Summer 2007
Features
Departments
- Fiddle Tune History: Fiddle Tunes at the Races, by Andrew Kuntz
- The Practicing Fiddler: Bowings 101, by Hollis Taylor
- Bluegrass Fiddling: Charlie Cline, by Paul Shelasky
- On Improvisation: Boogie-Woogie, Part I, by Paul Anastasio
- Irish Fiddling: Learning from the Pipes, by Brendan Taaffe
- Cross-Tuning Workshop: AEAE, by Jody Stecher
- Cross-Canada Fiddle Tour: Marcel Meilleur, by Gordon Stobbe
- Accompanying Traditional Fiddle Music, by Mark Simos
- Reviews
Tunes
- The Hope Jig, by Sarah Blair
- Minnie Young’s, as played by Sarah Blair
- Valse Emiliano, transcribed by Ken Keppeler and Jeanie McLerie as played by Cleofes Ortiz
- Libby Bird Song Mazurka, transcribed by Bayou Seco as played by Elliott Johnson
- Cotton-Eyed Joe (bowing exercises), transcribed by Jim Wood
- Rukkimestarin Polska, transcribed by Piia Kleemola as played by Iivari Hautala
- Hexham Races (Fiddle Tune History)
- Hamilton Races (Fiddle Tune History)
- Knutsford Races (Fiddle Tune History)
- Newmarket Races (Fiddle Tune History)
- Footprints in the Snow, solo transcribed by Paul Shelasky as played by Charlie Cline
- The Gold Ring, transcribed by Brendan Taaffe
- Possum Up a Gum Stump, transcribed by Hollis Taylor
- Bury Me Not On the Lone Prairie, transcribed by Jody Stecher as played by Wade Ward (Cross-Tuning Workshop)
- I Live Alone, transcribed by Gordon Stobbe as played by Marcel Meilleur
article excerpts
Sarah Blair: In the Stream, Like a Breath
By Brendan Taaffe
We hold our images dear. When we speak of Irish music, we think of the fiddler who learned his tunes from his father and his father’s father, his music sprung from his native soil. But the community of Irish music has grown large and complex, and is now played around the world. Born in Japan to a Navy father, Sarah Blair’s playing is earthy, driving, and complex –– her music fully a part of the idiom. If it really is our choices that define us, Sarah is an exemplar of such choice and of dedication to a music she loves. We spoke at her home in Montpelier, Vermont.
Tell me how you got started playing the fiddle.
I started playing classical violin in a public school string program in third grade in Alexandria, Virginia. My mother played violin, so I was very keen –– so keen that they talked the school into letting me start a year early. I had heard some traditional Scottish music when I was a kid –– my dad’s family is from Cape Breton Island and we used to go to Highland Games –– and I was a big fan of Hee Haw. The violin player on Hee Haw was this lady who smiled the whole time she played –– she made a big impression on me. I always thought I’d really like to play fiddle music, but I didn’t know anyone who was playing it, and I couldn’t play anything by ear. I played classical music through school, though I did have a three-year break where I had no lessons, no teacher, and no school program. In my senior year I had a private teacher who was a member of the National Symphony Orchestra. He was a very good teacher –– Sheldon Lambert –– and said a couple of things that really stuck with me. He said, “This could well be the last year that you have lessons, so what we need to do is clean up your technique. We need to get you squared away forever.” That whole year all I did was exercises. I had one melody: other than that, it was all scales and exercises and bowing exercises and shifting exercises. It was gut-wrenching.
You stuck with that?
For one year. I did quit at the end of that school year. He said something else funny –– when I went for my first lesson, he asked me to play something for him. I played a Mozart piece and I didn’t play it that well. When I finished, he asked me what my goal was. I said, “Well, I don’t want to be a professional musician or anything,” and he said, “Obviously.” It wasn’t the most tactful thing, but he was right –– the writing was on the wall about classical violin. I didn’t listen to it. I wasn’t seeking it out. I didn’t love it.
