Festival of American Fiddle Tunes/Paul Conklin

 

Summer 2002

ARTICLES

COLUMNS

  • Fiddle Tune History, by Andrew Kuntz
  • The Practicing Fiddler: Chords 101, by Hollis Taylor
  • Cross-Canada Fiddle Tour: Québec's Yvon Cuillerier, by Gordon Stobbe
  • On Improvisation: Thinking on Your Feet, Part Two, by Paul Anastasio
  • Reviews of Recordings & Books
  • Events

TUNES

  • HCQ Strut, transcribed by Peter Anick as played by Stéphane Grappelli
  • The Man of the House, transcribed by Jack Tuttle as played by Frankie Gavin on Fierce Traditional
  • Ocoee, waltz by Pete Sutherland
  • Miss Gunning's (Fiddle Tune History)
  • Miss Gunning's Reel (Fiddle Tune History)
  • The Contradiction Reel (Fiddle Tune History)
  • Valse Gisèle, by Yvon Cuillerier

 

ARTICLE EXCERPTS

Stéphane Grappelli with the Winter 95/96 issue of Fiddler Magazine, in which he was interviewed. Photo: Peter Anick.

Reminiscing with Stéphane Grappelli

by Peter Anick

The first time I saw Stéphane Grappelli was in 1976, just a few years after his appearance with the all-strings Diz Disley Trio at the Cambridge Folk Festival had re-ignited his already brilliant career. Nearly seventy at the time, he played a long and energetic set, looking completely relaxed as he spun off unpredictable, serpentine phrases and joyously sparred with his guitarists. The last time I saw him was twenty years later in 1996, on what may have been his last American tour. Nearly ninety now, he looked much frailer and took the stage in a wheelchair. However, his playing remained supple, bright, and imaginative, and if you closed your eyes, the charm, vitality and grace with which he approached each tune made you quickly forget his age.

Like his playing, his memory had also remained lucid. In this interview held the morning before the show, he readily recalls his first violin, the details of his historic recording session with Django Reinhardt and his long-held desire to play for a strictly listening audience free of distracting dancers. We began the interview discussing some of the tunes that he and Django had composed together and which have now become standards for afficianados of "Hot Club" jazz.

I'd like to reminisce about some of the tunes that you have written.

Well, we used to compose together with Django. Django used to improvise, because he can't write, you know. He had no knowledge of music at all. It was all naturel. But I was there to put it down when we found something.

Did you help compose the tunes?

We played together and when we had an ideasometimes out of the blue, we got something, we develop it, and then I write....

Did you ever specifically say, "Let's make up a tune today"?

No. We never worked that way. It was improvised, you know. We never prepared anything. Because when you prepare something, it's not very good. It's not very naturel. The difficulty, when we got an idea, is to remember! Because it's like a bird -- when you open its cage, he goes out and you don't see him. Improvisation is like that. On the moment you want to write it down, it's already forgotten.

What was the first tune that you composed together?

We worked for years together, and then one day we decided to put that on paper. I think the first tune was "Minor Swing." I think that was the one. Very easy. And another one was "Daphné," because when I was tuning up -- dah dah dee dee -- with the harmonics. I do the harmonics to see if it [the violin] is in tune, you know, and that was enough material to build something....

[sings the melody of "Minor Swing"] Ah, tiens! And Django -- boom boom boom boom boom! [imitating the strummed chords] He was an extraordinary man, you know. Many times, we improvised on the spot. Like the free jazz, you know, we did that fifty years before.

...

How about "Ultrafox"?

That was to compliment the young man who gave us a chance to register [record]. In those days, in 1934, that is sixty-two years ago, it was something new, you know -- playing jazz with guitar and violin! The people said, "What?" In those days, it was the trombone, trumpet, the drum. Alors, they wanted us to do a little concert, you know. They telephoned their friends and they managed to get a decent room. So we gave the concert. It was Panassié, Charles Delaunay, and another one, Pierre Noury. Those three young men liked modern stuff and all that, so they tried to make us register and make a record. It was new, because they never registered with three guitars, violin, and bass. They wanted clarinet, they wanted trombone and all that. So finally they found a young man who said, "Okay, I will accept the challenge!" His name was Raoul Caldérou. And we went there one morning at nine o'clock, because in those days, it was from nine to twelve and two to five. The two to five was reserved for the star, for the well known singer, and the beginner, unknown person -- nine o'clock. And I remember there were two gentlemen there; they were dressed like doctors with the white jackets. In those days it was not like today with the ribbon (tape), you know. It was -- what do we call that? -- the crèpe. "Pancake," you know. One inch, and they got that from the frigidaire. It was in wax, you know. And then we were obliged to do two records -- one record with two faces [sides]. That made four tunes, four compositions. And they got for that eight records, eight matrices -- two for each tune. So, if you made a mistake, it's finished! So you must not make a mistake. Of course, if something wrong happens, a string breaks, then they put another pancake. Mais if you are not informed or something goes wrong, they never do a record! So, alors, our appointment was at nine o'clock there. You must be there at quarter to nine at least to get in, tune up, and all that. Django was not there! Always like that. Django, it's too early for him. So somebody goes there to pick him up. He arrives at half past ten. We did all the four records, all four tunes in one hour and a few minutes -- the arrangement, how we start, how we will finish, in that. And I remember what we played for that; that was in 1935. We played "Sweet Sue," "Lady Be Good," "Tiger Rag," and "I Saw Stars." Those four. And there remained two pancakes they didn't use! We only did that with six. Voilà, that was the first record we did, for Ultraphone. And of course we composed a tune to thank the guy who took a chance with us. So we called the tune "Ultafox."...

