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Winter 2000/2001ARTICLES
COLUMNS
TUNES
ARTICLE EXCERPTS
Joe Meadows: Bluegrass Music's Unsung Fiddling Sidemanby Adam TannerThe Stanley Brothers, Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys, Jim and Jesse and the Virginia Boysall three names bring to mind the Golden Era of bluegrass music (1946-1956, in my opinion). These bands were virtual universities: changing membership regularly, constantly training young musicians to play the most soulful and action-packed music possible. Among those musicians is a man from West Virginia who plays the fiddle with a strong and supple bow arm and a singing and lyrical tone. He has been playing the fiddle for almost seventy years. I met him playing some old time music with Country Ham at the Grass Valley Bluegrass Festival 2000 in California. He was kind enough to talk to me. I sat in amazement as he recounted his experiences recording and performing with dozens of bluegrass and country greats. He is seldom mentioned, yet he has recorded some of the most powerful fiddle solos ever, particularly his sessions with Ralph and Carter Stanley in the early 1950s for Mercury Records. Hopefully people searching for the sound of bluegrass fiddle will find an opportunity to seek him out and listen to him play. ... Let's talk about when you were learning to play the fiddle. What was the first fiddle music you heard that might have inspired you? The first fiddle music I heard was a neighbor who played. But what got me started was my dad had his dad's fiddle and there were seven boys in the family. He kept his fiddle hanging on the wall and we were not supposed to play it. We were all learning to play guitar and Mom taught us chords. I was really interested in guitar and one weekend my brothers took the guitars off somewhere, and I took the fiddle off the wall. I would break the teeth off an old comb and pick tunes out on it. Then I heard a friend of my brother's (Bruce Ellis) play fiddle and that's what started me. And when Dad saw I was really interested he wanted me to play the fiddle, too. One of the tunes I heard Bruce play -- I thought it was the prettiest tune ever -- was called "Ragtime Annie." I'll never forget how the tune sounded to me. After really being interested in fiddling, I listened to the Grand Ole Opry. There weren't that many fiddle players. But of course there was Chubby Wise and Howdy Forrester and Tommy Jackson. Then I listened to Farm and Fun Time. I heard Jim Shumate and Lester Woodie with the Stanleys and all the country music on the radio helped me learn. The melodies stayed with you after hearing them only a couple of times on the radio? Every time I heard the tune I could pick up a little more. The easiest for me to pick up was the fiddle breaks on Hank Williams' songs. They were just so straightforward. What kind of music before bluegrass might you have heard in West Virginia? There was a great old time fiddler from around Charleston by the name of Mike Humphreys. He really had a lot of drive. Did you hear anyone play in cross tunings? My dad did, but I didn't learn much from him because I didn't care much for his style. Over the years I can see where I could have learned a lot from Dad, but at the time that's not what I wanted to learn. Bluegrass is what I liked right away Chubby Wise -- that kind of fiddlin' would really get to me. I never thought I would play professionally. I would say, "If I could only play such and such, I'll be satisfied," then I kept going on like that. It's endless, isn't it? Oh, yes, and up until I quit playingYou see there was an accident and I lost my three brothers. That got to me and I didn't have the heart to play -- sold my fiddle. But up until that time there wasn't a day in my life that I didn't play. I never let a day go by without playing. ... Did Monroe know a lot about playing fiddle even though he didn't play? Oh, yes, Bill loved fiddle. He told me it was his favorite instrument I think it was a compliment. I know it made me feel good. He said I played more like his Uncle Pen than any fiddle player he ever had. I think it was a good compliment, although I don't really know what kind of fiddle player Uncle Pen was. Would Bill show you notes that he wanted you to play on his mandolin? Yeah. One of the first tunes he taught me was "Brown Country Breakdown," you know, the one in E. He wrote that while I was a Bluegrass Boy and I was the first fiddler to play it. He wanted me to play it for Chubby Wise. So I played it for Chubby and I liked his playing and respected him so much that I was kind of embarrassed to play it in front of him. Compared to bluegrass bands today, did Monroe and the Stanleys play as fast in their day? No. Well, Bill Monroe told me one time, a song has a certain pace that it should be played at. He thought a lot of folks played too fast. I agree with that myself. A lot of people play so fast that they lose itand a lot of guys think drive is speed drive. Drive is not speed; you can put drive into a waltz. You can put drive into anything. If you listen to some of the Flatt and Scruggs stuff, it had so much drive but it wasn't fast and if you'd done it faster it wouldn't have been as good. How would you describe "drive"? It's feelingit's really putting the punch in there. I guess it's every fourth beat you put some drive in it. Some people just play -- they don't play with feeling, they don't play with drive -- they just play. They don't understand until they feel the music. I understand you worked with Senator Robert Byrd and I know he is a fiddle player. Can you tell me about the nature of your job? I was mail clerk. I ran the mail room Senator Byrd is one of the greatest guys I've ever met. He was so nice to his whole staff. I worked very hard and want everyone to know I wasn't just working for him because I play fiddle. But he loves fiddle music and my playing. Is he a bluegrass fiddler? He loves bluegrass music. He kind of learned his music from Arthur Smith. He's a pretty good old time fiddler. He has a problem with shaking. He couldn't hold his bow solid. He thought he could overcome that problem. I tried to help him with that. There were lots of weekends where we would sit down and play together and he said he'd hope to be as smooth as me but he kind of stopped playing -- it was hard for him. He taped everything we did together and he would have me play for him and he would write it down in music -- learn to read it first, then play it by ear. He's very involved in writing a history of the Senate. So he kind of stopped playing fiddle. One day he assembled the whole staff and wanted them to hear the tapes we made and wanted to put them in the Archives and he wanted them to vote on which tapes should be selected. He'd sit with tears in his eye and listen to those tapes. He loved fiddle music more than anyone I've ever met. He said, "Joe, you don't know what I'd give to do that." He wanted me to tell him if he wasn't doing something right. He made me at ease to make suggestions. Do you read music? No, don't read a note. That's another thing I hope you print. I only went to school through the seventh grade. In seventh grade class we had a music teacher who played piano and sang and I didn't like her singing and if I knew what she was teaching would apply to a fiddleI thought what she was teaching only applied to the piano -- that's how much I knew about music. If I had understood that her lessons would apply to the fiddle You would have learned it. Oh, yes, and I probably would have gone on to school. ... Do you have any advice for people trying to learn fiddle? Get yourself a bunch of Hank Williams recordings and learn them. They're pretty and simple to learn, good for any fiddle player to listen to. Video tapes to watch what guys are doing. I never had that when I was learning. Listen, play simple, and stick to the melody. ... [Adam Tanner plays old time southern fiddle and bluegrass mandolin with his retro-bluegrass band 78 rpm and lives in Seattle, Washington.]
