, Mary-Chapin Carpenter, Valerie Carter, Victor Wooten, John Jennings, Bonnie Raitt guitarist George Marinelli, and James Taylor violinist and vocalist Andrea Zonn.
From 1997 to 2018 Michael also represented Elixir Strings and Taylor Guitars as a product specialist/demo player, artist relations director, and International Sales Manager covering Canada, SE Asia and the US. In 2018 he returned to making music full-time.
Lille’s love of the road began in 1983 when he moved to Aspen, CO. There, he befriended Dan Fogelberg, who often joined Michael at his solo shows. Michael has lived in Austin and Nashville where he also added his guitar playing skills to dozens of fellow singer-songwriter’s recordings.
After a year long trip thru New Zealand, Australia and southeast Asia, Michael returned to North America where he was the house musician at Panorama ski resort in British Columbia. The following summer he was bitten by the whitewater bug which began a 15 year love of whitewater kayaking, taking him to exotic destinations including Nepal, Bhutan, Costa Rica, Mexico, France, Morocco, The Grand Canyon and dozens of other North American rivers and streams.
Lille is also a motorcycle/Harley enthusiast covering as many miles as possible on two wheels.
Michael spends time traveling in Gus the Bus, visiting friends, touring the National Parks, seeking adventure on the perfect motorcycle highway, as well as making music as a solo artist and with his compadres spread around the country.
In 2023, releases from The Sherpas, “Promise to Harry”, and the self-titled, “Man from Tuesday”, dropped on all streaming platforms.
April 24th, 2025 marks the release date of Michael's first solo project in 20 years.
"Ashland Avenue" features 13 previously unrecorded songs with a stellar list of collaborators, co-produced by Michael and Chris Rosser and recorded at Hollow Reed Studios in Asheville, NC. Guests include David Wilcox, Don Henry, Jon Carroll, Casey Driessen and Dan Dugmore and a long list of old friends and extraordinary players and singers.
Justin Roth
Justin Roth is a nationally touring singer/songwriter/acoustic guitarist based in Colorado. His brilliantly inventive fingerstyle guitar arrangements define his unique mix of indie folk and instrumental guitar music. Justin has toured with David Wilcox and John Gorka and opened for some of the finest singer/songwriters on the acoustic music scene, including Shawn Colvin, Lucy Kaplansky, Darrell Scott, and Peter Yarrow (of Peter, Paul and Mary). Equally, his guitar playing has earned him shared stages with some of the greatest fingerstyle players of today, such as Tommy Emmanuel, Andy McKee, Billy McLaughlin, Michael Gulezian and Pat Donohue.
Major festival appearances include the Rocky Mountain Folks Fest, Kerrville Folk Festival and Sisters Folk Fest, as well as teaching his unique style and techniques at guitar workshops, festival workshops and online at JamPlay.com. He has sold over 13,000 copies of his five independent CDs in addition to being a core contributor to an instrumental album produced for Target Stores by guitarist extraordinaire, Billy McLaughlin, entitled Lifescapes – Solo Guitar, which has sold over 70,000 copies nationwide. Justin’s fan-funded album, Now You Know, was voted as one of the Top 100 Folk Albums of 2011. Justin lives in Fort Collins, CO with his wife and two kids.
Raised in Minnesota on rock and roll, singer-songwriter Justin Roth picked up the guitar in 9th grade, taking lessons from a heavy metal guitarist. His path to acoustic music was solidified at 17, when he saw innovative guitarist Michael Hedges open for Crosby, Stills & Nash. He had gone to see the famed headliners, but it was Hedges’ music that truly spoke to him. Justin was enthralled by Hedges’ expressive playing and inventive compositions and was immediately hooked by this new sound of the acoustic guitar. Justin saw that the acoustic guitar was capable of so much more than he had been exposed to before, and from that moment on, he knew that it would be the root of his musical world. From
Event Links
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