Then I went to college at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. I didn’t play much until the end when I got into the free improv, a completely non-idiomatic, “out” music. There’s no theme, no head, key, time signature –– many people hate it. One time I played a tape that I had made for my parents. My dad listened to it for about twenty seconds, folded his paper, said, “That’s the worst thing I’ve ever heard,” and left the room. And it was; it was definitely the worst thing he’d ever heard. After college, we were living in Providence and I met Jimmy Devine. Jimmy was born in New York to Irish parents, and is one of the real lynchpins of the Irish scene in Providence –– playing for dances, sessions, house parties, and teaching. I had really been wanting to learn to play Irish fiddle, and when I met Jimmy I finally had an “in.” Jimmy totally got me started –– he was wonderful. I didn’t know anything. He loaned me a bunch of records, and I mean all of his record collection. He was moving from one apartment to another and he handed me a crate of records and said, “Here, return these to my next apartment. Help me move.”
Not lessons, but informal direction.
Not formal, but it was very direct. It was him and me at his house. Don’t use vibrato: do do this. He was very formative, and especially formative about listening to people whose music was worthwhile. Jimmy invited me to sessions in his house and I’d sit right next to him and try to copy everything he did. Just a really generous guy. There were a bunch of people in Providence at the time playing music –– Mark Roberts, Patrick Hutchinson, Tina Lech was a teenager and a really fabulous fiddler. We had a great time: we played for set dancing and ceili dancing, and we played out and played in people’s houses. We’d go to Boston periodically, but mostly stayed around Providence.
…
Didn’t you play a lot in the Boston scene?
I did. After we moved here, I started playing a lot in Boston. I played every weekend with people like Noel Scott, Billy Kelly, and Shay Walker. It was a great crowd of people down there. I had a great time and put in massive hours of playing.
How did those sessions shape your playing?
There were some great things I learned in Boston. Before that, I definitely had a tendency to be too careful about how I was playing. That was beaten out of me playing at sessions in Boston. I learned to play out, play strongly, and play with strong rhythm.
…
You came into this tradition from a classical background and you aren’t Irish –– I’m curious if there was any prejudice against you leading sessions.
By that point I don’t think there was. I had had the incredible good fortune of being in Providence when I was first playing, because none of those people were from Ireland and it wasn’t a performing scene. Not being Irish was not an issue, and I didn’t feel like anybody looked down on me for having a classical background. It was really matter of fact and obvious that there were things to overcome by having that background: the automatic vibrato had to go and there’s a certain way that classical violinists use their bows that’s just completely inappropriate. I’m sure that people listened to a lot of really poor playing from me while I was getting that figured out. In Boston, I don’t think people cared that much that I was American. Sometimes people were surprised that I was American and could play a bit. There were definitely times when someone wanted to bring me down by making some reference to a classical background. But the way I look at it, it’s like being bilingual. There are people who can speak more than one language verbally and there are people who can speak more than one language musically. It’s all a matter of deciding what is the sound you want to make and figuring out how you make those different sounds.
I will say that I had no interest in any other kind of fiddling. I wasn’t playing for contra dances –– I’d never been to a contra dance. I wasn’t interested in New England playing. I admired certain French-Canadian fiddlers that I’d heard, but I didn’t try to learn any of those tunes. I was monomaniacal about traditional Irish fiddling. So, while I didn’t achieve the sound I wanted to get, it was obvious that I was trying to be within the tradition. I think that made a big difference –– it comes across pretty soon that someone is devoted to this particular tradition.
But at some point you started playing for contra dances and broadening your scope.
Right, I started playing for contra dances in Vermont, but I was always really clear that I only play Irish tunes. At contras, I really wanted to sound like I was playing for a ceili but with a caller. There were definitely callers who were not that thrilled: they felt like a dance that I was playing was just in the one bag. They wanted a rag and wanted some New England chestnuts; but I was just really stubborn and wouldn’t learn those tunes.
And then, I had subbed for Becky Tracy in Wild Asparagus in ’97 or so, and met Stuart Kenney, who was the bass player in that band. Stuart put together a dance in Greenfield with Mark Roberts, who I knew from Rhode Island, and myself. We had a really great time and thought we should do this more. Some other people got pulled in and that’s how The Sevens got started. With The Sevens the focus is generally on Irish music with an American sensibility in the backing. But I basically just play the tunes straight, with all sorts of things going on underneath.
Does the different context change the way you play?
Yes, definitely. It’s all about power, the beat, the phrases. It’s a discipline to play all that time and not fool around with the rhythm or the tempo, to just keep laying it down.