Martin Hayes on "The Lonesome Touch"by Peter AnickMartin Hayes should be no stranger to readers of this magazine. The East Clare fiddler, now living in Seattle, graced the cover of our premier issue almost seven years ago. Since then, three more CDs and countless tours and workshops have introduced his unique and intimate interpretations of Irish traditional music to a worldwide audience. I caught up with him in Boston last spring, as he was touring with long-time partner, guitarist Dennis Cahill. I asked Martin if he would share some thoughts about his approach to the interpretation of Irish fiddle music. Martin, let's talk a little about what you call that "lonesome touch." Yeah, what is it? If I knew what it was exactly, I suppose I'd be able to do it all the time. But I'm not a hundred percent sure I can get my hands on it at all times! For me it was just a figure of speech, a way of expressing a kind of feeling. It was a way I heard musicians describe other musicians on occasion. So it just became a way of describing a plaintive kind of touch in the music. It had to do with hearing the music in a very vocal kind of way -- lyricism, expressiveness, interpretation of the melodies. Singing them, as it were, on the fiddle in a vocal, expressive way. So I try to play what I might sing in my mind. And I try to bow it as you might breathe it almost. It keeps it kind of simple in some ways. In other ways, it's kind of complicated. For example, when I would bow...[plays], that's how I would sing that phrase. Most often when I've been humming tunes or singing to myself, I'd say, "If I could play like that, I'd be good." And so, I just chase that idea in all its simplicity. Because there are many things you can play on a fiddle that can be very "fiddlistic," even non-musical in some respects. You almost can tell sometimes, when you try to sing it -- if you sang exactly what you played -- how unmusical it might sound at times. On the other hand, it can be kind of accepted as being part of the fiddle genre itself. But I have focused less on Irish fiddle playing and more on Irish music. It's more about the interpretation of the music and less about the instrument. Although it is a great instrument and I wouldn't trade it for anything! It's just using the instrument to express the melodies, really. Is this approach something that is typically done in Clare or is this something you have picked up on your own? Yes and no. Most of my ideas are picked up from musicians and Clare people like my father (P. J. Hayes), Paddy Canny, Junior Crehan, Bobby Casey. But it's not the complete picture. Anybody looking at a regional style will see it with their own set of blinkers on. I see one thing, where if somebody else went there, they might see another thing. And I've followed what I saw, what I believe it to be. There's a good degree of subjectivity when you're determining a regional style. And then there's also the problem, if I were to go to East Clare and pick out the definitive East Clare fiddle player, he or she couldn't be found. Because you'd have to have a collection of them before you begin to see that they all contain little parts of it. Maybe no one plays it completely. So I wouldn't be playing definitively in the "East Clare style." I'd be playing how I see it, and then I'd be further into seeing what that philosophically meant -- what were the reasons for them to play music, how did they see music, what did they aspire to in music -- and then taking those ideas and following on from those concepts. Leading you to things that might not necessarily have been heard within that tradition before -- but, in my subjective opinion, not inconsistent with it either. I find myself in that in-between world where in one sense I think it's absolutely traditional, and then with just a flick like that, suddenly it's something completely new and different. And it wavers. It just sits on that edge all the time. Was the music you heard originally mostly for dancing or was it used also for listening? Were there two kinds of fiddle tunes? There were, yeah. Even between my father and Paddy Canny, you had that difference in some ways. My father primarily liked to play for dancers a lot. Paddy Canny on the other hand didn't have much particular interest in that. There were different people who appreciated it from a listening point of view, people who appreciated it from a dancing point of view. I've been very influenced by the dance aspect of it also. Slow or lyrical things, even if I play slowly, I try to bring inherent dance syncopations into it. I've found that, yes, you do play a little bit faster for dancers, but it's not really the speed they're looking for. They're looking for a syncopation, a kind of a swing in the music, to lift them, because then it doesn't have to move nearly as fast as people are often led to expect. It doesn't have to be a rapid speed. It just has to move in a certain way. I played in a ceili band for years and have been kind of focused on that, and I've tried to bring aspects of that and merge it with the kind of lyricism and have the two things moving at once, if possible. Can you explain a little about the "swing"? Can you take a phrase and show how you put that in? Yeah, there's that DAH di DAH di DAAH [plays a phrase, tapping along with his foot]. It's almost as if my right hand is tied to my knee. I'm just chopping the rhythm out with my right hand. Like, when they played concertinas for sets, they used to bounce the concertina on their knee to get that effect. You're getting a bit of an accent on each of your downbeats. I don't do it all the time, but, yeah, it's a little bit of an accent and it creates a slightly syncopated effect, you know -- DAH di DEEdle DOH [tapping out four beats per measure] as opposed to [tapping only two beats every measure]. No matter how fast you go, it doesn't create a real dance feel. It doesn't move the body. So Dennis (Cahill) and I have spent lots of time just working on refining how that moves, because there's a lot of power and strength in not driving rhythm very hard, but being very precise with it. And having it under control. But I've also found that no matter how one thinks about it or how you physically work it out on the instrument, the only true monitor of the rhythm is your body. You almost have to move in a certain swing in order to experience it, I think. You can't just make your hands play a groove. You just need to be the groove. You, period. ... [Peter Anick, co-author of Mel Bay's Old Time Fiddling Across America, plays fiddle and mandolin with the Massachusetts-based Acoustic Planet.]
