STEPHEN CANNER is a child of the southern diaspora with deep Appalachian roots, and this background heavily informs his songwriting. A descendant of the Hatfield clan of the infamous Hatfield-McCoy feud, his childhood was split between rural Arkansas dirt farms and the industrial neighborhoods of Indianapolis, populated with displaced southerners who had migrated north to work in the factories. His interest in music began as soon as he was able to operate a turntable by himself, and he began playing guitar at the age of seven. During the 80s, while studying linguistics at Indiana University in Bloomington, he played in no-name punk bands, and he also fronted a legendary Indianapolis glam band. In the 90s, he formed a Madison, Wisconsin based garage twang band before landing in Austin at the end of the decade. After completing his undergraduate degree in linguistics and English literature at East Tennessee State University, he earned a master’s degree in library science/archival studies at Kent State University. His research interests include writing on obscure aspects of vinyl collecting, and creating bibliographies and discographies on overlooked topics related to recorded sound. His work has appeared in We Are the Mutants; in Undefined Boundary: The Journal of Psychick Albion; in British folk horror titles published by Wyrd Harvest Press; and on his own blogs Mediated Signals and Liminal Cultures.
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LYNNE ADELE grew up in a musical household in southern Minnesota. Just old enough to fall under the spell of the folk revival, she got her first guitar in the late 60s, and taught herself to play it by learning all the songs in the Joan Baez Songbook. After discovering progressive country in the 70s, she headed for Austin, where her name can be found in small print on a handful of fliers featuring better known local acts. After completing BFA and MA degrees in art history at The University of Texas, she spent a number of years working in an academic art museum and then at a commercial folk art gallery known for its epic SXSW day parties. She is best known for her groundbreaking scholarly work in the field of folk/self-taught/outsider art; and she authored the award-winning As Above/So Below: Art of the American Fraternal Society, 1850-1930, with Bruce Lee Webb and a foreword by David Byrne, published by University of Texas Press in 2015. 
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STEFAN KEYDEL traces his musical interests to his early youth in the Baltimore suburbs, where he studied the violin. His teen years found him playing bass guitar in a series of rock bands, and while studying German at the University of Michigan in the early 1980s, he was a member of an industrial noise band. After graduating, he studied critical theory at Johns Hopkins University, and then enrolled as a graduate student in folklore at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. There he returned to the violin, this time immersing himself in traditional music. After completing a master's degree, he served as director of the Louisiana Folklife Festival, and as education coordinator for Texas Folklife. Since relocating to Austin, he has played fiddle in projects ranging from old time to klezmer. When he’s not playing with Swarme of Beese, you might find him working on his solo hauntronica project Dreihasenbild or its pop-influenced sister project Microgroove, or performing with Austin bluegrass band Boxcar Preachers.