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Spring 1997ARTICLES
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Dale Russ: Irish Fiddling on the Pacific RimBy Larry HillDale Russ is a friendly, unassuming man who plays Irish traditional music with distinctive clarity, articulation, and soul. Born in the U.S., he picked up the fiddle as a young adult in Washington state, far from the urban Irish enclaves. Yet, in 1993, Martin Hayes told Folk World magazine, Dale Russ is one of the greatest fiddlers I know in Irish traditional music Recognized by such luminaries as Kevin Burke, Liz Carroll, and James Kelly, Dale plays music for dancing, for listening, and for pleasure, mostly in the Pacific Northwest. He plays with the Suffering Gaels and with Jody's Heaven. He also performs solo. Dale recently toured in Japan, and plans to return next fall. He has taught advanced Irish fiddling at the Lark In The Morning Music Camp for the past thirteen years. He also teaches privately and in workshops and on video. Subtle, inventive, and steeped in the tradition, his intense work ethic and concentration are matched only by the sheer joyfulness of his music. We spoke during the Northwest Folklife festival in May 1996, where Dale performed in four separate venues in a single day. How did you come to the fiddle and to Irish music, and did you do it at the same time? I didn't play Irish music before I played the fiddle, and I only picked up the fiddle when I moved out to Olympia (Washington) in 1973. There was a bunch of people who were all learning how to play at the same time, so we kind of taught each other the little bits of information we knew. I was playing the guitar in a bluegrass band, messing around with bluegrass, really a mishmash of stuff, a few old timey tunes, a few Scottish, a few Irish, a few contra dance. Was there anyone in particular who guided you? It was a consortium of beginners. The only established fiddle player I knew who was playing anything vaguely Irish or Scottish was Frank Ferrel. He was living in Seattle and had his fiddle shop going at that time. frank's style is actually Canadian, like Graham Townsend. He played Irish and Scots tunes, but he didn't play them in a strictly Irish style. When it came to learning Irish music, we'd pick up techniques from people coming back from Ireland, from people who had gone over to learn. So there was no one in particular who guided you in Irish music or on the fiddle. You made your own way. I think somebody showed me how to do bowed triplets somewhere in there. There was a teach-in I saw in Sing Out! magazine where Aly Bain explained how to play "turns", rolls. From there, I realized what I was hearing on the records of like, Jean Carignan. I had a Martin Byrnes recording, but ironically he doesn't play rolls. I only found that out years later by listening more carefully. Basically, it was all studying on my own, from recordings of whoever I could get...Martin Byrnes...Somebody brought back a tape of Paddy Glackin at some session...There was Paddy on one side and Brendan McGlinchey on the other, so I took those from the cassette player and put them on reel to reel and slowed them down to half speed. Looking back, is there anything you would do differently that would make the whole process easier or more productive? In terms of technique, there wasn't a whole lot of dead time. There were some bowing things that took me a while to catch on to, but I think, like a lot of things, when I was ready for it, there it was. I heard it, and I was able to figure out what was going on. I really was flying blind for a long time, but occasionally someone would come through town, or I'd get some kind of confirmation that what I was doing was the right thing, that I was on the right track. If someone else was around that knew what was going on, that could have given me that affirmation earlier on, I'd probably be a more confident player than I am. Because the rest of it was just work, just getting the techniques. You played a lot of dances then, and you still do... When I first started with that same group at Evergreen [College], we put together a Thursday night contra dance, or square dance, or whatever kind of dance people were doing. It was a group situation where I got to play tunes up to speed. It was invaluable to be able to play loud and to know that no one was going to hear your mistakes. That was really, really useful. I also started playing for Feises, as early as 1978 or 1979, and playing for step dancers was also really valuable. To watch the motion, to watch the dances being done and to see physically the way the bodies move to execute the steps really helped with rhythm and phrasing. Reflect on the differences for you, playing for dances or playing for an audience. It seems to me those are different things. Either way you want to have rhythm that's steady; for the music to be effective, either as dance music or as listening music, the rhythm has to be steady. that's the common thing. And there has to be energy in it. But there is definitely a difference between dance fiddling and listening fiddling. I know that volume dynamics aren't necessarily a traditional thing, but I like to play louder and softer when I'm playing for listening, and sometimes for dancing, too, just to give it a little extra lift now and then. Now, it is a much more acceptable