"Tomorrow is Best Today": The Blue Mountain Ramblers Go Beijingby Jody StecherIn June 2000 I traveled to Beijing to play fiddle at a nine-day barbecue gig on the patio of a luxury hotel. I brought two old friends, Paul Hostetter and Heath Curdts, to play guitar and banjo. We were the Blue Mountain Ramblers and we had an amazingly good time. My friend Bill Evans was going to perform at the 1999 Fourth of July celebration at the American Embassy in Beijing. Playing five-string banjo. Solo. As the opening act for The Supremes. This bizarre double bill proved to be more than unlikely. It was canceled when NATO bombed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade. A year later, Bill, who is not the famous but deceased jazz pianist some at the Embassy thought they had booked, was invited to Beijing again, this time for an event called The Great American Barbecue. Bill had prior commitments and passed the gig to me, along with an ongoing series of strange email messages forwarded from China that began to impart to events in my life a surrealistic quality that resembled the shifting sands of Chinese politics. The event was first described as an agricultural fair. I pictured myself in a green valley fiddling amongst huge piles of vegetables, rambunctious pigs and several million people. Details poured in. The U.S. Department of Agriculture was throwing a party for 800 Chinese guests to be followed by eight days dedicated to the promotion of American food products. My band would provide the live soundtrack. Yikes! The entire event would take place at the Great Wall Sheraton Hotel and we would be accommodated there. So much for the pigs and longbeans. Sounded comfy though. Over the next few weeks I learned that a bluegrass band comprised entirely of banjos was to play two 45-minute daytime 30-minute sets of old time music on fiddle, guitar and mandolin each night three times daily in the lounge in the atrium outdoors in the indoor patio. This was to take place June 20-28 and was happening June 18-25. After that it got confusing. One never sensed that the writer (who was not Chinese) knew or minded that he had reversed course. It was very perplexing, especially the shifts in urgency which accompanied contradictory certainties about what kind of visas we would need. There were government "formalities to fulfill that would make Kafka envious" and we could enter China with tourist visas which we couldn't do. Eventually we connected with Peter Moustakersky from the American Embassy in Shanghai and everything became simple. Peter answered all questions, cleared the path before we came, upgraded our seats to business class, and gave us an American welcome to China in a way that only a Bulgarian could. The telephone booth in the Chinese Consulate in San Francisco would not accept dimes even though the cost of a call was 35 cents. I arrived there with three signed visa applications and a pocket full of money. Paul and Heath gave me cash but mischievously urged me to ask, "Do you take Visa?" As if I needed more chaos. Heath's job description, media consultant, set off a silent alarm. The polite and friendly official made it clear that they simply couldn't have the M word on a visa application. Media!!!! What kind of a writer is he? He's not a writer. He helps people produce videos. Will he write political magazine articles criticizing China? No, this is a vacation. He never writes. What will he write about then? Nothing. Nothing? Correct. OK, no problem. United Airlines actually lets us into business class! After twelve of the most comfortable airborne hours any of us has experienced, we begin our descent. Spectacular green rugged mountains with startling sheer drops give way to cornfields and wheat and then we're in Beijing. We are required to fill out a quarantine declaration that we're free from "fever, cough, mental psychosis (is there any other kind, like physical psychosis??), animals, soil or waste clothing." Waste clothing? The Chinese government doesn't want us to bring dirty laundry into their country or what? This is PRC, not Chinese laundry. Psychotics go home. The American Embassy sent three helpful people to meet us but we didn't see them, possibly because we were perpetually looking down at the shiniest floors I've ever seen anywhere. We are discovered and guided through customs without incident. This deft operation consisted of pushing several carts full of luggage forward and not looking at any officials. Soon we were speeding toward central Beijing in the Embassy van. Everywhere I looked was familiar vegetation. Our rooms at the Great Wall Sheraton were very comfortable but we couldn't rest in them long, the hotel wanted us for a soundcheck immediately. Heath does manage to find a moment to sit on and -- ha! I'm not the only one who does this -- destroy his reading glasses (made in China). This will lead to adventures. We trudge out to the Barbecue site. Jetlagged and (some of us) unwashed, we are led to a spot between two hollow 51-stage prop volcanoes which belched steam 24 hours a day. Eventually a soundman materializes. Heath tries to convey to him that in the interests of minimizing feedback we want the mandolin mic off when not in use. It is an insurmountable problem. Would he relocate his board from behind a volcano to a place where we can see him and communicate? He throws a tantrum. We play our first set; all the mics but three are dead and the soundman has vanished. On the following evening our sound man is Johnson, a pleasure to work with, a pro. (Many Chinese have adopted English names for use with foreigners.) They worked alternate nights