Fan of the D-21

JIM YATES comes from a musical family. His father was a singer, he is married to a musician, his four siblings all play music, his two sons and most of his nephews and nieces are involved in music.
He started playing music on a ukulele that a cousin forgot at his home and bought his first guitar circa 1960. Over the years he has added banjo, mandolin, Autoharp, accordion, concertina, bouzouki, mountain dulcimer and mouth harp to his arsenal. He also owns a fiddle, but plays it only in the privacy of his own home when his wife is at work and the cats are both outside.
After moving to the Port Hope/Cobourg area in the early seventies, he played in several folk, bluegrass and Celtic groups and became involved with promoting acoustic music through Folk At The Forum and the Waterfront Festival. Jim teaches guitar, banjo and mandolin and has had articles and arrangements published in the Banjo Newsletter and the Autoharpoholic Magazine. His tune Robbie Burns' Day has been recorded by the Peterborough folk group Freshwater Trade and by Fiddlin' Zeke Mazurek.
Jim plays eclectic acoustic music with Al Kirby as part of the duo Kirby & Yates and with Zeke Mazurek and Al Kirby as The North Shore Ramblers.
Jim also sometimes sits in with The Otonabee River Boys, his son Clayton's bluegrass group and plays with his wife, Maggie - voclas, guitar, hammered dulcimer and bodhran - and Graham Taylor -fiddle, mandolin and guitar - in a group billed as Graham Taylor & Friends.
He has played Ontario venues such as Toronto's Glen Gould Studio, Port Hope’s Capitol Theatre, Belleville's Empire Theatre, Shelter Valley Folk Festival, Peterborough Folk Festival, Fred Eaglesmith Picnic, The Mariposa Folk Festival, Palmer Rapids Bluegrass Festival, River Valley Bluegrass Festival, Cobourg Harvest Festival, Cobourg Waterfront Festival, Wellington Waterfront Festival, Carrying Place Portage Festival and more beer joints and concert halls than you want to hear about.