Although born and raised in Chicago, Liz Carroll has found a stunning amount of success in her ancestral homeland of Ireland. In 1975, at the age of 18, the fiddler won the Senior All-Ireland Championship - the first American to win that title in nine years, she recalled in an interview last week.

And a quarter-century later, in 2001, Irish Echo named her traditional musician of the year - its highest honor.

Carroll will be one of nine main-stage acts at this weekend's Midwest Folk Festival in Bishop Hill, about 30 miles southeast of the Quad Cities. The free two-day event focuses on Midwestern talent but has an international flavor because of artists such as Carroll, who still lives in the Chicago area.

When most people hear the phrase "folk festival," they think of idealistic and liberal white people with acoustic guitars. The Midwest Folk Festival at Bishop Hill this weekend will have a few of those, but it's more of a folklore festival, highlighting ethnic and traditional arts.

So in addition to those acoustic guitars, the Midwest Folk Festival will feature Latin American music, the santur (the Iranian hammered dulcimer), the pipa (a Chinese stringed instrument), and the Irish fiddle. And its conception of "American" music is broad as well, with Delta blues, Cajun, and Creole styles.

"I'll tell you a cute little story," began Ray Voss, president of the Bix Beiderbecke Memorial Society. "There used to be an author in town, who passed away a few years ago. His name was David Collins. And he's written about 75 books - mostly for children - and he was also a teacher. Rich Johnson [the Bix society's music director] had been trying to get him to write a book about Bix, and he never wanted to do it.

"But one day in [Collins'] class, he said, 'Does anybody know who Bix Beiderbecke is?' So one kid got up and said, 'Yeah. He's the guy that's named after a run.'"

Voss then laughs, and says, in reference to 1998's Bix Beiderbecke: Jazz Age Genius, "So Dave got busy and wrote this really nice little book."

That is a cute little story.

So ...

... how many of your kids think Bix is named after a run?

Think about Sade, the cool and exotic British chanteuse known for "Smooth Operator." Now consider the "Texas Man" with an eye patch, Mike Morgan, whom Guitar World called "a genuine blues guitar hero" known for his incendiary playing. Mike's got all Sade's records and loves her jazz band.

And on his next album, which is currently in pre-production, "I've got one song I could really hear her recording," he said in a recent phone interview.

That's in addition to Morgan-penned numbers such as a "radio-friendly rootsy-rock song" that he and his band the Crawl have tried out live, an Otis Redding-like ballad, a couple of R&B "Al Green-ish-type things," a Louisiana-style ballad, a few shuffles, some "funky things," and "a Marvin Gaye ‘What's Goin' On' thing - I've never recorded anything like that."