so every other evening we get the tantrum vendor. He never once brought the right number of cables, could not see why the speakers ought to be connected to something, could not mix, hear, count or remember to show up during the times we were actually playing. He eventually worked out a mixing system: all channels up equally. Democracy! The hotel had good mics but a wind screen was a novel idea. We described what we wanted and an hour later a man arrived with a foam mattress and a knife. Paul had a better idea. United had given us booties to wear. Business Class, you know. I had worn mine to the airplane toilet several times and did not relish singing into them. A quick trip to Paul's room turned up fresh unused booties and some rubber bands. Voila: Blue Mountain wind screens. Between sets, we were subjected to a fashion show. A passing waiter stopped to approve of my fiddle and to disparage the antics taking place on the runway as "disgusting." The show was strange, to say the least. Tall, bald Chinese girls drenched in attitude and dressed in animal skins slinked and cavorted and reinforced my belief that fashion designers hate women. At one point they were modeling mink bikinis to the strains of what I thought was a Chinese band but, according to Paul, who has teenaged daughters and Knows About These Things, was the Norwegian group Abba, singing Yo yo, yo yo, yo yo yay, Tarzan big, Tarzan strong or similar words of equal depth. "This is what Chinese businessmen like," we were told. Oh. The Great American Barbecue turned out to be part of an effort on the part of the U.S. Embassy to sell convenience foods and other American edibles to an emerging Chinese middle class. The sponsors included The U.S. Potato Board, The California Prune Council and something called "American Pernut Council" which was always spelled like that. The Cult of the Individually Wrapped had been introduced to China. In our bathrooms we find little round courtesy soaps so very securely (and individually) wrapped we can hardly get them open. They do not easily dissolve in water either. We have been given California prunes. Individually wrapped. After a struggle I get few open and soak 'em overnight in an individually wrapped cup of bottled water. They prove to be delicious. I can't vouch for the taste of the soap. And I don't see how an individually wrapped prune is "convenient." A Blue Mountain Diary Wednesday I'm up at dawn and eager to explore. The Sheraton is a Sheraton but walk through the revolving door and it's China out there. It is phenomenally exciting to be here. Lots of students on bicycles, lots of street vendors, lots of people, lots of buses, lots of noise -- it's great. And it's 5 AM! Throughout our stay we found the people of Beijing to be neither shy nor aggressive but frankly curious and sweetly responsive in a down to earth way when approached with friendliness. They remind me of my grandparents. After a breakfast of congee (rice porridge) spiked with peanuts and pickles, scrambled eggs, excellent toast, and strong Lavaza(!) coffee we all decide to visit an old part of Beijing south of Tiananmen Square. We discover that small cabs (usually red Xialis) are cheaper and skillfully driven. There are no stop signs in Beijing. Everybody yields! It's remarkable. I had read that Beijing motorists are rude. We found them to be polite and patient. No anger, no hurry. I found a similar object lesson in the widespread but quiet use of cell phones. People step away and shield their mouth when using them. We alight from the Xiali and quickly attract a tenacious young couple who ask us an awful lot of questions. Paul thinks they only want to practice their English. I decide they are government spies. They walk with us for hours and translate as we try to replace Heath's glasses. They are art students, would we visit the gallery where they work? We enter a shop on a very noisy street and walk up three flights. The small art gallery is serene. A middle-aged woman presides. Her presence, poise and dignity are an aesthetic experience equal to the best paintings there. Paul buys several, including a four foot scroll mounted on silk portraying a pretty teenaged girl painted in a way that beautifully combines old and new. Traditional strokes and paints show her sitting comfortably on the floor holding an apple in her cupped hands. Short hair frames her enigmatic face and she is wearing running shoes. It is stunning. Today Heath begins to acquire Mao Zedong alarm clocks. The better ones have a jet plane second hand or a female worker perpetually waving a Little Red Book. Ideal Christmas presents! Heath's bargaining style is fierce and the street vendors enjoy the sport. Thursday The Forbidden City was designed to impress and intimidate, the Emperors of China ruled from here. Heath gets the willies from certain walls and rooms, senses ghosts and intuits executions. Heath disappears and Paul and I get a chop made, a hand-carved personal seal that we hope says "Blue Mountain Ramblers" in ancient Chinese. (Later, we find out it says "Blue Mountain Tourists.") We've been asked to do an early set indoors in the atrium. Unlike the outdoor audience, who seem to like us, this bunch really don't get our music, but Channa, the hotel manager, was delighted with the results. "You were brilliant. I had every Tom, Dick and Harry looking over the railing!" Our repertoire was replete with references to potentially Barbecueable Animals and I exploited this coincidence in my stage banter at the Great American Barbecue. This elicited no response whatsoever from the audience. Every set now contained some of the following: Pig In A Pen, Groundhog, Boll Weevil (2 versions -- yum), Mole In The Ground, Whoa Mule Whoa (yum yum yum), Ducks On the Millpond, Cluck Old Hen, I Got A Bulldog, Grey Eagle, The Cuckoo, Buffalo Gals(!), Forked Deer, Saddle Up The Grey, and Big-eyed Rabbit. ... [Jody Stecher lives in San Francisco, where he plays and teaches fiddle and a variety of other instruments. He performs internationally solo, in duet with his wife Kate Brislin, and in the bluegrass band Perfect Strangers.]
