Kory May
Kory May tells stories to make sense of the world. Since the world doesn’t make sense, he continues to tell stories.
From childhood storytelling to winning Moth GrandSlams and performing on a Moth Mainstage, Kory has made his mark as a powerhouse storyteller across the Midwest. As a founding member of TellersBridge, an Eastern Iowa storytelling collective, and a facilitator for Story Jam’s “The Cocoon,” he’s deeply committed to building and enriching storytelling communities. His latest venture into personal narrative prose adds another layer to his creative journey.
For a taste of his work, check out a clip of his last appearance at Story Jam, or Grit Talks in the Des Moines Storytellers Project. He’s also shared his talents with Spring Grove Storytelling.
Karla Leroy-Brown
KARLA (vocals) sings with a variety of bands and groups, and at events including the Chicago Humanities Festival’s production of “Four Women” where she put her college French to use singing tunes made popular by Eartha Kitt, Josephine Baker and Nina Simone.
She has been a featured soloist on Royal Caribbean Cruiselines, and she has appeared in many plays, national tours, and televesision shows, including “Mamma Mia”, “Doubt”, “Sunday in the Park with George”, “Xanadu” (where she wore roller skates!),“Ragtime”, “Dessa Rose” and Once on This Island,” “Chicago Med”, "Chicago Fire" “Chicago PD”, “Empire”, “Mind Games” and a variety of commercials.
Karla is the Early Childhood General Music teacher at Catherine Cook School. She emphasizes cultural competence, and diversity and social justice in her community and school.
She is grateful to have her husband, Jean-Christophe and her two children Dominique & Mireille along for the ride.
Xoe Wise
Xoe Wise (songwriter) began playing music around 8 when she was enlisted as a triangle player for a local Zydeco band. Her releases have spanned folk to rock. Xoe has also been seen and heard in Netflix shows such as Sense8, and Showtimes Work in Progress. Xoe enjoys making records, comedic improv songs, and homemade hot sauce. In 2020 Forbes magazine and Chicago Tribune featured her series “Curbside Live” where she played pop up shows off her motor scooter to raise money for local music venues and bring some joy to carry out lines. Wise’s music has been recognized by NPR and Huffington post. You can find her not only on stage but also developing songwriting and music programs for Chicago LGBTQ youth that help inspire self-exploration, like music did for her as a young queer artist looking for ways to heal. Xoe holds a BS in psychology and a master’s in social work, focusing on music as body-focused (trauma responsive) psychotherapy and creative arts care.
Rafe Bradford
Rafe Bradford (bass) who studied double bass performance at the University of Illinois, has toured and worked with many great jazz, pop, and R&B greats, including Nancy Wilson, Stanley Turrentine, McCoy Tyner, Aretha Franklin, Lou Rawls, and David Foster. On The Tom Joyner Morning Show, Rafe performed with Luther Vandross, Mavis Staples, and many others in the live house band. He was in The Bonnie Hunt show band with Paul Shaffer, The Swell Season, and Dave Koz, and he is famous for playing bass for Patti LaBelle on Oprah’s theme song. Rafe teaches, plays all around Chicago, and he owns music mastering company.
Charlie Garrido
Charlie Garrido (storyteller)
Mama Edie Armstrong
Mama Edie McLoud Armstrong (storyteller) began this journey of professional storyteller as a speech and language pathologist. She recognized the blatant omissions in the education of her predominately African American students, which left them with little knowledge of the phenomenal contributions of people who looked like them. Images of people like the physician who performed the first successful open-heart surgery weren’t hung in places of honor among the others on the walls, even though this African American, Dr. Daniel Hale Williams, also developed the first African American Hospital in the Country, Provident Hospital, which was right in their own neighborhood. Provident was created because Black people on the south side were dying on their way to Cook County Hospital on the West Side because they weren’t allowed treatment at the White- run hospitals that were nearby.
The stories, poems and songs that Mama Edie subsequently created and taught her children helped to fill these gaps as she incorporated this knowledge into their speech and language activities. Their pride, confidence and academic scores began to rise. They came to see that they too were capable of great things.
Mama Edie is grateful that when she left the public schools and began accepting invitations to tell her stories in other settings - for pay - that this new profession would allow her to continue her journey to educate, uplift and empower. She uses all of what she is to advance the cause of social justice. Today she shares with us, “I Walk by Faith.”
Stephanie Rogers
Stephanie Rogers (songwriter) is the host, creator, and producer of STORY JAM. She’s been in dozens of rock, pop, and folk bands, and she has acted in plenty of obscure (and a few non-obscure!) theatre, film, and TV roles.
With a B.A. in acting from Northwestern University, and a master's in writing from National Louis University, Steph currently leads storytelling classes and workshops for Story Jam Studio.
Story Jam’s classes and trainings began in 2018 after a fan asked us to lead a storytelling workshop for her company, A lifelong lover of hearing peoples’ life stories, and a late discoverer of her ability to teach storytelling, Steph realized that it is one of her great joys to teach people how to tell stories.
Alysha Monique
ALYSHA MONIQUE (singer) is a singer, lyricist, actress, member of the Chicago Cabaret Professionals, and Graduate from Columbia College Chicago, where she received her B.A. in Vocal Performance.
In 2022, she received the prestigious Denise Tomasello Emerging Artist Scholarship Award.
Alysha has worked with New York Voices, Buddy Guy, Koko Taylor, Mavis Staples, Brian Culbertson, Frieda Lee, Lynne Jordan, Kimberly Gordon, Margaret Murphy-Webb, Michele Thomas, Anne Burrell, Tecora Rogers, Greta Pope, Cynthia Clarey, Jenifer French, Jeannie Tanner, Ellen Winters Reynolds under Daryl Nitz Entertainment, and Story Jam.
