The Wickers Creek Band
The Band
The Wickers Creek Band performs an eclectic mix of traditional American music, primarily in the Bluegrass tradition. The five-person group sings in close, blended harmonies backed up by varying combinations of fiddle, banjo, mandolin, guitar and bass. The band’s repertoire includes classic and contemporary Bluegrass, country and Appalachian music, with a dollop of French Canadian, Celtic and New England dance tunes thrown in for good measure.
The group originally hails from the hills of lower Westchester County where Wickers Creek flows into the mighty Hudson River, but band members have recently been spotted migrating up the Hudson to Columbia County. Featured are lead singer Peter Paden on banjo and mandolin, Charlene Paden on fiddle, Rob Bradley on guitar, Andy Bing on mandolin and dobro, and Vivian Walsh on upright bass. The band has performed at the Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors Festival, the annual Willow Creek Bluegrass Festival in Montgomery NY, the Columbia Land Conservancy’s annual Shad Bake, Manhattan’s Parkside Lounge and Millerton’s Manna Dew Café, as well as many public and private events around the Hudson Valley and Long Island.
“Letter From My Darlin'”
The Wickers Creek Band has been playing together for nearly 25 years. All of us are amateur musicians (which means we have another way to make a living) and, apart from the band, have active involvements in various other musical pursuits. We try to reflect the history and tradition surrounding the origins of old-time and bluegrass music, but also to incorporate a lot of the wonderful developments that have evolved over the years. Traditional American string band music began as a community effort and an expression of community values, and we feel very fortunate to be able to have so much fun doing the music in the context of a band comprised first and foremost of good friends.
Band Members
- Peter Paden (Mandolin, Vocals), a resident of the Town of Taghkanic, just retired after 14 years as Executive Director of the Columbia Land Conservancy. So he has lots more time to play music now. He has been playing traditional music since he was a teenager in St. Paul, Minnesota, where, to their mother’s eternal frustration, he and his brother Don whiled away countless hours exploring the virtues of old-time and bluegrass music.
- Vivian Walsh (Bass) Vivian Walsh is a native of the Hudson Valley and enjoys a career as an accountant for a local philanthropic foundation. She began playing bluegrass bass in the mid-nineties. Preferring to stay in the background, she quickly learned the bass player cannot hide. She started joining her husband and friends at jams, and has been playing with local bands ever since.
- Andy Bing lives in Castleton-on-Hudson and has been executing bluegrass music for over 25 years. He’s been a fan of Bill Monroe and Flatt & Scruggs since childhood and started playing the resonator guitar when he lived in Washington D.C. in the early 1980s. Andy is also known to sing and play the mandolin and banjo on occasion.
- Rob Bradley (Guitar) is a professor of Mathematics and Computer Science at Adelphi University, divides his time between Garden City and Hillsdale. Rob, a native of Montreal, has been singing and playing French Canadian, bluegrass and folk music in the Hudson Valley for many years. He is also the webmaster of our website.
- Charlene Paden, an former environmental consultant, has lived up and down the Hudson Valley for nearly 45 years. She became interested in New England fiddling through contra dancing in Columbia County, but her true downfall occurred when she met Peter in 1983 and was introduced to bluegrass. She’s still in recovery, but the prognosis is good.
Contact Us
The Wickers Creek Band
518-851-3553
2041 County Route 27
Craryville, New York 10522