Jeremy Cohen: A Fiddler in Two Worldsby Michael SimmonsJeremy Cohen is probably one of the very few violinists around who is equally at home playing in jazz groups, rock bands, and symphony orchestras. He has worked as a session musician in Los Angeles, where he was the principal fiddler for the Dukes of Hazzard, and he has played for touring musicals like "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas" and "Les Miserables." He was Linda Ronstadt's concertmaster, taught at the Stanford Jazz workshop, and played violin with the Gypsies at the Django Reinhardt festival in Samois, France. His latest project is "Violin Jazz," a concert program that blends swing-era jazz with a symphony orchestra. Cohen has been playing violin since he was seven years old. His father was a cantor in Oakland, California, and his mother was a voice teacher at California State University at Hayward. His two older brothers were also musicians and when they were growing up they used to joke that their parents were trying to raise a string quartet rather than a family. Although he grew up in a musical family, Cohen had his own reasons for taking up the violin. "I wanted to see the world as a kid," he explains. "I thought that if I wasn't able to be wealthy that somehow music would be a very good vehicle to take me around the world." Cohen's early training was strictly classical, but as he got older he began to listen to other styles of music. "As soon as I learned to drop a needle on a record I was listening to Dave Brubeck's Take Five," he says. "I would try and play along with records of the Marshall Tucker Band. I also listened to It's a Beautiful Day with David LaFlame, and Papa John Creach with Hot Tuna. I thought blues violin was just amazing and totally exciting. That's probably why I play so many different styles today. I wasn't attracted to styles as much as I was drawn to good playing." ... Cohen continued to play in various non-classical groups through college, including a bluegrass band, a progressive rock band, and a western swing band. After graduating he moved to New York, where he studied with Itzhak Perlman for two years. After his studies, he decided to take a break from the classical world and got a job with the touring company of "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas." "Everybody in the show band was from Texas," he remembers. "We ate cornbread and fried chicken every night." The tour ended in Los Angeles fifteen months later, where he decided to stay and try his luck as a session musician. Over the next seven years he played on the soundtracks for dozens of movies and television shows, including a two-year stint as the lead fiddler for "The Dukes of Hazzard." He also played on albums by Melissa Manchester, Aaron Neville, Kitaro, Howard Keel, and Linda Ronstadt. Although he was making a good living in Los Angeles, he missed living in the San Francisco Bay Area, so he moved back. Cohen continued to freelance, and he worked as a sub at the San Francisco Symphony, and on some of the numerous soundtracks that are recorded at George Lucas' Skywalker Ranch in Marin. He also began to work on various solo projects and to teach. One of his favorite areas is helping classical string players learn to improvise. "Classical musicians are raised with blinders," he says. "They have wonderful technique but they are brought up with a very strong sense of right or wrong and black or white. If a note is 'out of tune,' it's bad; if we use the 'wrong' bowing, it's bad. These are things we get from our teachers and carry with us for the rest of our careers. We classically-trained musicians have this ongoing self-torture that keeps us from feeling it's okay to experiment, it's okay to create alternative sounds, it's okay to play other styles that call upon other skills." Cohen helps string players expand their range of sounds on their instruments so they have a wider vocabulary to draw from. He teaches them that although those sounds may not be appropriate for classical music, they are appropriate sounds for the violin overall. "They are appropriate for folk and jazz," he says. "Sliding and bending notes are okay as are different rhythms and bowing techniques. How do you expect to be able to play Irish music, for example, without intricate rhythmic bowing techniques?" Over the years, Cohen has come up with a number of methods to help get classical players to loosen up. "I give them blues scales and I teach them call and response techniques," he explains. "And I give chords and arpeggios in very small bites. I use a combination of printed music and ear training because the quickest way to a classical musician's heart is to give them something they are used to doing. I give them things they can look at and interpret. I play it for them so they can hear the stylistic things in jazz and bluegrass and so forth. And as soon as they can play from the page, I tear up the page. As long as they are reading the notes, they are working with all of the classical skills they are trained with, and that is the obstacle that is holding them back. I do try to get them off the page as quickly as possible, because I feel that's where fiddle music happens. It doesn't come from translating notes off of a piece of paper. It's a feeling." ... Cohen's love for jazz and classical music led him to join the Turtle Island String Quartet, a string quartet that plays jazz. While he was with the group he met jazz pianist Billy Taylor, who used to play with Eddie South. Taylor had written a piece called "Homage" for the