Winter 2005/2006
ARTICLES
COLUMNS
- Fiddle Tune History: Ryan's Mammoth
- The Practicing Fiddler: Teaching 101
- On Improvisation: Guessing the Chords by Playing the Odds
- Cross-Tuning Workshop: AEAE/EbBbEbBb
- Practical Hints on Irish Fiddling: Hornpipes
- Cross-Canada Fiddle Tour: New Brunswick's Don Messer
- Accompanying Traditional Fiddle Music
- Bluegrass Fiddling: The Early Style of Vassar Clements
- In Memoriam: Vassar Clements; Rufus Thibodeaux; Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown
- Reviews
TUNES
- "Newz Reel," by Michael Doucet
- "McIntosh's Lament" (Caledonian Pocket Companion)
- "Off Nicolson Street," by Nick Pynn
- "Dusty Miller" (A Winning Contest Round)
- "Vendome Hornpipe" (Fiddle Tune History)
- "The American Rifle Team" (Fiddle Tune History)
- "The Brushy Fork of John's Creek," transcribed by Jody Stecher as played by Hiram Stamper and Art Stamper (Cross-Tuning Workshop)
- "The Queen of the West" (Practical Hints on Irish Fiddling)
- "The Western Hornpipe" (Practical Hints on Irish Fiddling)
- "Centennial Waltz," by Don Messer (Cross-Canada Fiddle Tour)
- "My Little Georgia Rose," solo by Vassar Clements (Bluegrass Fiddling)
ARTICLE EXCERPTS
 Photo: Peter Anick
An Interview with - Dirk Powell of Balfa Toujours
By Peter Anick
Dirk Powell is well known as an interpreter of old time Appalachian music. His fiddle and banjo can be heard on numerous solo projects and collaborations, including the Cold Mountain soundtrack and Riverdance: The Show. In 1989, he met and played with Cajun fiddle master Dewey Balfa, an encounter that prompted him to pursue Cajun music and learn the accordion. After Dewey’s death in 1992, Dirk joined forces with his daughter Christine Balfa to carry on in the Balfa Brothers’ footsteps in Balfa Toujours. The band, whose name translates to “Balfa always,” has been a driving force in the revival of traditional Cajun music and very active in the dissemination of information about Cajun history, culture, and dance.
Dirk was at the 2001 Festivals Acadiens not only playing with Balfa Toujours but also accompanying the legendary accordionist Alphonse “Bois Sec” Ardoin. Bois Sec, along with longtime partner fiddler Canray Fontenot, had helped to shape Creole and Cajun music over the last century. During a pause between his performances, Dirk shared some of his thoughts about playing traditional Cajun music.
While you obviously draw inspiration from the Balfa Brothers, I imagine that your background in Appalachian music must have given you an alternative perspective on Cajun music?
Somewhat. I learned a lot from Dewey, but having grown up playing more the mountain stuff, I’ve got a style that naturally lends itself to a bit of an older Cajun style. The further back in time you go with Cajun fiddling, the more similar it is to other southern fiddle styles, because they used to play more reels and they used to play a lot faster because they were playing for different kinds of dancing. And it was really in this century that the fiddle style smoothed out a lot, like it did in a lot of other styles. The same thing happened when old time stuff went into bluegrass. It got more smooth and less old, archaic tunings and a different kind of a feel. And Dewey was really right between those two places, the old style like his dad played and the real Harry Choates-influenced, western swing-influenced style. So Dewey had that real smooth bow but he had a lot of those old sounds, too. I tend to do more of a rocking bow motion, which is more like fiddlers like Dennis McGee, Rodney Fontenot, Adam Landreneaux, and guys like that who are from the earlier generation. Probably more like Dewey’s dad would have played. I like a lot of the ornamentation that those older players used. That’s one thing that still does sound like it has a connection with France and the really old Cajun style. A tonality, intonation, and use of ornaments that I think really goes back that far, that I like to try to go for.
How would you describe the groove in the kind of Cajun music you play?