Keep laying it down in a very narrow range of tempo.
Yes. You can’t really get too subtle. There are things that have to get set aside, because you have to keep the tempo up. There are certain kinds of ornaments or variations that won’t be heard and can cloud what your real job is, which is to lay it down for the dancers. But in The Sevens the other people are crafting something with a certain groove and changes in texture. They’re having this whole conversation that I’m not tuning into because I’m just keeping the tune going. If it’s one fiddle and four backers, I have enough on my plate.
Do you ever feel like you’re fighting against all of that, or is it always supporting you?
When it’s good, it can get really crazy and still feel really supportive. It can be a calypso or a James Brown sound, but if it’s right rhythmically, it’s like being in a big easy chair.
And The Sevens have been working on a new album…
We have a new record that we’re finishing mixing –– it sounds more Irish than the first record because Flynn Cohen is playing guitar. But we do a few of our usual odd things, like mixing an old time tune with a barn dance.
And you also have a solo project coming out –– I’m guessing that’s much more traditional.
I’m chipping away at it –– it will be all traditional. I’ve recorded about nine tracks: some totally solo and some with my friend Paul Groff. He came up and recorded some things with me on concertina and backed me on guitar and piano. I just love the sound of traditional Irish fiddle, and I would like to create a recording that is that sound that I love.
Can you put into words what you find so compelling?
Well, in the community of fiddle musics, I think of Irish playing as being very dignified. There’s an austerity that I find very beautiful and appealing. There aren’t tricks. There are ornaments; there is the way a tune can manifest itself differently different times through. But I don’t admire tricks in playing.
…
[For the full text of this interview, and the tunes “The Hope Jig” and “Minnie Young’s,” subscribe to Fiddler Magazine!]
www.thesevens.org
[Brendan Taaffe lives in Massachusetts, where he plays fiddle and guitar for contra dances and concerts. He holds a master’s degree in Irish music from the University of Limerick, and has toured in Europe and North America. Visit his website at www.brendantaaffe.com]
“Not Just Tunes –– A Part of Our Lives”
Ken Keppeler and Jeanie McLerie,
the Bayou Seco Band
By Gus Garelick
The following interview was broadcast on “The Fiddling Zone” on KRCB Radio, Santa Rosa, California, on December 11, 2006. Ken and Jeanie spoke by telephone from their home in Silver City, New Mexico. They were leaving the next day for a short tour in Northern California, including several house concerts in the Bay Area and a fiddling workshop and dance in Berkeley. We spoke about their many musical pursuits over the years, beginning in Louisiana, continuing in New Mexico, and expanding throughout the Southwest, including appearances at major festivals in Europe, Mexico, Port Townsend, Washington, and Washington, DC. They play styles ranging from traditional Cajun music to old Spanish music from New Mexico, the desert music of Southern Arizona to old cowboy and pioneer ballads from all over the West. In addition to playing fiddles and accordions, Ken is also an accomplished luthier and has built fiddles, violas, and cellos for many years. We began the discussion on the subject of Louisiana, where Ken and Jeanie first met.
Louisiana
Ken Keppeler (KK): Jeanie and I met in Louisiana in early 1978 and we lived there for almost three years. Then we moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, in the summer of 1980. I’d been going down to Louisiana since about 1973. We were both friends of Canray Fontenot, Bois Sec Ardoin, Dennis McGee, and a bunch of older players. We were mostly interested in the older stuff. And then we played a little with BeauSoleil, before they became famous. We were making about $8 a night!
I’m really interested in what Louisiana was like back then, as opposed to now, where Cajun and Zydeco are popular everywhere. What was it like in the ’70s?
KK: Well, the young people weren’t really into it at all. The few that were interested were considered like geeks. At the time, Jeanie was working at Marc’s store (Savoy Music Center in Eunice, LA), and she would try to encourage the young people to play music from the Louisiana perspective. And as time passed, it did become more popular. But part of that had to do with dances and inventing something more challenging than the simple waltzes and two-steps they’d always been doing. This dance phenomenon happened outside of Louisiana, and created more interest from outsiders, which stimulated more interest in the music in Louisiana among the younger people. So the dance thing took off around the country. But we were more interested in the old music, and we hung around people like Dewey Balfa and D.L. Menard and Marc Savoy and Lionel Leleux. It was a hands-on thing for us. Because wherever we go, we try to learn from local people. So that’s what I was doing when I met Jeanie in 1978, and we got together ––
Jeanie: And the fireworks started happening!
