Our Amazing Teachers & Classes in 2026
Johnsmith • Susan Cattaneo • Taina Asili • Sloan Wainwright • David Roth • Vito Petroccitto • Sue Riley • Julie Snow
• Chris Kunstadter • Mark Dann • Glen Roethel
JOHNSMITH
What’s in Your Songwriting Toolbox? • What tools do we have available to us in our writing? This class will talk about our Songwriting Toolbox: The use of metaphor, rhyming, object writing. Is our song a journey? Besides verse and chorus do we use bridges, channels, refrains? Writing from 1st, 2nd, 3rd person. Do we bring out the Zen knife for editing? John will break down one of his songs sharing his process and what tools he chose to use, while adding to your toolbox throughout the week.
How to be Comfortable in Your Own Skin While Baring Your Soul on Stage • You’ve got your songs, now it’s time for gathering the skills to deliver them in public with confidence and grace. In this class we’ll work on the art of delivery. How to deal with and sing through the fear. Staying grounded, connecting with the audience, eye contact, dynamics of your voice and instrument, introductions, pre-show mojo, set lists, and more. We’ll take turns in the classroom critiquing each other’s performances.
Johnsmith Bio • Johnsmith is one of those artists so often under-recognized – he possesses a genius that cannot be denied, ignored, or overlooked. For the past forty-plus years, Johnsmith has been sharing his music all across America and abroad. He has become a favorite at festivals, clubs, and house concerts alike. In addition to being a Kerrville New Folk Winner, Johnsmith has released nine solo CDs to rave reviews, leads musical tours to Ireland, leads Idaho rafting trips, teaches songwriting, and has served as a staff songwriter in Nashville. With his faded jeans, his twinkly blue eyes, and his infectious smile, John immediately connects with audiences. You get the sense of a man who loves his life, his family and friends, and who loves nothing more than sharing that love in song and stories all across this land. ~ johnsmithmusic.com
SUSAN CATTANEO
Stealing Songwriting Magic • Join me as we dive into the magic of great songs and reveal the tricks and tips that make these songs memorable. Exploring concepts such as rhyme, rhythm, melody, lyric structure and content, we’ll work on specific writing and musical prompts so that you can learn from the Masters and use these tried-and-true techniques in your own songs! Come prepared to listen, write, and play!
Cowriting and Collaboration • Two (or more) heads are better than one! When you write a song all by yourself, you are in control of all aspects of the song process from music to words to melody. But what happens when you team up with someone to create something together? This course will focus on the concept of co-writing! Learn the do’s and don’ts of becoming a successful cowriter. Each day, we will focus on a specific aspect of cowriting and then break off into teams to write songs. Come prepared to be inspired and to write!
Susan Cattaneo BIO • Susan Cattaneo is one of Boston’s most respected singer-songwriters, combining vivid storytelling with a modern songwriter’s spin. Call it New England Americana with a twang. Susan won the CT Folk Festival and was nominated for Singer-Songwriter of the Year at the 2022 Boston Music Awards. She has been a finalist or winner in the country’s most prestigious songwriting and music contests. An in-demand collaborator for a wide range of local and national artists, she is a three-time Kerrville New Folk finalist. Her double album The Hammer and The Heart charted #1 on the Billboard Heatseekers chart and yielded a folk radio #1 single and top 10 album. Her latest work, All is Quiet was a top 25 Album of 2022. In her 20 years teaching Songwriting at Berklee College of Music, Susan helped students work on over 15,000 songs in all musical genres and styles and mentored over 2,000 artists. She’s taught master clinics at the International Folk Conference and at regional Folk conferences (NERFA, SWRFA, and SERFA). She’s written for American Songwriter and Guitar Magazine and her lyric writing has been featured in Pat Pattison’s award-winning books Writing Better Lyrics and Writing Beyond Boundaries.~ susancattaneo.com
TAINA ASILI
Taina Asili Bio • Taína Asili is a New York-based Puerto Rican singer, filmmaker and activist carrying on the tradition of her ancestors, fusing past and present struggles into one soulful and defiant voice. She combines powerful vocals with a multi-genre fusion—confidently weaving between salsa, rock, reggae, cumbia, reggaeton, and hip hop—with multilingual songs that beat with the heart of social change. Asili’s music offers a sound that spans continents, exuding strength of Spirit, inspiring audiences at venues across the globe—from Carnegie Hall to the Women’s March on Washington to the main stage of San Francisco Pride. With energetic and infectious rhythms, Asili’s music urges people to get on their feet and dance to the rhythm of rebellion. ~ tainaasili.com
SLOAN WAINWRIGHT
Sing! Heart, Body, and Soul • Singing is fun! Inside each of us lives a beautiful and unique instrument! In this workshop, we will move our bodies, soften our hearts, open our mouths and let our voices out to play! With an emphasis on vocal health and self-care, we will use a combination of vocal warm-ups and workouts, to help relax and strengthen the voice—making it more flexible and reliable. Individual attention and support is offered to each person in class as well as for the group as a whole. And bring us your song! As time allows, we’ll work some 1-on-1 into our time period.