It’s funny. There’s really as many different ways of doing it as there are people and some people play real laid back, kind of behind the beat, and that’s a typical way to play in Louisiana. I think the different influences that came together made it that way, and the heat and just the feel in the air -- it’s not rushing ahead most of the time. But then there’s some players that drive it really hard and do play ahead of the beat and really get that kind of a feel. So it’s real personal, but it tends to be elusive to people that don’t play it a lot because the two-steps sound like a regular 4/4 and the waltzes sound like regular 3/4 time, but there’s elements of the feel that are very different, that are hard to latch onto. There’s a lot in between the notes. There’s a lot of pulse and feel in between the beats that’s not real squared off. In a lot of Louisiana music, some guys in the band will be swinging and some won’t. If you listen to a lot of New Orleans music, you got people playing straight and people swinging at the same time and that happens in Cajun music.
Does that work? Is it a good thing?
It’s a good thing. It creates this tension that gives it a rhythmic feel that you feel it when it’s happening. That tension makes it great dance music. Obviously, if it’s too extreme or too conscious, then it’s not going to work.
Among the different instruments, who would be doing what?
A lot of times the fiddle swings but the band isn’t so much -- the guitar. But again, it depends on each personal situation. Some of those old New Orleans records you’d hear, the drums would be straight but the piano would be swinging. There are as many different feels as there are bands, I guess, but the generalizations are that it usually tends to be waiting a little bit for the offbeat rather than driving it.
Do you do Cajun dancing? So you can feel it when the band is doing something?
Sure. I don’t really know any Louisiana musicians that don’t dance. Not that they profess to be great dancers, but dancing in Louisiana is social dancing. It’s not about being good at it or bad at it. It’s just a matter of getting out there and doing it, and Cajun music has a lot of extra beats in it that also provide tension for the dancers. If you play Cajun music or if you listen to it, you’ll notice that there are these extra beats and a lot of times what that will do is flip the dance around. So half the time the steps are occurring on the downbeats and the next time they’re occurring on the opposite beat. Then it resolves and comes around again and it’s constantly shifting that way. How that came into the music I don’t know but it really makes it good dance music, because you’re constantly being put on another part of the beat and then when it resolves back again, it feels really good, and that keeps building on itself.
It almost seems like you need to think in twos for the waltz and in threes for the two-steps.
The two-step has three steps and then a pause, so it is actually three steps but then that last pause is what gets it back into 4/4. But the jitterbug is a six count thing over an eight thing, so that has the same effort. Jitterbugging is a three feel over four, which again makes it have tension. You’re not resolving every time on the same beat but when you do, you hit it and it gives you a little boost.
When did that influence come in?
That came in in the fifties when it came in everywhere. I’ve got a friend who is the niece of a great accordion player named Lawrence Walker, who was kind of the king of the Louisiana dance halls in the early fifties. And she was just telling me recently he never got over Elvis. At one point Cajun dance halls were filled with young people and old. Cajun music had gotten to a low point up to World War II but after World War II it got really strong again, with people coming home from the war. So the dance halls really cranked up and Lawrence Walker was one of the kings of that. But that started to shift when the rock ’n roll fad came in and Cajun bands started playing rock ’n roll. Dances started reflecting that jitterbug craze. But, of course, it was done its own way, too. It has a Cajun element, the jitterbug that’s done here.
When you play with Bois Sec, is there more of a black influence noticeable in the music?
Yeah, there is. Before recordings, people used to call Cajun and Creole music together French music. In fact, Christine’s sister used to think that on the dial FM meant “French music” and AM meant “American music.” That’s how rooted in it they were -- there was French music and there was American music. And French music was black and white music. They didn’t consider it a separate thing. And if you look at colonial documents going back as far as you can in history, there is evidence of black and white people playing together. And even though often times the situations they were playing in would be segregated, the actual bands themselves have always been mixed and so there’s been an incredible cross-fertilization between African-American and other different European traditions. A lot of the Creole people have a big part of American Indian influence in their culture. It’s a cliché but it really is a melting pot here. So when I play with Bois Sec, you could say there’s more of a black sound there, but a lot of the tunes that he learned, he learned from a Cajun accordion player Sidney Brown. So he might throw his own spin on it, but the differences between Cajun and Creole, or black and white Louisiana music are pretty insignificant compared to the similarities. Some people choose to emphasize the differences and others choose to emphasize the similarities.
You came into it having previously played mostly old time. How did you have to change your way of thinking to play Cajun music? It must have taken you a while to get the hang of it?