I see over the years you’ve covered every-thing from Louisiana music to Arizona fiddlers, cowboy music, Spanish music… How do you keep it all straight?
KK: It’s knowing the people. If you can connect what you’re playing with an image of the people and their culture, then it’s a lot easier. It gives you a whole context. These aren’t just tunes; all this music is a part of our lives and a part of someone else’s life –– someone who took the time to teach us how to play their music.
[Because of health concerns, Jeanie could not continue to live in Louisiana. In search of a drier climate, they moved to Santa Fe New Mexico, and eventually down to Silver City. The name Bayou Seco (“dry bayou”) reflects their lives in both places.]
Moving to New Mexico
KK: Lots of friends came down to see us in Louisiana, and later to New Mexico, to learn with us: Eric and Suzy Thompson, Will Spires ––he documented a lot of great fiddling from Dennis McGee.
Yes, Will Spires teaches here in Santa Rosa at the junior college. And I believe Suzy had an NEA grant at one time to study with Dennis McGee and Dewey Balfa.
KK: Yes, we spent a lot of time with all those people. But Jeanie and I were just living down there and working, we never had a grant. And after moving to New Mexico, we found it was hard to get grants. It was more a political thing in New Mexico, since we weren’t Hispanic.
Jeanie: It never really stopped us, did it? We spent nine years working with Cleofes Ortiz and we got him lots of work, and we backed him up twice at Port Townsend, Washington, at the Festival of American Fiddle Tunes, and later at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington, DC.
KK: Cleofes Ortiz played the old Spanish colonial music from northern New Mexico. It’s something we love.
How did you meet him?
Jeanie: We’d actually been in New Mexico for four years, and were looking for old fiddlers. We were used to finding so many in Louisiana, it was kind of weird not to find any in New Mexico. We did find a couple, but they were pretty old and they didn’t play very well anymore. So we figured something would turn up. And sure enough, there it was: an event called the People’s Fair in Las Vegas, New Mexico, on August 25, 1984. That’s where we saw two older musicians, Cleo on the fiddle and Augustine Chavez on guitar. And they were exactly what we were looking for. They were just great, except Cleo was playing his fiddle through a terrible amplifier that distorted everything. But we could tell that the music was totally amazing, and we went to his house the next day and we became friends.
And how would you describe the music? Is it like Tex-Mex or Norteño music?
KK: This music is much older. It comes from the colonial period. This is old dance music: round dances, group dances. And a lot of it is really European-based music: waltzes. quadrilles, polkas, schottisches. It’s a very particular fiddling style. The fiddlers don’t play a lot of chords; it’s more linear, melodic. The bowing doesn’t have that rhythmic feel, like the Cajun style or other old time styles.
Jeanie: They were very singular. The fiddlers didn’t do a lot of double fiddling or harmony. If there was more than one fiddler, they’d switch off. They hadn’t developed twin fiddling the way you think of Louisiana fiddlers, for example.
KK: Cleo’s cousin Arturo could do a little rhythmic chunking, but mostly you didn’t do much double fiddling. Jeanie and I started doing some harmonies, but a lot of that came from the Tohono O’Odham fiddling in Arizona. That was different. Those fiddlers learned the tunes about two hundred years ago from Spanish missionaries.
…
And what do they use for accompaniment? Was it all solo fiddle?
Jeanie: Usually guitar and fiddle. Later on, the accordion came in, but they didn’t have accordions up there in the old days.
KK: No, they were playing very old Spanish colonial music. And they were very isolated where they lived. Very few roads, little or no electricity, no radio stations, at least none in Spanish. Back in the ’20s, lots of people in other parts of the country were buying record players and musicians were making records, 78s, so a lot of the old time music and some of the Mexican music got recorded. But none of the music from up here was ever recorded, none of it. Not commercially. There were maybe a couple of folklorists back in the ’40s who came up and did some field recordings. So most of this music is gone now. And when electricity and record players started coming into this area, people couldn’t buy this music; they’d buy either country music 78s or Tex-Mex, music from La Frontera, and they started playing that kind of music; they forgot most of the older music.