And later you did one called "Stomping at Decca."

We went to another company, because nobody wanted us (originally), because nobody did that. Except in the same time, I think, there was Joe Venuti and Eddie Lang. I think that was the only group that did the same. Joe Venuti was a great friend of mine. I have a great love for him. Terribly amusing, you know. And I'll tell you something. Duke Ellington was on tour in Italy, playing in the principal towns -- Rome, Firenze, Milano. Alors, about twelve concerts he engaged Joe Venuti and me, and that's the way I met Joe Venuti. And in Italy, we'd been playing together with the Ellington band, we got such a triumph! An incredible success -- but I found out what it was! "Venuti." "Grappelli." Mais ils sont tutti Italiano! [They are both Italian!] Hah!

Was it sometimes difficult playing with Django?

Well, he was very lazy. He didn't care, you know. He was like that. Fortunately, he was in good form; he apologized that he was late and everything was happy. It was a family affair, more or less, with him. Because on the guitar he had his brother and one of his cousins. Of course, he used to like me because I told him what to do. Django was illiterate. He couldn't read. He couldn't write....He was obliged to take a taxi when he went somewhere, because he couldn't read the station in the metro. Well, he had a good life you know. He was a personnage [star]! No one would believe what he was doing. Incredible! He was so clever! Nobody could do that, you know.

In those days, we break the strings easier. Industry was not developed like today. Today those strings can last, but in those days, you must be careful, you know, 'cause if you are too strong, you break a string. So, we were in a big concert once. And you know he never carried his guitar. His brother did it. So, one night, he breaks a string. So I went to the piano to entertain and then when he came back, I learned after at the end of the concert, he didn't have any string. So he did a knot! With the string. And he's been playing in a concert with that, and nobody saw or heard anything wrong....

Another tune I remember ­­ "Tears"?

"Tears," yes. But that's Django. I put it down, mind you. And you know, the tunes with Django were very easy. It's a beautiful tune but very easy. For instance, "Tears," there are only two or three notes. There is nothing much, and he does something with that small material! He did something which is charming.

He did a lovely melody, "Le Manoir de Mes Rêves." And some [tunes], even me, I don't know. I was not always with him. I had my own career because he was so eccentric sometimes. We were engaged at the Palladium in London and the opening date, he was not there, and I must swim my way with the brother, the cousin, and the bass. He was in the street. He was looking at his name electrified (in the marquis). "Tonight -- Django Reinhardt, Stéphane Grappelli." And there he was so fascinated to see his name turning on top of the theatre, he didn't realize that I was waiting for him inside. You know about Django! He was incredible, but not amusing for all the time, you know. I have a great souvenir [memory] with him. He occupied my life for twenty years.

When you played with the Quintet in clubs, did you play for dancing or for listening?

It was very rare [to play for listening only]. Last time we played for cabaret with Django Reinhardt, that was in 1937 in Paris, for the international exhibition in Paris, and we were engaged for the time of the exhibition by an American called Bricktop. She's very well known among the musicians of that time. And she used to live in Paris, because she was a kind of queen of nightclubs. They'd call her Bricktop because she had her hair red. And she engaged us for the duration of the exhibition. It was a clientèle, very top, you know. We got the visite of Cole Porter, even Gershwin before he died, and people like that, and we were there. And when she found a locale in Montmartre and when we were discussing, she said, "I'm going to keep that little space in case the people want to move about." I said, "Oh, no. Why not with the Quintet instead to play like the [string] quartets? The quartet, nobody dances, you know. Classical quartet, they all stay quiet. Why don't we play like those people? It's a good music." She said, "That's a good idea, I can put three or four tables more." So when opening started, we were playing and no dancing. That's what I wanted for ages! No dancing! Listening to our music, instead of dancing sometimes out of rhythm. You know, some people can't dance -- they have no ear. It was ridiculous on top of that. And it worked, you know. So we had people even come every weekend from London to listen to us. One was Constant Lambert, the director of music, and he came one weekend with Richard Addinsell, the composer of the Warsaw Concerto. So all those people make an ambiance. Cole Porter was there every night. It was the first time we were playing for no dancers and it worked. People came there for listening or to be between them -- everyone was not a musician, you know. But it was a nice clientèle, intelligent.