It did. I thought to myself, I’m so ingrained in mountain, Appalachian fiddle styles, I’m always going to have that in my bow arm and in my sound when I play Cajun music, you know. I don’t even want to change that because that’s what I am. The Balfa family -- Balfa’s originally a Scottish name -- they came down here from North Carolina in the early 1800s. Within a generation or two they couldn’t speak English anymore. Then they started learning English again a few generations later. But what I did, instead of trying to play Cajun fiddle all the time, I started playing the accordion. I thought I’d start on a new instrument, something I don’t have a history with. It’s kinda like your first language, or an accent. You’re never going to lose your accent and in some way you should be proud of your accent. When I play Cajun fiddle and I’ve got that older sound, or whatever it is, I just kinda decide, well, that’s me. And if I want to start from scratch with the Cajun stuff, then I pick up the accordion.
[For the rest of this interview, subscribe to Fiddler Magazine!]
 David Greely (left) and Steve Riley. Photo: Peter Anick
An Interview with - David Greely of the Mamou Playboys
By Peter Anick
Steve Riley and the Mamou Playboys are among the world’s foremost cultural ambassadors for Cajun music. Mainstays of Lafayette’s Festivals Acadiens since 1988, they have spread their music as far away as Japan and Australia, hosted New England’s Rhythm and Roots Festival, appeared on Mountain Stage and A Prairie Home Companion, and garnered several Grammy nominations.
They play a high energy, joyful brand of Cajun music, with a mix of harmony vocals and instrumental chops that makes them as listenable as they are danceable. Both Steve Riley and David Greely are top notch Cajun-style fiddlers, but Steve’s role as vocalist and accordion player in the Playboys leaves David with most of the fiddle duties. At the 2001 Festivals Acadiens, David and Steve had been playing together for thirteen years, but it was not an easy job to kick off Lafayette’s Downtown Alive TGIF party the Friday after September 11. Somehow they managed to set the right tone, leading off with a beautiful waltz written by David and following up with a set that was both reverent and defiant.
In this interview, held the following day, David reminisced about his long love affair with the fiddle and Cajun music.
Did you start off playing Cajun music on the fiddle?
Actually no. I started playing the fiddle when I saw Richard Greene play with Seatrain in the early seventies. So I went out and bought a fiddle the next day, a nice Japanese plywood fiddle. I wish I still had it. Seatrain was opening for Black Sabbath that night in New Orleans, so I went from Black Sabbath to Flatt and Scruggs in one day! I was completely blown away by the instrument and when I got one, I found out it was easy. It seemed easy to play. I made up two songs the first day.
The first day? So you must have played something before that.
A little guitar. I was always real musical but I never really found an instrument until I found the fiddle. Of course, fiddlers were in short supply in that part of Louisiana, which was just east of Baton Rouge, where I grew up. So within a year I was on stage making money, which is a lot of incentive. On the stage, making money, and finding girl friends.
What were you playing then, bluegrass or country music?
I was playing in a band called “Cornbread,” which many years after we broke up got recognition from Bluegrass Unlimited for being one of the first punk bluegrass bands to ever exist. We played a lot of bluegrass, very much in love with Flatt and Scruggs and Ralph Stanley, and we did a lot of western swing later on, too. ...That went on for four or five years until our guitar player died in an accident. We kinda shut it down then.
When did you finally start playing Cajun music?
It was funny. After Cornbread broke up, I lived in Nashville and played in clubs around town. I had a family and didn’t want to travel. So I never got on the bus and did all that stuff. Left there and went to Texas, hoping to find some good swing musicians to play with. Found out they were pretty rare in the part of Texas I was in. Eventually got myself a gig as a solo artist in a restaurant called Boudreau’s in San Antonio. Bluffed my way into that gig by saying I knew how to play Cajun music. Got the gig, and since I was supporting myself and my family with music, my obsessions had to take a back seat until then. When I got the Cajun job, then I could get obsessed with Cajun music. I had the time. I’d always wanted to play Cajun music because my grandfather, whose name is Eddie Theriault from Ascension Parish, Louisiana, was an amateur Cajun fiddler. And my family was always really happy I took up the fiddle because that was my grandfather’s instrument, even though I never heard him play. So when I first heard Dewey Balfa, I just went nuts for it. It was the perfect music for me. …Nothing really suited or satisfied me like Cajun music because now I get to play songs. And I get to do variations on songs… So for me that’s perfect. And I’ve been doing that full time since the early eighties.