…
[At this point, Jeanie’s fiddle students start to arrive, so she needs to leave the interview. Ken continues.]
The purpose of this music was dance and there weren’t that many public dances anymore. But there were some, up in Bernal (NM) where Cleo lived, and also around Pecos, New Mexico.
Did you record Cleofes Ortiz?
KK: Yes, we made two recordings of him. One with just fiddle and guitar, and the other with our whole band. [“Violinista de Nuevo Mexico, Cleofes Ortiz,” with Augustine Chavez and Jeanie McLerie, and “Orquesta Cleofonica, Cleofes Ortiz and Friends” are available at www.bayouseco.com.]
Another name that comes up is Antonia Apodaca. Who is she?
KK: We met her in Bernal, where Cleo was playing. She was playing the guitar at a función. That’s a saint’s day, and people return to the village once a year to celebrate and play the old music. We met her there, but not long afterwards her husband died and then we didn’t see her for a long time. Jeanie was playing in the schools around Mora with Cleofes, and they stopped in to see how she was doing. It was winter and there was snow on the ground, and Antonia had no heat. She was very depressed. She had taken all the strings off her guitar and she was giving up music. But Jeanie persuaded her to play again and we started playing with her. She had come from a family who had played music for generations. Her mother played the accordion and her husband had been a fiddler. So we encouraged her to play and we even accompanied her at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival and also at Port Townsend. She made a recording, too, but it’s out of print now.
…
Tohono O’Odham Music of Arizona
Let me ask you about the Gu-Achi Fiddlers of Arizona.
KK: Yes, I first heard them on a cassette. Now, Gu-Achi is an area of the reservation of the Tohono O’Odham people in southern Arizona. It’s actually a trading post. So it’s not really called “Gu-Achi fiddling.” I don’t know how that got started, but Elliott Johnson recorded this tape with his group, the Gu-Achi Fiddlers. There were a couple other groups as well, playing that style. Later on, we met Elliott at Port Townsend and we helped him out in some of his workshops. He was great and he invited us to visit him at the reservation and learn more of his music. So we did that and recorded a lot of his tunes. He insisted we learn the tunes right. Although I was playing the accordion, he thought the accordion changed the sound of his music, so he wanted us to learn the tunes on the fiddle, with the twin fiddle harmony, and he wanted us to go out and teach them to as many people as we could.
Do they still play this music in Arizona?
KK: What they do now is a little different. They’ve added the accordion and the saxophone and they’re really getting into cumbias and more popular stuff. They’ll use an electric bass and a modern drum set, where before they just used a guitar and maybe a trap drum and a big bass drum, like in a marching band. Basically, it was just the twin fiddles and the guitar. When Jeanie and I do workshops of this music, we teach the melodies and the harmonies. Sometimes there are several harmonies. Some of them can be very odd: parallel fifths or sixths. It sounded good to them, and the melodies are not regular, like in contra dance music. Their dances were usually done in a circle, and it didn’t make any difference how many measures a tune had. You’d get 19-measure schottisches, stuff like that.
It sounds crooked.
KK: Well, they don’t think of them as crooked at all… It gives you a lot more freedom. You don’t have a caller glaring at you, telling you to straighten up the tunes!
…
[For the full text of this interview, as well as the tunes “Valse Emiliano” as played by Cleofes Ortiz and “Libby Bird Song Mazurka” as played by Elliott Johnson, subscribe to Fiddler Magazine!]
www.bayouseco.com
[Gus Garelick is a fiddler/mandolinist in Santa Rosa, California. He is a member of The Hot Frittatas, an Italian music ensemble, and The Wild Catahoulas, a Cajun/Zydeco band. For eight years, he has worked at public radio station KRCB in Santa Rosa, where he hosts The Fiddling Zone, a program of traditional fiddling from around the world. The Fiddling Zone is streamed on the Internet, c/o www.KRCB.org.]