That must have been a lot more fun, eh?

My dream came true. I always think of that -- why can't we play like those classical people? Nobody dances in front of them! And I wanted that way. So Bricktop was happy, too.

Today you will be performing with Bucky Pizzarelli. Do you find that you play differently depending on who the guitarist is?

Of course, instinctively, I go with the partner, of course. Now it is difficult for me to travel, but I've gotten satisfaction in my life. When I arrive here I have a good accompagnateur. I've got Bucky Pizzarelli and Jon Burr, a very solid bass. That's what I need. That's enough for me. I don't need the philharmonic. Of course, sometimes I play with the philharmonic and I'm delighted! But as you can't have that every day, you know, you must be satisfied with two persons. And I'll finish my life with pleasure, you know.

...

Your way of phrasing, you make even the simplest melody come alive.

And you know I am not a violinist; I never had any teacher. I learned by myself. My father gave me a violin when I was thirteen years old, when he came back from the first war. My father was Italian, you know. When he came back from the first war, he knew somebody the same nationality who was selling a bit of everything. So my father saw a three-quarter violin and he got the idea to buy that and give it to me -- "to amuse me," he said. We never knew I would do my profession of it. Suppose he didn't go that day that street! Tis fatalité. So to amuse myself, I took an interest.

How did you know what to do on the violin?

I didn't know. In those days, there were some people playing in the courtyard and in the street as well. They were three or four and with a singer, selling the words they were singing, little sheets, you know. Alors, I saw some violinist and I saw the way he held his violin and I asked him how he held his violin.

You were lucky there was somebody there to watch!

Yes! When you are young, everything is easy. So I looked, I looked [at the] position. Sometimes I found somebody who showed me the notes.

Do you like certain keys on the violin better than other keys?

Oh, yes. For the violin, flat is no good. Flat is terrible. Sharp is better. F, Bb, Eb, that goes. But Ab, Db, and Gb, that's terrible. And sometimes, when I have a lot of flats to do, I transfer that into sharps.

Do find it easier to improvise at some times than others?

You know, with Bucky for instance, we play naturally -- things coming when you don't expect them. And of course, when we hold something, we keep it. You know what I mean? On rehearsal, when we find something interesting, we are not putting [it] in the dust bin. We keep it! I am lucky. As a matter of fact, my life started when I met Django. Because in those days, before him, I was a musician, playing here, playing there; but I realized when I was with Django, we can produce something not ordinary. I could believe that because everywhere we went, there was great success with Django. They never heard a phenomenon like him. All the guitarists were inspired by Django.

Do you think there is a big difference between composing and improvising?

I don't know. To me, it's like a river. I like all the music, everything. For instance, I would be not surprised to hear Louis Armstrong after the Ninth Symphony of Beethoven. I can hear Beethoven and I can hear Louis Armstrong immediately after, or Art Tatum. Because they are great artists; they are musical. That means I like everything -- on condition it is music and art.

[Fiddler Magazine wishes to thank Abby Hoffer Enterprises and radio station WICN for their assistance in arranging this interview.]

[Peter Anick, co-atuhor of Mel Bay's Old Time Fiddling Across America, plays fiddle and mandolin with the Massachusetts-based Acoustic Planet.]

 

Photo: ©Owen Carey

Frankie Gavin: Fiercely Traditional / Happily Contemporary

by Michael Simmons

Frankie Gavin was pushed into playing the fiddle at the age of ten by his older accordion-playing brother who thought the two instruments would sound good together. "One day Sean came up to me," Gavin recalls. "He said, 'You know, I think you should play the fiddle.' I said, 'I don't know about that. Doesn't it make a lot of squeaks when you're learning?' But he kept on me so I decided to give it a go. The first thing he made me learn was a tune called 'The Broken Pledge,' which is lovely, but really difficult to play. He said, 'If you can get a really nasty tune off first, everything else will be plain sailing after that.' And it turns out it's true enough."

Although he didn't know it at the time, Sean Gavin had launched his younger brother on a career as one of Ireland's finest traditional musicians. In 1973, seven years after taking up the violin, Frankie won the All-Ireland Under 18 fiddle competition. (He also won top honors for his flute playing in the same competition.) The next year Gavin and his friend Alec Finn formed the innovative band De Dannan, and created a new way of playing Irish dance tunes in a group format, which Gavin describes in The Companion to Traditional Irish Music as "tightly percussive melody lines set against a flowing, contrapuntal background." And the band's cheeky versions of classical pieces such as Handel's "The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba" and pop songs like "Hey Jude" and "Bohemian Rhapsody" helped remind the world that traditional music doesn't exist in a cultural vacuum.