So how did you connect up with the Mamou Playboys?
I met Steve (Riley) at a jam session at Marc Savoy’s music store. It was a great day for me because that was the day I got to jam with Dennis McGee. That was a lot of fun. It was in November 1987. I played for hours with Dennis, just following him, just seconding him, you know. I’d played with a lot of old guys who’d play crooked tunes, so I had gotten pretty good at that. So he and I had a great time together. And I heard Steve play accordion and I found out Steve was living in Baton Rouge going to school, so we should get together and get some gigs. That’s what I was doing at the time -- hustling work. And we did. The first line-up was friends of mine that I hired and Steve kinda vetoed all that and said, “No, I’ve got a couple of guys.” So he brought in “Chop” Chapman and Kevin Barzas. And that was the Mamou Playboys. We played in that configuration for years and the year after that we got to play this festival, which was my dream come true. To go from nothing to playing main stage of Festivals Acadiens in such a short time for me was incredible. I got completely obsessed with the music, and the language, and the history. Plunged immediately into a study of the language so that I wouldn’t be embarrassing myself singing these songs. So I’d know what I was singing and be able to sing them with conviction.
You didn’t speak French before that at all?
No. My grandparents spoke French but each of my grandparents on each side of my family had married an Anglophone. So there was only English spoken in the home. So I was a completely assimilated Cajun kid, growing up on the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. But through the fiddle and through the music of Dewey and Marc Savoy and people like that, I was able to start doing the music of my own heritage.
What did it take to become comfortable playing Cajun music? There’s a groove that’s often difficult to pick up, but maybe you’re playing with these people all the time, so you could feel it...
That’s exactly it. You gotta get completely immersed in it and completely soak yourself in it. Once I stopped being a dilettante and focused on one thing, it still took a while. I listen to the early recordings that I did and I wince, you know. I saw a video of the Mamou Playboys playing at this festival in ’89 and I’m talking to myself on the screen, going “Can’t you hear what he’s doing? What are you thinking!” One thing that really helped me a lot was to get to apprentice with Dewey Balfa. When he sat me down in the living room and he pointed out the things that I was doing that sounded foreign to him. And just sit there and witness the power of his rhythm. And how it wasn’t the drummer, it wasn’t the guitar player, and it wasn’t the bass player that was the force in this music. It was his right hand. The power was in Dewey Balfa himself and that fiddle. That’s when the light started coming on for me.
...
...One of my crusades personally, I like to bring forward the old, old melodies that we find on field recordings that weren’t commercially popular. Because of commercial recording, it’s as if Cajun music passed through the eye of a needle. The people who made those records, to modern ears, it seems like all that Cajun music ever was or ever can be. And I don’t really agree with that. I love that music very much and I’ll always play it, but I like bringing the older styles along, too, and creating new music and putting all that together again.
With Steve Riley you do a lot of nice trio harmonies. Would you consider that untraditional?
Yes. The Balfa Brothers did a style of harmony singing but it usually would be one person singing the fifth all the way through a verse and the other person singing the melody. Because earlier on in the Playboys’ history, as a result of my bluegrass influences and Peter Schwartz’s old time and country music influences -- he grew up singing with his dad, Tracy Schwartz -- we were able to real easily put three part harmony on these songs. You find the right people and that chemistry happens. So it’s that background that we brought into Cajun music. And there’s nothing unusual about that. Cajun music, if it weren’t able to absorb influences and recycle them as Cajun, our music would still be reels and jigs from France. It would sound very European. But because we absorbed all this Caribbean music from the French-speaking blacks here, and all the blues, and whatever was on the radio in the thirties, we absorbed that and recycled it and made it Cajun.
...In the old days there were a lot varieties and styles of dances and songs that people would play. They would play what’s called a “round of dances.” They would include mazurkas, which is like a waltz in straight eight time. There’s something called a “varso-vienne” and I don’t even know what that is. They would play a polka. They would play a “Jim Crow,” whatever that was. I heard story-tellers talking about this. Somewhere along the line, I guess through the commercialization and commercial recording of Cajun music, it got distilled down to waltzes and two-steps. I think a lot of it has to do with the climate here. They used to have step dancing -- rhythmic, percussive dancing. But it’s just too hot.