kind of thing. I think only hardcore traditionalists pooh-pooh that. That's what makes it music. I think so, too. But I think a lot of that comes from the pipes, not being able to vary the volume, you know, so if you can't make the music work without messing with volume then you're not really playing "the music." I think that is the feeling. I've noticed you make a lot of pipe sounds. Early on I did a lot of playing with Nick Voreas, who was a highland piper and lived in Ireland for a while, and learned to play whistle and flute. He is a clean, strong player. I learned to play whistle from him, and I almost bought a set of pipes at one point before I realized I had my work cut out for me on the fiddle. I've always loved the pipes. Seamus Ennis was a big influence on me, and later Paddy Keenan. I've always been interested in piping technique, and I've felt, in one way, fiddle is kind of an adjunct, or extension of pipes. You can kind of recreate some piping techniques on it. Piping is rhythmic especially when you get into the closed playing. I love the inflections you can get, like taking the chanter off the knee... all the different variations in sound you can get really fascinate me. I'm kind of chameleonic when it comes to playing with other people. When I'm playing with someone else, I try to listen to how they're playing and try to match my style to theirs, especially if it's another instrument. For instance, if it's a flute player, I try to put pauses in when they take a breath, I try to phrase the same way. it's a lot more exciting to me, more unified. Give us an example of a pipe technique on the fiddle. There are two styles of playing rolls. One is to play melodically, like [Michael] Coleman. I think of it as an older style because I don't hear modern players play it so much. James Kelly plays them. it's more like a turn, where you actually hear both grace notes, the grace note above and the grace note below. You can only do that when the roll comes right on the down beat, like in a reel on the first three eighth notes, Da De Da Da Dum. But when you hear a piper paying, like Paddy Keenan, you are basically dividing the dotted quarter into three eighth notes, with a real fast grace, so you get Da Da Dum. The grace notes are more like percussion notation. If you have the opportunity to play for a dance, or play solo, or with the Suffering Gaels, do you have a preference? I don't. [However], I really enjoy playing for an old style step dancer. Solo, hard shoe, reel, jig, hornpipe -- old style, I love that. I really enjoy the interplay, rhythmically. When I was a kid the first instrument I wanted to play was drums, and there's still that desire in me for rhythm. I love a rhythm. So, really, I think of the bow as a drumstick with hair on it.
John Hartford: A Fun and Open DiscussionBy Peter AnickMany of us "baby boomers" remember John Hartford's appearances on the Glen Campbell TV show in the mid-sixties. The deep-voiced composer of "Gentle on My Mind" went on to become a fixture in the folk scene, combining his prolific songwriting, instrumental virtuosity and indefatigable footwork into a one-of-a-kind one man show that cheerfully bridged the gap between old and new. This past summer, as John was finishing up a song-writing workshop at the Winterhawk Bluegrass Festival, I asked him if he would share some thoughts about writing fiddle tunes. He suggested that we actually try composing a tune and we retired to his bus to do just that. In this interview, John intersperses his composing with his insights on a whole range of fiddlistic topics. How would you compare writing a song to writing a fiddle tune? Well, writing a fiddle tune is just writing a melody, and there are songs that are fiddle tunes, or of course you can play any song as a fiddle tune, I guess. About the same kinds of things apply. I jot 'em down as they come into my head. A lot of times, I wake up in the morning, I got something on my mind, or I can just start writing, put something down and see what comes out. Do you have a particular goal in mind when you write a fiddle tune? I guess I'm always trying to write "the fiddle tune," "the melody." And I don't want it to be too complicated. I just want it to be something that's memorable. The whole study of fiddle tunes and melodies and everything really probably boils down to why you like one melody over another, which is of course the 64 dollar question. Any guesses? No. That's the one I don't understand. Sometimes I'll be working on a melody and say, "There's no way anybody could like this." I'll change one note in it or something, and then I'll fall in love with it. Or I'll think, "Oh this is the greatest melody I ever heard," and then I'll go to play it and it won't be worth a dime... Do you remember all the tunes that you've written? No, no, lord no! If they're good tunes and stick with me, yeah, then I remember them. I remember a lot of tunes that I wrote, but I certainly don't remember everything, and not everything I write would be worth remembering... Who would you say were the main influences on your fiddling? Well, I'd have to say Gene Goforth, Benny Martin, Ed Haley, Dr. Jimmy Gray, Texas Shorty, Benny Thomasson, Major Franklin. Quite a range of influences. I couldn't help but notice all the variations and different bowings you put into "Billy in the Lowground" yesterday. That