She is currently a freelance vocalist while singing with the Soundtracks of a Generation, embodying Aretha Franklin in the show titled "R.E.S.P.E.C.T." She also works with Mike Zabrin & the Funktastic Band, and the Chicago Soul Jazz Collective.
Fred Simon
Fred Simon (keys) has been making music for more than thirty years, composing for records, live performance, film, dance, and television, with instrumentation ranging from solo piano to symphonic orchestra. His recorded work includes seven albums of original music under his name, three albums (as principle composer) with the Simon and Bard Group, numerous appearances on compilations and samplers, and many appearances as side-musician.
Chuck Lacy
Chuck Lacy (drums) was encouraged to go into music by his talented family. He started playing drums at age 12 for his church and soon began working for various churches and community choirs. He went on to study music in high school learning to read and study different genres of music. In college he began working in local Jazz, Blues, R&B, and Rock clubs as well as working for many cooperate bands. Today he is a working fixture in Chicago’s music scene and beyond playing everything from country to neo-soul. He has worked with: Ana Popovic, Buddy Guy, Keb Mo, Rahsaan Patterson, Avery Sunshune, Regina Belle, Shirley Murdock, Angela Winbush, Miki Howard, K-Jon, Kenya, Mike Phillips, Shana Tucker, Vince Ingala, Steve Oliver, Marion Meadows, Norman Brown, Larry Carlton, Marc Antoine, Phil Denny, Paul Taylor, and many more. He tours with Folk/Rock artist Peter Himmelman, Gospel Legends The Caravans, Edwin Hawkins, Richard Smallwood, Donnie McClurkin, and many more. In addition to being a drummer he is also a songwriter and producer. One of the projects he produced, “Music Made Rhythm” by Kenya, was considered for a Grammy nomination. Another project he co-produced was #1 on the UK Soul Charts. He is also the music director for Just Friends as well as MTV Star Maker runner up Melody Angel. Chuck is equally busy on stage and in the studio drawing on his various influences to create good music. Chuck Lacy is a Sabian Cymbals and Reunion Blues artist.
Howard Lieberman
Nationally known writer, storyteller, performance artist and political commentator/activist Howard Lieberman grew up on the North Side of Chicago. After a series of unfortunate life tragedies left Howard homeless, he left Chicago and traveled the country and the world eventually finding his way to NYC where he became a husband, father, corporate attorney, Irish ceili dance teacher and Director of the Irish Arts Center. He moved with his family to bucolic Stillwater, MN in 1990.
When not writing poetry and political essays Howard spends most of his artistic hours writing and performing personal narrative stories. His jaded yet surprisingly tender style has made him a favorite on the national and, thanks to Zoom, global performance scene. Howard is a former member of the Board of Directors of the Minnesota Fringe Festival and The National Storytelling Network and is a current board member of Story Arts of Minnesota.
Devin Thompson
Devin Thompson (songwriter, vocalist) started his music career in his early teens in the city of Joliet, just southwest of the Windy City. He was the product of a musical family, and, like many a soul great, he has a church background. His father was a choir singer whose voice attracted the attention of the famed producer Thom Bell, and his sister also led a choir.
Thompson increasingly segued into singing as the group played shows around the Midwest. “Because I was a horn player,” he says, “at first I didn’t really look to vocalists as any kind of inspiration. I was looking at instrumentalists — Miles Davis, Jimi Hendrix, Johnny Guitar Watson. Those were the people I gravitated towards. Later on it was Marvin Gaye, Sam Cooke, the Staples, Donny Hathaway. Then I was introduced to the music of Joe Williams, the jazz singer, Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett. I didn’t become interested in songwriting until I heard Prince, who became my favorite artist.”
Thompson has worked in Chicago-based society bands, including the Georgia Francis Orchestra and The CHicago Catz.
Thompson’s 2020 release, “Tales of the Soul” is bursting with tunes that offer a vital new take on the music’s ballad and dance traditions. But its most striking track, and certainly its most prescient, is the set-closing “Tell Me.” A pointed meditation on race in the style of Curtis Mayfield’s “We People Who Are Darker Than Blue” and Syl Johnson’s “Is It Because I’m Black,” it was written long before demonstrations began to roil the nation this summer.
“It’s just about the experience of being a Black man in America,” says Thompson. “The first thing I started with was, ‘Tell me what it is about my skin that you don’t like.’ It’s a real question — people who claim white supremacy can’t tell me why they don’t like me. But then it became a lot more real when Colin Kaepernick was going through some of the things that he was going through. The song is about challenging people to have empathy. In America, people seem to lack the ability to walk in someone else’s shoes.”
Though it was created half a continent away from his Midwestern stomping grounds, Devin B. Thompson’s Severn debut proved a surprising and rewarding experience for the musician, as it will for listeners.
Nestor Gomez
Nestor Gomez (storyteller) is a household name in the world of storytelling. He has won more Moth Slams and Grand Slams nationally than anyone alive. Nestor was born in Guatemala and became a US citizen in 2018. He produces a popular storytelling show, "80 Minutes Around the World: Immigration Stories," which boasts a podcast on NPR. Nestor is one of the most sought-after storytellers in the country. You can find out all about Nestor at his website.
Dave Hiltebrand
Dave Hiltebrand (guitar) has been a full-time musician for over 25 years. Since graduating from DePaul University School of Music, Dave has had extensive experience as a performer, composer and studio musician. Highlights include the Broadway National Tour of Jersey Boys, co-writing and co-producing two national top-ten songs, composing work for clients including the Oprah Winfrey Show, Nike and Allstate, and tours to South Africa, Cuba, Spain, Italy and Egypt. His debut solo guitar album Yoguitar, Vol. 1 was released in 2016. Dave is currently an adjunct professor of Digital Music at Elmhurst University.