...
[For this rest of this interview, subscribe to Fiddler Magazine!]
[Peter Anick, co-author of Mel Bay's Old Time Fiddling Across America, plays fiddle with the Massachusetts bluegrass band Wide Open Spaces (www.wideospaces.com).]
 Photo: Mer Boel
Robert Wilson: One-String Fiddler
By Mer Boel
Robert Wilson is a lively Scottish gentleman, ninety-eight years old, who had a busy music career in a group with his older brother and sister in the Rochester area of New York State from the mid-1920s until 1970 or so. Calling themselves the Scottish Trio, the Wilsons entertained church, civic and clan groups with their repertoire of slow airs and humorous songs from England, Scotland, and Ireland.
Lately he finds it more difficult to play his favorite instrument, the one-string violin, due to the pain of arthritis in his hands and a hearing loss that has made the constant use of hearing aids necessary. I met with him and his wife Marjorie (also Scottish) at their home outside Rochester, in The Highlands of Pittsford (a suitable place for them, entirely coincidental, they tell me).
Where in Scotland do you come from?
From Glasgow. I came over with my family in 1924, we were in Canada first for about a year, and then came to Rochester. There is a Scottish clan here, the McNaughton, they took us in very handsomely. They heard us play these Scottish melodies, and they just loved it. [Note: In Scotland, Wilson is a minor clan that is allied with the Gunn clan.]
How did you learn to play, from your father?
Yes, he played the one string fiddle but I just picked it up, I have never played with him. My family was musical -- it started way back in 1919. My father played violin, my sister Mary played piano, my older brother David played cello. Then when my father passed away I played the violin with my sister and brother. For church dinners, and banquets, we would play with violin and cello. Then we dropped that and had more fun on the one-string for lighter entertainment. And we sang Harry Lauder songs, like “Roamin’ in the Gloamin” -- that is the type of song we sang. If we had an English program we would sing all English songs, like “I Do Like an Egg for my Tea” [a music hall tune recorded by Harry Fay, among others]. We sang humorous songs, Scottish, Irish, and English. My memory is not as good as it used to be, but every so often at night if I can’t sleep, I remember a whole song, words and all.
My brother has my father’s one-string violin, the one that my father made, and I made this one in the late 1930s. We would play the one-string violins, and violin, cello and piano, and we sang, too. We could entertain for an hour and a half no trouble. We would play the slow ones -- we did “Annie Laurie,” “Bonnie Bonnie Banks of Loch Loman,” “Rowan Tree,” “Moonlight and Roses,” those are the types of things we would play on the one-string violins.
We toured all over this part of New York State, but usually we wouldn’t travel too far from home. But within that traveling area we were quite popular. I’m sure back twenty-five or thirty years ago there were many people still alive that would know us quite well. We got to be quite well known in this part of the state. And we had two other people we picked up that were good singers, and one was a good dancer, she could do the Scottish dances well. The Highland Fling and The Sword Dance, for instance.
Now did you get paid for these gigs?
Oh yes, sure.
So what was the pay rate like back then?
Not very much.
It isn’t very much now!
If we got $25 dollars we were doing good… that was a long time ago!
That’s between all of you, right?
Yes.
Would they collect money at the door?
No, these were dinner parties that were set up, for us to entertain, or a church group that wanted us to play. Usually our entertainment lasted about an hour and a half. It was all done for fun. In fact, I never thought any one else would be interested in this: to me it is just a fun thing. The Johnsons, who heard me play -- they’ve got this going, and I never expected to cause such a fuss.
Well, it is a real treat! It is not known of very much now, and shouldn’t be forgotten. Marjorie, how did the two of you meet?
Marjorie: During the war, in 1943, when I moved from Auburn to Rochester, I got a job at the Rochester Savings Bank, where Bert worked. He worked for them for forty-seven years! We got married in 1949.
Congratulations on your really long marriage!
Thanks, we haven’t done too bad.
...
Do you read music?
Oh yes! We’d memorize mostly for concerts, but we would learn sometimes from the printed page.
Do you have any recordings of your Trio?