Julliard String Quartet and his trio. When the Julliard Quartet couldn't make a show, Taylor asked Turtle Island to play "Homage" with his trio. A few years later, after Cohen had left Turtle Island, he got a call from Roy Milland, the concertmaster of the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra. He said that they were playing at a festival in Maine with Billy Taylor and invited Cohen to play "Homage" with the string quartet. Cohen jumped at the chance. "I couldn't have asked for a more wonderful experience," he says. "I also got to play the Schumann Piano Quintet that same evening. It was very well received by the audience and I hope that more concert programmers will experiment with combined evenings of jazz and classical music." Cohen's latest project does just that. It's called "Violin Jazz" and it combines jazz from the swing era with a symphony orchestra. Cohen has commissioned orchestral scores for standards like "Sweet Georgia Brown," "Mood Indigo," and "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes," as well as tunes like Joe Venuti's "Wild Dog." "I get to go out and play romantic music and jazz violin in the Eddie South style," he says. He has performed "Violin Jazz" with a number of orchestras across the country, including the Virginia Symphony, the Los Angeles Modern String Orchestra, and the Monterey Bay Symphony. Cohen says that "Violin Jazz" satisfies all his years of classical training as well as his years of playing non-classical music. "I have a love for playing good music with good musicians, period. I say that the violin is not limited to any style. I want to play jazz but I want to use my classical training, too. I want to play with orchestras, but I don't want to have to play the same the same Mozart concertos, the same Brahms piece, the same Sibelius. 'Violin Jazz' lets me do what I want to do." Cohen wants to continue to expand the "Violin Jazz" program. He is also hoping to work with Billy Taylor again. "Eddie South is probably my favorite violin player," he says. "I would love to work with Billy on some sort of tribute to South." And since Cohen has achieved just about every other musical goal he has set for himself, there is little doubt he will make this dream come true as well. What He Plays "When I was still living in Los Angeles, I decided to get a new violin. I was up in San Francisco visiting my family and I stopped by Cremona Violins, where I got my first instrument when I was twelve. Nash Mondragon handed me a fiddle and said, 'Try this. I won't tell you anything about it, but take it home and try it for a while.' I took the violin home and played it, but at first I wasn't sure. After using it for a few days, I learned how to play this instrument and I saw it was something special. I went back to Nash and said, 'I'll take it.' Then he told me the story of the violin. It was made by Vuillaume in 1868, three years after Lincoln was shot and it's probably the most recorded violin of all time. "It used to belong to Lou Raderman, who was the concertmaster of the MGM orchestra from 1939 to 1969. Raderman's first job for MGM was playing all of the solos in "The Wizard of Oz." He played on the soundtrack of every MGM movie made between '39 and '69 on my violin. Raderman also worked as a concertmaster for Percy Faith and Frank Sinatra and occasionally for Nelson Riddle. He died in 1980. After he left MGM in '69, he moved to Vegas where he spent his time playing for the big acts and golfing. He retired a millionaire from playing this violin. I helped add to its recorded history as well. I played in a string quartet on Santana's Supernatural, and when they sent me a plaque a few months ago, the CD had already sold twelve million copies." ... For more information, see Jeremy's website at www.violinjazz.com [Michael Simmons, Fiddler Magazine's Review Editor, is a guitar player and writer living in Mountain View, California.]
"A Fiddling Summit": An Interview with Kevin Burke, Dirk Powell, and Tim O'Brienby Candace HorganIn June 2000, Tim O'Brien celebrated his 25th year playing the Telluride Bluegrass Festival. He put together a world-class band that included Kevin Burke and Dirk Powell, as well as Paddy Keenan and John Williams. During the Festival, Tim, Kevin and Dirk expounded at length on fiddling and Celtic music and its influence on American folk music and bluegrass. ... Kevin, what can you tell me about some of the different styles of fiddle playing in Ireland, how they vary, and also how they are set apart from some of the Celtic fiddle in America? Kevin: If you draw a line down the middle of the country, most styles happen on the west side of the line: Donegal, Sligo, Galway, Kerry and Clare, really. And Kerry overlaps Cork. In general, as you work south from the North, it gets smoother and slower. That's a rough generalization. Then in the North, the further east you go it seems closer to Scottish music. Cape Breton inherited most of their music from Scotland. The Breton style is very different from ours, even though it is a branch of Celtic music. They have a much different rhythm system and play different instruments, and drink better wine [laughs]. Smoke stronger cigarettes, and drink cider out of bowls. Tim: Do they? Kevin: Yes they do. Right out of the bowls [laughs]. How did the three of you get together to play at this festival? Tim: I'm interested in getting a group together that is based in the U.S., so we can perform at festivals without mounting a tour. John Williams, Paddy Keenan and Kevin all live in this country, Paddy