Gavin also released a handful of solo albums over the years, and he has performed with such disparate musicians as Stéphane Grappelli and The Rolling Stones. In 2001 he recorded Fierce Traditional for Ireland's Tara Music Company. The CD features Gavin playing a selection of jigs, reels, hornpipes, and slow airs on fiddle, flute, and tin whistle with backing by his brother Sean on accordion and his old friends Brian McGrath on piano and tenor banjo and Alec Finn on bouzouki.

"I was inspired to make the CD by working on a recording project with Brian Rooney," Gavin says. "He's not that well known, but he's a beautiful player. John Carty and Brian McGrath were working on his CD, which is called The Godfather, and asked if Alec Finn and I would play on a few tracks. I had never heard Brian play before, so I went up and heard him. His music was so warming I thought to myself, 'I have to do an album of fiddle music like this.'"

So Gavin began rummaging through his vast repertoire and selected a handful of tunes that paid homage to the musicians who inspired him as he was growing up. "She Lived Beside the Anner," for example, was one of his father's favorite slow airs, "The Mason's Apron" was a reel taught to him by the great tin whistler Micho Russel, and he learned "Jenny Picking Cockles" from Jimmy Cummins, a truck-driving accordionist who used to give Gavin lifts home after sessions. But the majority of the tunes are drawn from the 1920s recordings of fiddlers like Michael Coleman, Paddy Kiloran, Paddy Sweeney, and James Morrison, who is a special favorite of Gavin's.

"A lot of the music on Fierce Traditional is firmly based in the 1920s playing of James Morrison," say Gavin. "I have to say he is my all-time favorite fiddle player. To start with, his technique is phenomenal, and his tunes were just wonderful. Even when he played the old schmaltzy, sentimental things, he was really good. He had the complete package."

To help him bring the old tunes to life, Gavin turned to Alec Finn and Brian McGrath, two players from his own past, but most of all he relied on his brother. "Even though he played accordion, in a way Sean was my first fiddle teacher," Gavin says. "It was a struggle at first, but playing duets with him helped me come around to it. He used to get me records of various fiddle players and tell me to listen to this and listen to that. Thanks to him I heard a lot of different fiddlers at the beginning, like Sean McGuire, Sean Keane, Michael Coleman, James Morrison, and people like that. I really owe it to Sean for getting me started on fiddle."

Sean's record suggestions also helped young Frankie forge an individual fiddle style. "I've been lifting elements for years," Gavin explains. "I took bits from various players and did a sort of amalgam of them all. Apart from Morrison, the other player who most inspired me was the late Tommy Potts. His mind was amazing and the way he played a tune was like nothing I'd heard before. I showed up at his house once, and of course he didn't know me from Adam. But right out he asked if I wanted to hear a tune. He set me down in his sitting room and went and got his fiddle and played for half and hour. I cried the entire time because the music was so powerful and so emotive. I can't copy Tommy Potts, although I'd like to. I think his musical brain was extraordinary."

Two of the tracks -- the airs "She Lived Beside the Annar" and "Sliabh na mBan" -- are dedicated to Gavin's father, who taught him to play tin whistle when he was four years old. "My father was very fond of slow airs, and he got very emotional about them," Gavin recalls. "Whenever I would play one, he'd start crying, which might be a reason why I didn't play them much at first. But I've been making up for it since then. Somebody once said to me you shouldn't play a slow air unless you know the original words, and that's always stuck with me. I suppose knowing the lyrics helps you put the emphasis in the right places in the melody, but most of the songs are these huge epics in Irish, which is a language I don't speak very well. So I overlook that part, and just play the music. I learned many of them from people who did know the words, who did speak Irish, and I try to keep them as close to what they played as I can."

Gavin came up with the title Fierce Traditional after reading an article that took him to task for supposedly ignoring the old tunes. "The writer thought that in the recent past I had strayed too far from the traditional music with De Dannan," he says. "He thought that we were doing too many covers of '60s pop tune and the like. He decided that my conscience must be eating me, and that I should bring out an album of traditional music because I had gone so overboard. He suggested I call the album Fierce Traditional, which is a term people in Cork use to describe the music. I thought it was a bit of a giggle title, and I like the measure of it, so I used it. Of course, if I felt like recording an album of pop tunes, I'd do it in a minute."

...

Asked if he has any advice for fiddlers who want to learn to inject some Irish soul into their playing, Frankie Gavin says, "It's dance music, let there be no mistake about it. And if it's going to be dance music, it's going to be rhythmical. To me, the rhythm is almost everything. It's the hypnotic part of Irish music that takes you into another place."

Frankie Gavin's website: www.frankiegavin.com

Tara Music Company: www.taramusic.com/

[Michael Simmons, Fiddler Magazine's Review Editor, is a guitar player and writer living in Mountain View, California.]