Sloan Wainwright Bio • Folk-pop artist Sloan Wainwright belongs to a musical dynasty of impossibly gifted singer-songwriters. Her family tree (brother and folk-music luminary Loudon Wainwright, sister-in-law Kate McGarrigle, nephew Rufus Wainwright, nieces Martha Wainwright and Lucy Wainwright Roche) reads like a who’s who of contemporary folk music. Sloan’s incredible gift is not only her unique songwriting ability but her dramatically voiced rendition of her original songs. Defying standard categorization, Sloan consistently demonstrates her easy command of a variety of American musical styles — pop, folk, jazz, and blues — held together by the melodious tone of her rich contralto. The end result is a unique and soulful hybrid. With a solid and impressive discography of 11 original CD releases to her credit, Sloan continues to write, sing and perform live. In addition, Sloan has written numerous musical compositions for theater and dance and teaches at many of the best-known master songwriter series and workshops. Her open spirit and first-hand experience are welcomed year after year in the musical classrooms of such prestigious song camps as Richard Thompson’s Frets and Refrains, Moab Folk Camp, The Swannanoa Gathering, SummerSongs, the Cape Cod Songwriters Retreats, WUMB Radio’s Summer Acoustic Music Week (SAMW), and Lamb’s Retreat (MI). ~ sloanwainwright.com
DAVID ROTH
DAVID ROTHGrain of Salt • Got some unfinished business with a song-in-progress? Do you love playing and talking about music? Here’s an interactive and participatory workshop for any songs or parts thereof that you might wish to have some input on. We’ll hear these works right where they are and become a collective think-tank about what’s working so far and what might benefit from a closer look. It’s also an opportunity to hone your listening and feedback-giving skills as we work with each songwriter and ponder the many elements—lyric, rhythm, chord progression, key, arrangement, etc.—that make a song click.
David Roth Bio • David strikes many chords, hearts, and minds with his unique songs, offbeat observations, moving stories, sense of the hilarious, and powerful singing and subject matter. His music has found it’s way to Carnegie Hall, the United Nations, several Chicken Soup for the Soul books, the Kennedy Center, Peter, Paul, & Mary and Kingston Trio CDs (and 15 of his own), NASA’s Goddard Space Center (“Rocket Science” went up on the Space Shuttle Atlantis’s May 2009 mission to repair the Hubble Telescope), and the classic folk song books “Rise Up Singing” and “Rise Again” (sequel). David has also taught singing, songwriting, and performance at the Augusta Heritage workshops, SummerSongs (NY – where he currently serves as Executive Director), Common Ground on the Hill (MD), the Woods Dance & Music Camp (Canada), WUMB’s Summer Acoustic Music Week (NH), Moab Folk Camp (UT), Rowe Center (MA), Pendle Hill (PA), Lamb’s Retreat (MI), the Swannanoa Gathering (NC), the National Wellness Institute (WI), and for many other songwriting groups and associations around the country. David is also founder/director of the Cape Cod Songwriters Retreats and creator/host of Cape Cod’s “Full Moon Open Mic” which, for the past 20 years has provided a forum for musicians to connect and be heard while at the same time collecting donations (more than $17,000 to date) for local non-profits to help neighbors in need.~ davidrothmusic.com
SUE RILEY
SUE RILEYSongwriting 101 • Do you feel drawn to songwriting and wish that you understood how to get started? Are you looking for some guidelines about how to craft your poem into a song? Do you wonder where melody comes from? Are you already writing songs and want some tips on how to better understand the craft of songwriting? Do you have the beginning of a song and wonder how to come up with a catchy chorus? I’ll give you some ideas on how to embark on the wonderful path of songwriting. We’ll go over some basic structure ideas, do some free writes to get to the heart of what we want to write about, and then create our songs. Bring paper and a pen to class. Let the songwriting begin!
Sue Riley Bio • Sue believes in the power of music to touch hearts and heal lives. As one of the co-founders of emPower Music & Arts, Sue helps host the yearly emPower Music Festival and Posi Awards recognizing excellence in songwriting for artists who create songs with messages of peace, interfaith, and joyous living. A prolific singer-songwriter, Sue has created 8 CDs of original, award winning, uplifting positive music. Her newest CD, There Are Moments was produced by Glen Roethel and released in 2020, just in time for the Covid shut down. Sue is a grateful member of the SummerSongs Board of Directors. sueriley.com
VITO PETROCCITTO, JR.
Chord Crunching • Here’s a course about chords and how they shift, featuring exercises in chord movement and their relationship to the keys from which they come. This is theory in a nutshell as it applies to the singer songwriter, and in this class we’ll explore chord movement, have plenty of hands-on fun, play our instruments a lot, and go through paces that are sure to get you thinking musically outside the box. Plan to improve your skills and have plenty of fun in the process.