Garold Hanscom:
“Fiddler on the Loose” in Perth-Andover,
New Brunswick
By Gary Grieco
Perth-Andover is a quiet New Brunswick village just off Highway 2 that my wife and I visited for a day, and longed to stay. This orderly village with its shingled storefronts and friendly shopkeepers welcomes you to a place where modern life mingles gently with the traditions of the past. It straddles the celebrated and mighty St. John River, and is home to Garold Hanscom; a bright star and a man on a mission who is quietly bringing back fiddling to his community.
Old time fiddlers were almost extinct in Perth-Andover in 1992 when Garold Hanscom started teaching students of all ages for $1.00 a lesson, or free if they could not afford it. He jokes, “All the fiddles put away in attics during the rock and roll years are now out being played.” Garold believes that “fiddle music –– a jig or a reel –– can give you a rush of happiness, while a lament can tear your heart out.”
I first became aware of Garold Hanscom in May 2006 when village resident Glen Furge noticed our B.C. plates and approached me as I pumped gas at their highway service centre. He spoke of how excited he was to be learning the fiddle at age sixty-nine and of the man who was his teacher –– Garold Hanscom. I realized only after Glen drove away that here was a story. My detective work eventually led us to the ornate red brick City Hall where a friendly young lady pointed us in the direction of the historic St. James United Church a short distance away.
Sweet sounds of fiddle music drifted out of the church hall. A bearded “fiddler on the loose” with a twinkle in his eye accompanied a young girl playing a solo, while fifteen fiddle players of all ages waited silently to join in. Garold Hanscom stood relaxed amid the players, turning first to one, and then another, or stopping the group to make a point.
On-lookers were friendly and talkative, watching and listening with pleasure to their children, husbands, or wives, while strangers like us were accepted warmly and without reservation into the group.
Above Garold’s salt and pepper beard are kind eyes and a face that makes children and adults smile. His easy way belies the passion he holds for his pupils and their progress. His teaching formula is simple; “I try to teach new students songs they know, like ‘Old McDonald’; songs they recognize, so they know how long to hold the notes.”
Hanscom writes the music for his beginners using a “tab system.” He explains, “Students don’t necessarily relate the string letters –– E, A, D, G –– to their fingers, which are numbered 1, 2, 3, and 4 –– so you put your first finger on the E string.” As Garold’s students progress and gain confidence, he gradually takes the “tab” away and they start to play by identifying the notes.
…
Hanscom’s students play old time fiddling music, “but some are learning to play in the Celtic style made popular by the famous Cape Breton families of Ashley MacIsaac, and the MacMasters, Natalie and Buddy,” he explains. “They do ‘cuts,’ a little stutter, a form of a triplet that imitates the bagpipes, but around here you play Don Messer style.”
9:15 pm: The church hall is alive with piano, drums, guitars, and fifty fiddles, including Garold’s wife Dorothy, fiddlers from nearby Maine, and Hanscom’s eighty-nine year old father Winfred, on spoons. We are tapping our toes in time to tunes like “Cock of the North,” “Whalens Breakdown,” and “Boil the Cabbage.” Ninety-three year old retired dentist Dr. Lee White approached to show us his sleek fiddle, smiled and said, “I have hand-built ninety-nine violins, not one hundred.”
Bringing back fiddle music to New Brunswick is important to Garold Hanscom. “I grew up listening to Don Messer, and my grandfather was a fiddler who always wanted me to play.” An old fiddler once told Hanscom that, “you listen to other forms of music, but the fiddle puts the music right under your feet.”
Hanscom relates, “As I get older I am beginning to appreciate that there is something unusual about this music. We visit nursing homes and these folks just light up at the sound of the fiddle. Alzheimer’s patients who do not react to anything will start moving their hands or feet to the music. Toddlers will jig to a fiddle tune, and mothers dance around with babies in their arms.”
Garold Hanscom feels that “fiddle music is special; it’s important that it be preserved, and everyone, particularly young people, should have a chance to play. Once you learn it, it lasts a lifetime.”
Perth-Andover was not our original destination, but worked its magic spell upon us. We will return.
[Gary Grieco is a writer who likes to travel. His freelance career began several years ago when he re-styled his life to pursue these twin passions. He has published articles in magazines including Pacific Yachting, Gam on Yachting, 50Plus Magazine, Powell River Living Magazine, RV magazines, and numerous newspapers.]
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