 

Pete Sutherland: The Last House on the Street

by Brendan Taaffe

Pete Sutherland, to my mind, is the quintessential American fiddler. Unlike an Irish fiddler born into an established tradition, and more -- I suspect -- like most of us, Pete came to traditional music in his nascent adult life, and had to make conscious choices about what he wanted to do. Out of a stew of early influences, he's created a compelling and unique personal style, one that is grounded in traditions and pushes at the boundaries with improvisational leaps. Multi-instrumentalist, solo performer, band member, producer -- Pete's the renaissance man of the music world. We spoke at his home in Monkton, on a chill Vermont winter day.

How do you classify yourself as a fiddle player?

Jack of all trades, but my first language is old time. Old time's nuances are most apparent to me, and easiest to reproduce from listening. But I think if I was starting now I'd be playing more local Vermont music, which is a hybrid of Yankee, whatever that means, and Irish and French Canadian. There were some lucky accidents that made me go southern. I was living in Vermont, where I'm from, and there was hardly anybody playing anything recognizably Appalachian. This was 1972, and there were these chance encounters with the right people -- an old time banjo player named Tom Azarian, going to the Fox Hollow festival and hearing the campground jams -- that gave me a critical mass of repertoire and a jump start on the style.

What happened once you had that initial start?

Well, within a year I met some people who were at the same level I was, and we started up the Arm and Hammer String Band. And in the middle of that was David Green, who had just moved here to work for Philo Records as a producer. He had been playing with Bertram Levy in California; so he had the whole repertoire that Bertram played with Alan Jabbour, which came from Henry Reed and a lot of those older West Virginia players. David sat down one evening on his porch and played about a hundred tunes into this tape recorder, literally. So the lineage was passing along from Henry Reed to Alan Jabbour to Bertram Levy to David to me. The impact of that wasn't totally apparent, but I knew I was on to something.

So that was one thing -- I got excited about that. The other was having heard the Boys of the Lough for the first time and getting turned on by Irish music. We wore out the records we could find of those guys. And the third thing was meeting Louis Beaudoin, who lived here in Burlington. Louis was a French Canadian fiddler of great ability, and the patriarch of his family. Louis was in his early fifties and lived about a mile from me, so I'd walk there after dinner and play tunes. So I had these three worlds, all coming in different ways --- the old time from this lucky accident of meeting the right people; the French Canadian was right there in my back yard; and the Irish was this exotic thing that was turning everybody on.

Did you manage to keep them separate?

I probably didn't because I was learning the fiddle at the same time. In the beginning I was just a tune-sucker and trying to spit them all out, and David Green said to me, "You just have to pick one style and do that -- I don't care what it is, but you have to pick one. You're never going to get anywhere if you try to play all of these styles." And I'm sort of a stubborn guy and I said to myself, "No, I really want to get into all of them." But I did take to heart that I would have to be careful if I didn't want to make a hash of the whole thing. I think I was as careful as I could be, and it paid off because those first few years are so important. It's like being a kid; you set a lot of your patterns for your learning life right there. I learned to recognize the difference in bowing styles, even though I couldn't necessarily replicate them. I tried to create all these files in my brain for the different ways that people use the bow. I didn't spend as much time on the Québécois thing, but I had that front row seat in Louis' kitchen to watch. I think the visual thing is really underrated; I learned to play guitar by watching as much as listening....

When did Metamora come into the picture?

Oh, it was later. Arm and Hammer -- which was Joel Eckhaus on mandolin, Sid Blum on guitar and banjo, Hillary Dirlam on bass and piano, and myself -- played through the seventies and did some traveling down South, and got known for this blend of southern music and Vermont music. We made this package for schools of Vermont folk songs, which is still a template for me.

In looking for material, did you find a distinguishable Vermont style of playing fiddle?

I'm not sure -- now I would say its Scots-Irish without any of the ornamentation characteristically associated with that style. Occasionally someone will play a grace note, or a non-bowed triplet. I think the Yankee repertoire is half Scots/Irish and half French- or Anglo-Canadian -- and Anglo-Canadian tunes are also derivative of Scots-Irish music. Some of it was square and contra dance repertoire, when they were doing traditional contra dancing here, which died out before WWII. And as soon as they encountered it, there was a great interest in country music.

While Arm and Hammer was traveling around, was the dance scene starting to come back?

Yes. I went to my first contra dance up here, which Charles Woodard called, in 1972 -- about the same time I started playing. We started the first dances in Burlington in '73 or '74, with our band and whoever we could browbeat into learning to call. There was definitely interest in doing it, and the live music propelled the events. It took many, many years to get it going -- the modern day contra scene looks really healthy now, but we had to work really hard to make it happen. It was flourishing already down South, in southern New Hampshire and the Tri-State area, but we're a long way from there.

