Duane, PLEASE don't get discouraged! the strongest traditions are the ones in which new ideas are constantly being tried-- and sometimes the seed falls on fertile ground. Specific suggestions The NEFFA festival held I believe 4th weekend in April every year in Natick MA is a hotbed of both trad and non-trad oldtimey and Irish and lots of other things. Specifically, every year Drew Smith leads a "string, wind, reed" jam in which tunes are played on rather surprising instruments. OTOH there is the old-time music festival at Galax which states in the rules that an old-time band shall consist of 3 to 7 people and shall include a fiddle a banjo and a guitar. It helps if your application has a return address from the right zip code too (100xx often brings instant disqualification without notice to the contestant) I once asked one of the judges if they realized that the Carter Family, under their rules, was not an old-time band and was told, w no sense of humor, that since they didn't have a fiddle, that they weren't. That's one way of keeping the tradition alive. On still another hand there is Clifftop, the weekend before Galax, which always includes a Non-Traditional Band Contest which has been the source of incredible inventiveness and fun for lots of people, myself included. Your specific request-- trad OT music played on non-trad instruments is a little harder. The Mando-Mafia of Charlottesville VA does some wonderful stuff. Every year at the Mountain Laurel Autoharp Festival several people do things on an autoharp that I would never have believed possible. And a good hammered dulcimer player ADDS to a session. I can go into my tape collection & get some catalog numbers and addresses but suspect that my fellow Mudcatters will shortly overwhelm you to the point where you don't need me.