We never had a tape of the three of us playing together. We had a record, one we made ourselves at home, but I don’t know where it is now. It wasn’t very good -- scratchy-sounding. Unfortunately we didn’t get a good tape of the three of us playing together. My brother moved to Cape Cod in 1969, and we never played together after that. My brother and sister have both passed away now. But I made a tape with my sister, oh, about fifteen or twenty years ago or so, we recorded it in Maryland, where she lives. It came out pretty good, do you want to hear it?
Yes, please!
---
We listened to the tape and Mr. Wilson played along with it in harmony on the one-string instrument beautifully for short stretches of time, and then it would become too hard for his fingers. On the tape the lonesome and mournful sound of the one-string comes across beautifully, with great feeling in the performance. The tape starts off with “Moonlight and Roses,” “Carry me back to Old Virginny,” “Old Black Joe,” “Annie Laurie,” and “Danny Boy,” all played on one-string violin with piano accompaniment. Then Mr. Wilson sings four songs with great energy, wonderful diction in a lovely tenor voice. The songs are: “I’m learning a Song for Christmas,” “MacDougal, McNab and McKay,” “Roamin in the Gloamin,” and “Waggle o’ the Kilt.” [See below for a link to MP3 audio on the internet.]
Mr. Wilson told me a story about the first song, “I’m learning a Song for Christmas.” When Robert and his family still lived in Glasgow, they went out one night to a music hall and were impressed by one of the songs they heard. When they got home that night, Robert’s father and brother figured out the song and all the words, and the Wilsons have performed it ever since. [It was recorded in 1917 by Jack Pleasants.]
––
About the instrument: Robert Wilson made his own one-string violin, patterning it after the one made by his father, that his brother David played after his father died. It has a mahogany back, spruce front, with a maple neck, in the shape of a cigar box with F holes. It uses a violin peg for a banjo-type steel string that is tuned to the lowest pitch needed for the tunes being played. It has a small bridge about 1/2" high placed at the center of the F holes. Inside the box are a sound post and corner reinforcement pieces. The instrument is played like a cello using a violin bow, and Mr. Wilson uses a slow vibrato for sweetness, sometimes sliding into and away from pitches, primarily using the middle finger, and other times fingering the notes with different fingers.
Do you change the tuning of the violin for each piece?
You tune the string to the lowest note in the whole concert.
Even when the pieces are in different keys?
Yes, you never mind that. You’ve got about two octaves, although it is hard on the fingers to play up high.
Would you normally just use all your fingers, or one finger more than another?
Yes, I would use the middle finger the most, especially to slide up and down. When you slide down, loosen your finger off the string a bit so it doesn’t sound as you are sliding. You just feel when you should take your finger off the string, and when to let the slide sound. You could learn this very fast!
Well, thank you for letting me try, and thanks for sharing your memories and your afternoon with me, it has been a pleasure.
––
Robert Wilson was kind enough to allow me to post streaming MP3 files of the pieces on the tape he made with his sister on a page of my band’s web site. The URL is www.waterbearmusic.com/robertwilson.html, and you can also get to it by going to the Links page of the waterbearmusic.com site and clicking on the photo of the one-string violin. I hope you enjoy his playing and singing as much as I have!
[For the full text of this interview, subscribe to Fiddler Magazine!]
[Mer Pantaleoni Boel is a composer, violinist, singer and writer who performs with her folk-classical-jazz string group Water Bear, based in Ithaca, New York. She writes music for fiddles, orchestra, small ensembles, and for film. You can find Water Bear CDs at CDBaby.com and CDs as well as sheet music at WaterBearMusic.com.]
(
Left to right: Tracy Bohn, Kalli Harbin, Kristi Thetford, Stacy Bohn )
Ranchdance Fiddlers: Four Young Women Carry on the Tradition
By Joe Carr
The dream fiddle student -- dedicated, willing to practice, knowledgeable, has a large repertoire and a great attitude. Teachers know students like this are few and far between. I have four such fiddle students.
In twenty years of teaching in the Commercial Music program at South Plains College in Levelland, Texas, I have only had a few fiddle students who were comfortable with the basic western fiddle repertoire, had an understanding of chord theory, and were accomplished at solo improvisation. Most often these are the very areas students come to college to study. The tunes come easy, but for many, the ad-lib soloing ideas are more elusive. It is truly remarkable then, that South Plains College can currently boast four such fiddlers. Ranging in age from nineteen to twenty-two, these young women know a vast body of fiddle music, understand chords and progressions, and can solo comfortably and appropriately over chord changes. Where did they come from?