That went through '79 and the band disbanded, and in the summer of 1980 I took off in my Volkswagen and went south to all these fiddler conventions. During that time I met Grey Larsen, who was living in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. We hung out a lot and had a good bond, and he called me within about a year and a half to say that he and Malcolm Dalglish were looking to expand their duo. I went out and spent a week with them in Indiana and was invited to join. We played throughout the '80s, and I moved out there in '83. That was the first time I had ever played full-time. We went for a model that included Grey and I playing pretty much every instrument that we felt competent enough to play on stage, so I wasn't just a fiddle player. Grey played fiddle too, and we both played keyboard and we both played guitar, I even played banjo some, and worked on a lot of original music. Our hallmark was taking different traditional styles and composing in them. We felt our instrumental pieces were pushing the envelope structurally and harmonically.

Structurally in terms of being crooked?

Yep, they weren't a 32 bar, AABB tune anymore. It was like a piece, a composition -- and I think it holds up when I listen to that music occasionally now. The kind reviewers would say that we were like Aaron Copeland, taking traditional bread and making our own bread pudding. We were using traditional sound as the template for composition. We really tried to work as a group, and invested a lot of blood, sweat, and tears in the studio, hashing out stuff and trying to be democratic about it.

...

Lately I've been wondering why people now are so interested in this old stuff? Why are these old traditions still relevant?

I think it's the honesty. The music projects honesty. Some people are into it more for the historical aspect, because they want to make a connection with something real as opposed to the cultural entropy that's going on now. It could be music, or it could be an old house, or growing chickens or potatoes or whatever. But I think for a lot of people the music sounds pure -- the emotions are easy to get, easy to latch onto, not covered up. We've become culturally conditioned by listening to anything that's mass-produced now. It's like being presented with a cake that's totally frosted and totally decorated and it's got the candle holders in and the candles are already on it and they're burning and your name is already in script and if you just want like a little piece of cake -- that's what you get. And a lot of people don't want that, they just want a piece of homemade gingerbread, so they're going to search around for that. It's a great watershed when something like "O Brother, Where Art Thou" comes along. During the course of the movie a lot of people are going to hear some pretty primitive stuff; they're going to hear some glitzy versions, too, but they're going to hear John Hartford play solo fiddle and hear some pretty archaic versions of things. For people that don't like old time music it's not necessarily going to change their mind -- they'll still see it as all "Hee Haw," but people who were on the fence or have just never thought about it at all might find something new. I've had those moments, and I bet you have, too, where you're playing out in public, somewhere accessible where people could just walk by, and every once in a while you get someone who stops and gives you this look, and you know that they're having a moment of discovery.

...

Talk about some of the albums you made after Eight Miles from Town.

The record that I made in '84, Poor Man's Dream, was my attempt to adopt the model of mixing songs and tune sets, too, about fifty-fifty. On Mountain Hornpipe there are fewer songs, but my thesis was all traditional material. There's nothing original on there at all. The style that I play is definitely the child of Eight Miles from Town, kind of a mid-western and celticky sound, plus I used some fairly unorthodox mixes. Indian drums and flutes and Martin Simpson playing electric guitar. There's some wild stuff on there, and I've taken a lot of flak from old time people -- some of them friends that I made in those early years with Arm and Hammer -- for being experimental at all. For one, playing Irish music is kind of considered this fey thing to do by some of these purists, and in a parallel way I've taken flak for being experimental. Mountain Hornpipe epitomizes that, taking a bunch of good old time tunes and doing different things to them.

And the flak is that you are damaging or weakening the music?

Damaging the music, I suppose. I'm not sure what, exactly -- it's not a substantive criticism to my ear. It's just, "We wish the hell you wouldn't do that. Why did you have to do that to a good tune?"

Have you come up with any kind of defense against that?

No. It's just "I gotta be me." I have a lot of good tunes that are still kind of under-known or under-recorded, and I've thought that somewhere along the line I should just put out a project that's totally straight, just fiddle, banjo, guitar and no messing around at all, and call it "So There." And it would be fun to do, because I love playing that music. But I see CDs coming out by really competent players that have been studious about keeping their chops going with pure old time music, putting out great CDs of exactly what I would do.

...

Pete Sutherland: P.O. Box 123, Monkton, VT 05469; epact@sover.net

[Brendan Taaffe is a farmer and musician in central Vermont. He plays fiddle, whistle, and guitar.]

 

Photo: Anne Hamersky

Fiddlers 4: Molsky, Anger, Doucet, Eggleston

By Michael Simmons

The idea of a string quartet made up of the fiddle world's Improviser General Darol Anger, the Cajun master Michael Doucet, the old-time fiddle maven Bruce Molsky, and Rushad Eggleston, a young cello prodigy who's still attending classes at the Berklee College of Music, sounds too bizarre to succeed. And at first, one of the members of Fiddlers 4, as they decided to call themselves, agreed. "It seemed really odd until we played together," says Molsky. "And then it didn't seem so odd anymore."

