About the Artist

Sunnyside Up has been playing around Chicago for over ten years and has a wealth of experience with acoustic string band music. From straight ahead bluegrass, to instrumentals, to toe tapping two steps this band has all bases covered.

“Chicago’s Sunnyside Up makes the sound of bluegrass their own. This band can change the way you think about bluegrass. Aficionados and newbies alike love Sunnyside Up’s approach to the beloved style of bluegrass.”
– CBS Chicago, Best of Chicago

Colby Maddox (of Sunnyside Up), Originally from California, where he studied with mandolin great David Grisman, migrated to the Midwest to attend Oberlin College and then stayed to escape the tech boom.

Colby moved to Chicago in 1995 to work with The Special Consensus bluegrass band where he rubbed elbows and shared the stage with many of his heroes like Tim O’Brien, Scott Nygaard, Sally Van Meter, Laurie Lewis, Slavek Hanzlik, J.D. Crowe and John Hartford. Along the way Colby studied fiddle with Missouri State Champion Charlie Walden and played for a short time in a duo with young banjo wizard Noam Pikelny.

Colby teaches at the Old Town School of Folk Music now, and in 2006 he won first prize at the Rocky Grass mandolin competition in Lyons, Colorado. Recent side projects include raising two kids, releasing 127 Songs Live From the Old Town School, editing the Old Town School of Folk Music Song Book and playing around town with Charming Axe, Barb Silverman, Steve Dawson, Chris Walz, and Mike Church as well as recording Civil War songs for the Newberry Library.

The husband and wife duo of Robin and Jenny Bienemann are both singer-songwriters and instrumentalists. “Chicago’s Sunnyside Up makes the sound of bluegrass their own. This band can change the way you think about bluegrass. Aficionados and newbies alike love Sunnyside Up’s approach to the beloved style of bluegrass.”
– CBS Chicago, Best of Chicago

By turns hilarious and heartfelt, this cutting-edge acoustic duo melds original and traditional music with an elegant hint of jazz. Robin’s wild guitar stylings harken back to the earliest forms of jazz, blues and country guitar. Jenny’s voice and guitar playing evokes comparisons to Joni Mitchell and Ricki Lee Jones. Both write songs that are celebrations of modern life in all of its wonderful, strange and hilarious beauty, garnering airplay on National Public Radio, Dr. Demento, and The Midnight Special.