Billy and Grace's performances are alive with chemistry, charisma, and a wide range of musical styles as they move from gypsy jazz and bluesy folk to back porch pickin' and lyrical freestyle flows.
They play guitar, fiddle, and a homemade percussion kit, and will also throw in some story-telling, tap-dancing, poi-spinning, and other gypsy tricks. Billy and Grace bring a deep connection to the natural world to their music and teaching. These two artists wish to inspire their audiences and students to step into their power as creative, imaginative, passionate human beings capable of making dreams reality.
BILLY
Music abounds in nature. Billy Joel Raaen is grateful to the Earth, his greatest teacher. Just as animals are played by the landscape like instruments, so has Billy been shaped by his enviroment, first as a child growing up in a musical household, singing in his father's choir and sitting in on his band rehearsals.
Billy went on to study at Berklee College of Music and the New England Conservatory. After 'formal' education, Billy ventured into the school of life finding profound teaching in the raw beauty of Alaska, the epic canyons of Utah, and all over the U.S. where he met and played music with many characters. Billy knows that the way in which he lives comes through his music. A hunter-gatherer of tastey licks, lively progressions, gypsy stories, and trickster jokes, Billy moves through the wild with intuition and compassion, playing the landscape, and surrendering to the music that the land plays through him.
GRACE TEA
Kate Grace Totherow is an explorer of the magic of creativity, the power of sound, and our human spiritual potential. Since receiving a BA in Dance in 2001 from Hollins University, she has steeped herself in spoken word, sound healing, authentic movement, and music. She has worked as a creative writing mentor in California schools for five years offering workshops and performance opportunities to teens and children, and she has visited New Folsom prison many times as a guest artist to their Arts in Corrections poetry program.
Grace is deeply nourished by nature. She thrives on building fires, walking by water, climbing mountains, and singing in caves. She is continually finding the alchemy between artistic expression and passion for nature and loves to help others experience this fusion as they ignite their own divine, remarkable spark. Read more about Grace's projects...