in New Hampshire, Kevin in Portland and John in Chicago. That's convenient because if we are in Portland we can stay with Kevin, or with Paddy in New Hampshire, which should be interesting [laughs]. Kevin: Wherever we go there's someone local. Tim: The rest are friends that I've played with for years. Kenny (Malone) is the newest. I met him through Darrell Scott. I think it's about there. We will tour in the fall with John and Kevin, maybe Dirk, and Darrell and Mark (Schatz), and Karen Casey who used to play with Solas and now lives in Cork. When did the fiddle start becoming a dominant instrument in Celtic music, and when did it start to push out the harpists? Kevin: I really don't know. For a long time, often for periods of time, it was illegal to play Irish music. Maybe the harps disappeared because they were so evocative of Irish nationalism. There's been a union between Ireland and England for 500 years, and it's been very uneasy these last fifty years. Every hundred years or so there's a burst of nationalism. They tried to outlaw the music and language that made the Irish feel separate. The fiddle just showed up and probably was brought by a sailor. The accordion arrived, then thirty years ago, the bouzouki. As a kid, I'd never seen one. Dirk: When I saw that book on traditional Irish bouzouki it cracked me up. Kevin: How long does it have to be used before it's traditional? Tim: I heard the harpists played for courts, but the kings aren't really around anymore and haven't been for a while. Kevin: The British took the big property away from the kings when they took over. Dirk: The harps weren't playing dance music were they? Kevin: No one knows. Turloch (O'Carolan) didn't play dance music, but he was unusual, even at the time. Tim: The dancing masters 300 years ago taught people how to dance in the country. A dancing master would come for two weeks, and at the end of the two weeks he would do an exhibition, and he would bring in itinerant musicians, usually blind pipers or fiddlers. There were so many blind ones because if you were blind you couldn't work, so music was a way out of a bad situation. One person has suggested the music was invented to meet the dance needs. There's new tunes coming all the time, and they evolve. And they relate to step dancing and group dancing and set dancing. Kevin: They had square dances in the country. When do you start to see the fiddle taking a place in Appalachian music? Dirk: The fiddle was the main instrument from the beginning with the first immigrants. Doing some genealogy, I discovered I have an ancestor who came over in 1726, fiddle in hand, and some of the family in Virginia still have it. Tim: Have you seen it? Dirk: Not yet. They made me a banjo though. There was this documentary on Scots-Irish immigration to the area, and I called them up asking to look at it and be part of the documentary. And I'll never forget, he said you need to get in on the ground floor. That's the typical mountain person; they are standoffish. Kevin: That's a very Irish trait also. Dirk: There's a reason for that, if you are persecuted. Kevin: When I came over here to the U.S. first, the people were so friendly instantly that I was a bit scared. I thought, "What the hell are they doing?" I couldn't accept that they would be that open immediately. It's a very American thing, an admirable thing, but growing up meeting people in a different way, it's strange. Dirk: A lot of these people were indentured servants and had been persecuted beforehand. They were poor, and they had a claim in a piece of land, so they were territorial. And coming from Ireland where there were so many issues with land, they were protective. And these cousins of mine were typical of that. They weren't interested in me coming with a film crew; they wanted no part of it. But I got to know them and they made me two handmade banjos for Christmas, then a fiddle. A lot of the music comes from that. It's stark and very personal and has that edge to it. I still haven't seen that fiddle though. Tim: Why is it the other instruments didn't make it? Dirk: The fiddle is a traveler's instrument. Pipes are temperamental. Tim: I think pipers were more well-to-do also. Kevin: You hear references to the prince of pipers, but you don't hear that about fiddlers. Tim: Fiddle is more of a poor man's instrument. Kevin: There was definitely an aura about pipers, this whole class thing to it. Dirk: Look at the language too, and you see it in phrases like fiddling around, or playing second fiddle or fiddlesticks, like it's nothing. But it has that devil's instrument connotation to it also, so it's weird. Kevin: I'll tell you, I was getting on a plane a few years ago, and they argued with me about putting my fiddle in the overhead bin. The flight attendants didn't know what it was, but they saw the size and didn't want me to put it up there. Finally, she asked, "What is it?" And I said "A violin." And she said it was okay to put it up there. During the flight, this same woman came up and chatted, and she was friendly, and said that if I'd said it was a fiddle she wouldn't have let me put it up there. It really made me mad. A classic example of how the average person regards that word. Dirk: I wouldn't have thought that distinction meant anything anymore. Kevin: This was in the States. It really shocked me. ... [Candace Horgan is a freelance writer living in Denver who covers music for the Denver Post, Relix and other publications. She also has a bimonthly internet on musicbadger.com. She is a beginning fiddler.]