seems to be something that I can't avoid. I'm a chronic improviser. When you play something like that, how much is pre-arranged and how much is on the spot? It's all off the top of my head. If I sat down and played it for you right now, it would just come out different... You've got to be able to improvise in the language of fiddle tunes. I mean, you can't start playing bebop scales and things like that. Although I've been experimenting with a thing I really enjoy, where you start, you leave the first 16th note out as a rest, and then start. Or, instead, if you don't want to confuse anybody, you just play something there and then you start your thought process in one 16th, or two 16ths. [Demonstrates on "Billy in the Lowground."] You do the same tune, everything right in place, you just put your phrase endings in funny places. I guess, to do a tune like that, improvise on it, you've got to have a pretty good handle on it. I've got tunes that I can play note for note, but, if I relax myself, I'll usually start fussin' with it. What do you consider the "language" of fiddle tunes? Boy, that'd be real hard to say! It's like Clifford Hawthorne -- an old boy I grew up with -- he used to say, "I may not be the best fiddler you ever heard, but, by God, I can tell when one's a bein' played!" I don't know how to tell you that. I can just listen to one and tell whether it's in the ballpark or not. Benny Thomasson and Mark O'Connor are wonderful improvisers, and it's all in the fiddle tune language. The improvs almost sound like they were engraved in stone. Another good exercise that I really love to do is take a tune that doesn't have a whole lot of parts and just start making up parts as you go, just playing it as if it had a whole bunch of parts... I think the one thing that helps in improvising is always try to play in time, even when you're working something out, try to keep it going and try to keep it in time. Don't stop and noodle it out, or do that as little as possible, because then if you don't hit something, something else will come out. It'll be okay. And then the next time around, you can go for the thing again, and if it doesn't work, you've got something else. How'd you decide you were going to become a professional musician? I didn't decide. It just kinda took me over. I was originally going to be a riverboat pilot and music was my second choice, and it just wouldn't let me alone. It tortures me by not allowing me to be quite as good as I want to be. My lifelong quest now is trying to teach my body how to reproduce what I hear in my head... Have you done some historical research on tracking tunes back? I sure have. Well, I read through these old tune books and every time I find a tune that sounds like something else, I try to figure out what it is and then I make a notation on a 3X5 card and drop it in the card file. I love the fiddle tunes of the Big Sandy River Valley [between Kentucky and West Virginia] and I like the tunes from back home in Missouri, and I like the stuff in Texas and when I hear one, I try to figure out where it's from and what it's like... The study of fiddle tunes is a whole lot like studying words. If you read the Oxford dictionary and it starts talking about the history of words, it talks about it in terms of where was the first time this word was published, or where was the first time that we heard this word... So I kinda put that to fiddle tunes, too... Do you think there's a difference between tunes that came over from the British Isles and tunes that were written here? Yeah. The British Isles stuff is mostly real dotted. But I feel very confident that the old time fiddling even in the Big Sandy River Valley and in Missouri in the vintage of the War Between the States was probably sounding a lot more Celtic than what we're used to. I think we've had a lot of ragtime and black influence that's made it sound like what we hear today, which I dearly love. Or it also may be that what we're hearing might be a lot closer to the way it was originally and that it didn't change here and it changed back there. It was one of the two. [Plays "Paddy on the turnpike" with a dotted feel.] Now, if you take that lilt, that dotted note feel, and just swing it just a hair, then you're pretty close to what Ed Haley's doing. So he kind of bridges the gap. Yeah... Count Basie's playing with a lilt. Do you know much about how waltzes got into old time fiddling? I think the waltz is the German influence. Most of this country got settled with Scotch-Irish and German. My background is Scotch-Irish, with a little bit of German and a tiny little bit of French and a little bit of English. Here Scotch-Irish is the main channel, and the tributaries are the German, and Afro, and Scandinavian. The river of music comes down through Shetland Islands and down through Scotland and then down through Ireland and then over to this country, and all up and down the east coast, and then into Pennsylvania and down into the Appalachians and down through the Ohio River Valley and up the Mississippi and down the Mississippi and out the Missouri and then just swinging out through Texas. It's a whole river of Celtic music... [Check out John's excellent web site.] For full versions of these articles, please visit Fiddler Magazine store to order back issues. |
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