Vito Petroccitto Bio • Singer/songwriter and musician Vito Petroccitto attended the very first SummerSongs and all this time later joins our stellar staff with an impressive resumé of musical experience and expertise. Whether on a telecaster or a Taylor, Vito has opened for acts like Robert Plant, Govt. Mule, Railroad Earth, Jefferson Starship, Montgomery Gentry, Lee Bryce, Eddie Money, The Doobie Brothers, and Orleans. He’s also toured or performed with Sloan Wainwright, David Roth, Pete Seeger, Professor Louie and the Cromatix, Frank Gadler (NRBQ), the Willi Amrod Band with the James Brown horns, Fred Wesley, Pee Wee Ellis, and Maceo Parker. In 2020 he appeared with Mark Ruffalo in the HBO Series “I Know This Much Is True”, performing an “approved by” Paul Simon version of “Bridge Over Troubled Water”. His versatility lends depth and staying power to a lifelong career of passion, remarkable and wide-ranging technique, boundless energy, and a genuine soul-smile to every endeavor. ~ iamvito.com
JULIE SNOW
Mixed Media Fun • Join Julie for a mid-day mixed media mash-up where we will take a break from words and music and focus on creating images with paper and fabric and paint and glue. Work in a small journal or on a small canvas. See what unexpected imaginings emerge!
Julie Snow Bio • Julie Snow has been coming to SummerSongs since we began in 1999. She is a singer/songwriter with two CDs made later in life following a long career as a clinical social worker. She started taking a mixed media art class over 6 years ago which continues to inspire her ongoing explorations in collage. ~ Julie on YouTube
CHRIS KUNSTADTER
Sound’s Good • Learn the tips and tricks of mastering stage and sound equipment with SummerSongs’ own Sound Master. I’ll show you how to manage the stage from the viewpoint of the performer, the stage crew, and the sound team–and how to keep things neat and tidy through dozens of performers. You’ll learn how to find out the needs of performers as they prepare to step up on stage, how to handle the stage equipment to make everyone comfortable, and how to help with the mixer to make the show run smoothly.
Chris Kunstadter Bio • Chris Kunstadter has been involved with SummerSongs for over 20 years, and is passionate about helping you sound awesome on stage. Chris’s songwriting is inspired by his studies of the 19th century French romantic poets (Verlaine, Rimbaud, Apollinaire) and by his four decades of work in aerospace. He appreciates using his left brain for spreadsheets and all things analytical and his right brain for lyrics and creativity.
MARK DANN
Mentor-At-Large • Mark is available all week for one-on-ones regarding a wide variety of subjects, including any aspect of record-making (home studio advice up thru larger-scale recording studio projects), guitar setup evaluations and minor on-site-tweaking, music theory (that makes sense for singer-songwriters/guitarists), as well as playing bass for you in the nightly coffeehouse! Also, advice on all sorts of music software, and Mac OS issues in general.
Mark Dann Bio • I got hooked on tape recorders as a young child. Quite a bit later, I started recording songwriter-oriented albums in the Greenwich Village music scene. That led to opening a pro-level recording studio in NYC that I ran for over 31 years. In the midst of countless recording projects of all kinds and scope over all this time, I’ve been constantly playing gigs, and building and repairing guitars. ~ markdann.com
GLEN ROETHEL
Mentor-At-Large • Guitar? Performance? Songwriting? Cowriting? Harmony? Arranging? Production? Bands, duos, trios, websites, YouTube? Copyright, BMI, ASCAP, SESAC, publishing, CDBABY, SoundExchange? … When I first attended SummerSongs, the one-on-one sessions were priceless! I’ll never forget the lessons I learned then. Hey, you’ve got questions too, right? Let’s talk. Sign up for a time slot and we’ll get busy.
Glen Roethel Bio • Glen Roethel, guitarist/vocalist, songwriter, entertainer, producer, and founder of streamable.cc (coaching/production for livestreamers) and dreamable.cc (musician support for any creative or marketing effort) helps kindle the energy of the SummerSongs experience and keep creatives afloat. Study Party Guitar, ensemble playing, songwriting, slow jam, harmony, and more with Glen at SummerSongs (NY), Cape Cod Songwriters Retreat (MA), Moab Folk Camp (UT), emPower Music Festival (MO), or Cosy Sheridan‘s Song Sessions (NH); let loose in a late-night jam-singalong-dance party after a joyful day of learning. Glen is an award-winning songwriter, jury-selected performer at NERFA and the Singer-Songwriter Cape May festival, and Gold prize winner (and 2024 finalist) at the Mid Atlantic Songwriting Contest (MASC) with Us! (his socially-minded trio with Summies Judy Kass and Amy Soucy). Roethel is also a Grace Note Award and Posi Award recipient at the emPower Music Festival. See or hear his songs in a Presidential Museum and in New Thought music and Hal Leonard Corp songbooks. To Glen’s credit are multiple self-produced and beautiful compilation CDs, plus instrumentation, vocals, production, and co-writes on gorgeous and award-winning recordings by Penny Nichols, Sue Riley, David Roth, Sloan Wainwright, Jan Garrett & JD Martin, and many others. Oh, and come to Ireland with Glen, Sue Riley, and Sloan in October 2026…or Scotland in 2027! ~ glenroethel.com