Fiddlers 4 was put together by Molsky and Anger, who had both been toying with the idea of a folk fiddle string quartet for a number of years. They were looking for an excuse to work together, and Fiddlers 4 seemed like an interesting way to do it. "The first time I heard Darol play, my jaw dropped," Molsky says. "And not because he's one of the best fiddlers I ever heard, which he is, but because his sensitivity to timing, melody, and pitch and all of the other elements of the styles he plays is just so there. When he plays he's very honest and sincere and he makes a clear path to the listener. Those are the sort of things that transcend style, and those are the sort of things I wanted to be next to."

After coming up with the basic concept, Anger and Molsky began casting about for the other members. Their choice of Michael Doucet, the great Cajun fiddler, at first seemed like an unlikely choice to invite to play in an experimental string quartet. "Michael and I have known each other for years now," explains Anger. "He's a real seeker. I knew he had studied and researched Cajun music and culture to an amazing degree, but he has musical abilities that surprised me. We all know Michael has this deep Cajun groove that's impossible to resist, but he's also a good jazz fiddler, he knows theory, and he reads well. One of the pleasures of working with Michael is that he lets the band do more complex stuff than I thought we could pull off at first. I knew he could play the solos, but it's like we're tapping into some of his unknown talents."

With the three fiddlers in place, they had to come up with a cellist. The first choice was Rushad Eggleston, a twenty-two year old cello student who is currently attending the Berklee College of Music on a scholarship. "I was playing in a jazz string quartet a couple of years ago, and the school flew us up to Montreal, where Darol and Matt Glaser were teaching a workshop," says Eggleston. "After the workshop I asked Darol if he wanted to play some fiddle tunes, which I had been working out on the cello." Anger immediately recognized the young cellist's talent. "Rushad is the world's greatest bluegrass cello player," he says with a laugh. "Not that there's much competition. But he has worked out a way of playing fiddle tunes on cello that is unique."

Eggleston started playing violin at the age of three before switching over to cello when he was nine. As a child he played classical music, which he didn't really like, and when he was twelve he stopped playing cello and took up bluegrass guitar. When he was around fourteen or fifteen he drifted back to the cello. "I was thinking about going to a conservatory, but at the same time I was playing guitar and getting into bluegrass," he explains. "The cello had a sound I couldn't live without, but the guitar was fun and classical cello was too much work. I really liked the guitar but I missed the expressiveness of the bow. So gradually I realized that if I started improvising on the cello it could be fun. After my first semester at Berklee I completely gave up classical music to try and invent a new cello style that incorporated improvisation and the fiddle tunes I had learned at bluegrass festivals. "I wanted to try and come up with a way of playing music on the cello as if it were a traditional instrument and not a classical instrument. I didn't want to be tainted by classical knowledge. I wanted to be like the fiddlers I listened to. I began working out tunes like 'Bill Cheatum' and 'Salt Creek,' but at first I started out playing them in a way that felt totally unnatural. I tried playing them using classical cello technique, which was difficult. It took me a long time to realize that people who play folk and vernacular music didn't play their instruments in a way that's physically difficult, like classically trained musicians do. They play their instrument in an organic way. Fiddlers tend to play in first position, for example. So if I was going to play this music on cello, I was going to have to play it in the simplest way possible. I experimented with different ways of holding the bow, and for a while I tried playing without the end peg, but eventually I stopped thinking about technique altogether. "I stopped playing the tunes in the upper octaves, the same range the fiddle is tuned to, and started playing them in first position, in the lower ranges I call the heart of cello land. In bluegrass music, not every instrument plays the tune the same way -- the banjo does it a bit differently from the mandolin and so on -- and I realized I could change things a bit, too, so they fit the cello. I could put some passages down an octave for example, and make the tone really bluesy and growly and take advantage of what the cello has to offer. I've really gotten into the low, grumbliness of the instrument."

After the four members were in place, the band began searching for material. Doucet, Molsky, and Anger gathered at the Festival of American Fiddle Tunes in Port Townsend, Washington, where they were each giving workshops, and began to work out what they wanted to play. They each brought along a handful of tunes and songs, and set aside a couple of days to work. "We just sat down and played and played and came up with the basic repertoire," says Doucet. "When we were jamming, something I'd play would give Bruce an idea, which would inspire Darol to improvise a line, which would remind me of something else altogether. It was just a string of connected ideas."