Bow Maker Roger Treatby David PapazianVermont's Roger Treat has been making bows for about five years and they are being played by a number of respected fiddlers. Roger is a fiddler himself, and played on luthier Bob Childs' "Childsplay -- The Great Waltz" CD in 1999. Working as both bow maker and repairer, Roger is able to take us through the bow making process, share some tricks of the trade, and offer advice for fiddlers on the care and maintenance of bows. This interview took place this past August while Roger was vacationing in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. How did you learn this trade? I took a number of courses, first at the University of New Hampshire with Lynn Hannings and George Rubino, and later at Oberlin in Ohio, with Rodney Mohr and Jerry Pasewicz, all master bow makers. I'm fortunate to know a fine bow maker from New York State, Bill Salchow, whom I've visited several times and he has been very helpful and generous, sharing his considerable experience and passing on various bow making tips. Is it true there is a German and a French school or method of bow making? Yes, there is a German or English tradition of bow making, and a French method. How I learned was pretty much the French way. And how does that distinguish itself? In the French method, it's all done with planes and files and you put the camber (curve) in the bow by heating it in small sections at a time, to get the camber you want, then continue planing and filing it, graduating it down, constantly checking the curve and the thickness as you go along. That must be a little awkward, working the bow after it's been cambered? No, not really. I use a number of planes. For roughing out the bow, I have a basic block plane, readily available, like a Stanley. After that, I use four other planes. Two have flat bottoms and the other two have curved bottoms. The bow starts out as a square, and then you knock the corners off, so it becomes an octagon. As soon as you get it roughed out, then you bend it and if the bow twists, you'll correct the facets so they line up with the head. At this point, the bow is oversized. You put hair on it as soon as possible so you can tighten it up and see how it reacts, and get all the kinks out of it. You can't make a bow straight with the right camber without putting it under tension at some point. Does the French method have a certain style of cambering as well? Basically, you want an even curve from the tip to the frog so that when you tighten it, the whole bow comes up evenly. You don't want one part to come up above the curve while the other part is down. Generally, you make the curve so that if the bow has no tension on it and you put it on a flat surface, the middle of the camber will touch the table either in the center or a bit closer to the tip, but it needs to be quite flexible at the tip. Can you explain that a bit more? At the tip end of the stick, just behind the head, you want to have a fair bit of camber and it has to be quite thin for it to grip. If you are trying to draw a nice even sound from the frog to the tip, it has to be able to dig in at the frog -- it can't be too stiff there -- and the further out you go, it has to get thinner so that you can maintain a nice even sound. The better the bow is, the easier it will be to draw an even soundin other words, if there are flat spots in the bow, it will tend to jump or jitter. So it's a combination of the camber and how the bow is graduated or tapered, if you like. It depends a lot on the wood. If you don't have good quality wood to start with, it's almost impossible to make a good bow, because the wood has a certain amount of vibrations in its structure. Pernambuco is the wood of choice? Yes, all the great old bows are made from pernambuco. Some of the lesser bows are made from brazilwood and some others from snakewood, which tends to be very heavy. Where does pernambuco originate? It comes from Brazil -- it's an evergreen tree. It has to be aged at least three years, but the older the better, of course. Pernambuco can be a variety of different colors. Some of it is almost black naturally, and it can be red, yellow, almost white or orange. It does darken somewhat with exposure to the sun over time. What are the qualities of this wood that make it ideal for bow making? First of all, it's incredibly dense. The better wood will sink if you put it in a tub of water. It seems to have strength and a certain amount of elasticity so that you can take it down to a fairly small dimension and it remains strong and yet is flexible after it's cambered. Could one consider those characteristics as opposing, paradoxical? Yes, there are opposites there. Part of the problem is you're trying to make the bow a certain weight without losing the strength, and the more wood you take off, the softer it gets, the more flexible it gets, so it's a constant balance between the strength of the wood and its weight. On the other hand, you don't want to make it too stiff because it's hard to get the nuances of sound if the bow is too stiff. The other important thing is the balance of the bow and there's a range of balance points which are considered acceptable. Makers measure it in different ways, but the way I measure it is, when you have the frog in the most forward position -- closest to the grip -- with the hair loose, you balance the bow on your finger and measure it from the wood at the button (screw) and that range is 8 1/2" to 10". I try to make it about 9 1/2" to your finger. Presumably, if you found a good plank of pernambuco, you would have the luxury of working with several bow blanks of consistent quality? Unfortunately, that's not always the case. Sometimes you can have two sticks right next to each other that are completely different. Sometimes they are pretty similar, but often you are surprised so you really have to judge each stick individually. The first step is to try and locate some good wood and a good supplier so that you have a number of blanks you can choose from, so that if someone wants a particular type of bow, you have some selection. You can't just take any piece of wood and make a good bow. You have to rough it out to get an idea of how it's working. After a while, you develop a sense or intuition of how to proceed with a particular stick. You can play around with the weight a little bit by adjusting the frog and also the grip -- a silver grip or a whale bone grip, which is lighter, or a silk wrap, which is lighter yet. Players refer to light or heavy bows. They mean the overall weight of it, but I wonder if this can be deceptive depending on how well balanced and crafted the bow is? Well, as with the balance point, there is also a certain accepted weight range which is between 55 and 65 grams. Most bow makers try to make a bow about 60 grams, which includes everything -- the frog, the grip, the hair. Again, you have to rely on each particular stick because the wood is so different, and some you have to make heavier because the stick is getting too soft and you can't get the weight down below, say, 62 grams. But I think you were speaking of the feel of it in your hand, and if the balance point is closer to the tip, it will make the bow feel heavier -- tip heavy -- and if it's back towards your hand more, the bow will feel lighter. So, some people say they like a heavy bow and you weigh their bow and it's actually a very light one; it's misleading sometimes. ... For more information on Roger's bows, contact him at P.O. Box 35, Putney, VT 05346; (802) 387-4782. [David Papazian makes and repairs violins, mandolins, and octave mandolins and plays the fiddle. He can be contacted at 44435 Cabot Trail, Little Riger, Cape Breton, NS, Canada B0C 1H0; (902) 929-2953; papazian@cranfordpub.com] For full versions of these articles, please visit Fiddler Magazine store to order back issues. |
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