The three fiddlers settled on a wide range of material, including the Cajun song "La Bétaille," the old-time fiddle tune "Pickin' the Devil's Eye," and the classic bluegrass song "Man of Constant Sorrow." They also chose "Chez Seychelles," an eighteenth century French polka that was adopted into the native music of the Seychelles Islanders, and "I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free," the song that Molsky credits with inspiring him to play music. "Billy Taylor gave a presentation on music at my school when I was in the fifth grade in the Bronx," Molsky explains. "He got up and played all these different things on his piano and made playing music sound like this really cool thing to do. At the end of the presentation he gave out these little 45-RPM records of "I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free." I took the record home and played it over and over. I still remember clearly that that presentation made me decide I wanted to play music -- that it was the coolest thing in the world. I always gave Billy Taylor credit for inspiring me to play music, and up until now I've never really had a place to thank him."

Coincidentally, Darol Anger was also a big fan of Billy Taylor. "Dr. Taylor has worked with just about every great jazz violinist, including Stuff Smith and Eddie South," Anger says. "We've worked together at Berklee, and I've been the beneficiary of so much of what he learned from players like that."

After deciding on the basic tune selection, the three members went away to work on other projects and to ponder the music. "A few months later we all went down to Michael's place," says Molsky. "And we discovered that while we were separated something had happened. We had been thinking about the music, and we had started to come up with seeds for some of the arrangements." They began to work up settings for the tunes, either writing out the more complex arrangements, or coming up with semi-improvised versions of the more basic melodies. "It's nice to be in a string quartet where everyone is totally responsible for what they play and relies on their ears to make a great part," says Anger. "This is a new thing for me."

With the basic arrangements sorted out, the three fiddlers rounded up Eggleston and headed into Anger's home studio to record a CD for Compass Records. The young cellist claims he just played what the others told him to, but the other fiddlers don't quite agree. "Rushad is a very interactive player," Molsky says. "He hears what's going on and knows how to respond. He really does draw the group together in an interesting way." Anger also has high praise for Eggleston. "He really understands music, what should go on the top and what goes on the bottom and he's able to switch back and forth as he plays."

Although a few of the pieces were completely worked out -- Anger's rhythmically challenging composition "African Solstice" required practice, as did his Motown horns style arrangement for the fiddles on "I Wish I Knew How It Would Be To Be Free" -- the final decision on most of the settings were done in the studio. "Rehearsing is not part of our repertoire," Doucet says with a chuckle. "Perfection is there, but it's in the creation of the moment."

For four musicians from such divergent backgrounds, they were able to blend their styles quite smoothly. "Half the group -- Michael and myself -- comes from a very traditional place," Molsky explains, "while Darol and Rushad are all about improvisation. Michael and I have so much respect for our sources that we are very careful that the music doesn't get hurt, lost or compromised in some way. I don't think we did any arrangement that detracts from the original, traditional music."

Anger has a theory about why the quartet plays together so well. "We all connect on a deep rhythmic level," he says. "Michael and Bruce are both amazing groove players. At first I thought it would be difficult for them to work together, but they began to mesh almost immediately. The combination was a sound I'd never heard, a rhythm nobody had ever made before. The Louisiana and Appalachian grooves were synergistic. And Rushad has developed an almost "drums and bass" way to play the cello and I play violin sort of like a rhythm guitarist and drummer, which, when blended with Michael's and Bruce's playing, comes up with a sound that's elemental. It all has a wild, almost animal energy. Rushad says it sounds like music for bears." Doucet concurs. "We're all very rhythmic players," he says. "If you play dance music like Bruce and I do, you have to have an innate sense of rhythm. If you can't keep a beat, you're not going to get people up out of their chairs. And Darol is the master of that rhythmic bow chop. I think he was the main timekeeper in the Turtle Island String Quartet, and in this group he doesn't have to do that as much. But it's not just rhythm stuff going on. There are some really beautiful melodies on the CD as well. When you put the two elements together, it can be really magical."

All of the members are excited about playing their music in concert. "There's so much room to explore in this group," says Anger. "There's a lot of integrated stuff. We do Cajun and old-time, jazz and West African, and improvise as a string quartet. This is a sound no one has ever made before and I can't wait to see the effect on our audiences." Molsky echoes Anger's sentiments. "You always take a chance when you step outside the box," he says. "The music on Fiddlers 4 may be considered traditional a hundred years from now, but the traditionalists of today are going to scratch their heads."

Michael Doucet probably has the best explanation of why the Fiddlers 4 can take the string quartet format, and adapt it so successfully to vernacular styles. "We're the exact opposite of the classical quartets who play folk stuff," he says. "We all come from the culture of the music we play. This music comes from the places we have played in for most of our lives: the dance halls in Louisiana, jazz clubs, and old-time country dances. And no matter how sophisticated the harmonies get, the music still smells of grease and beer."

www.brucemolsky.com/

www.darolanger.com/

www.compassrecords.com/

www.rosebudus.com/ (Michael Doucet and Fiddlers 4 tour info)

[Michael Simmons, Fiddler Magazine's Review Editor, is a guitar player and writer living in Mountain View, California.]

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