I had to look no further than Lubbock, Texas, fiddle teacher and bandleader Lanny Fiel. I profiled Fiel in this publication in summer 1998. His Ranchdance Fiddle Band (www.ranchdance.com) is a unique expression of Fiel’s dedication to the preservation of authentic dance music as played at Texas ranch dances in the 1880s through modern times. Through his tireless music writing, documentation, recording, teaching, band management, and performances, he has single-handedly pulled this beautiful music back from the brink of extinction. As many of his musicians left the band for college and careers, Fiel trained new younger fiddlers from his private studio to take their places. In the process, he has trained a new generation of young fiddlers in this attractive style. The current crop seems ready to stay a while. Who are these young women?
Kristi Thetford, Tracy and Stacy Bohn, and Kalli Harbin are all products of Fiel’s teaching studio and band. Along with long-time member Lillie Hart and multi-instrumentalist Fiel, they form the current fiddle line-up of the Ranchdance Fiddle Band. Although they are all currently in college and preparing for various careers, they have each made a commitment to the continued life of Fiel’s group. These four share many similarities and yet each have unique musical personalities.
Twenty-year-old Kristi Thetford started orchestra on violin in the sixth grade at age twelve. A year later, she began private violin lessons with Fiel. In addition to classical music studies, he introduced Kristi to fiddle music. She eventually played for a total of seven years with her high school orchestra and the Lubbock Youth Symphony. Fiel moved her towards playing with his fiddle band. “It was fun,” Kristi remembers. “The orchestra was so structured and don’t do this, don’t do that and in the fiddle music, you could just be free and do what you wanted.” Kristi started learning the band’s repertoire by ear and by note. She was soon playing regularly with the band at Lubbock’s Ranching Heritage Center and as she puts it, “anyplace where barbeque was served.” At a performance in New Mexico, she met fiddler Bobby Boatwright and other members of Bob Wills’ Texas Playboys.
Kristi remembers her first attempt at improvised soloing. She was a member of the “small fries,” Fiel’s name for his younger students who appeared periodically with the Ranch Dance Band. During a performance of “My Buddy,” Fiel turned to Kristi and told her to take a solo. “He had taught me pentatonic scales and stuff, but that was all I knew,” she recalls. Afterwards, Fiel said, “See, you can do it!” “I wasn’t sliding around or using flat thirds or anything -- just pentatonic scales,” she remembers.
Fiel used a special technique with his students to help develop their improvising. Kristi explains: “He would say, ‘here’s a question, make an answer.’ And he said there are notes you can end on that will make tension that could be questions. And then there are resolving notes that would be the answers. So he’d play a question and you’d have to play the answer.”
After pentatonic scales, Fiel introduced Kristi to specific chord tones including flatted sevenths and ninths. He discussed dominant seventh chords and how to play them. With Kristi playing arpeggios of various chords, Fiel explained the various tones that would work against each one. She remembers that after one of these sessions Fiel said, “Now I want you to forget everything I just told you and just play.” Although she was initially scared of making up solos on the fly, Kristi now loves this part of fiddling and is considered one of the better soloists in the band. Fiel did have her learn a recorded solo note by note. It was a Bobby Boatwright hot solo from “An Old Watermill by a Waterfall.” Although the band plays this song, Fiel told her not to play that solo but to make up her own. “He wanted me to understand what Bobby was thinking when he was playing… what notes he was playing with the chords and why they were working,” she recalls.
At South Plains College, Kristi plays in a top 40-type country music ensemble and The South Plains Playboys, a Bob Wills-style western swing band. Although she learns specific licks from recordings for the top 40 band, she uses her improvisational skills in swing. She observes, “In the swing band, a lot of attention is put on the fiddle players and in the country band, more is put on the singers.” Kristi concludes with this good advice from Fiel, “If I’m in a key and it’s hard to remember where my pattern is, he says put your first finger on that note and play the pentatonic pattern, and it works!”
Tracy and Stacy Bohn are home-schooled Shallowater, Texas, natives. The twenty-two-year-old twins are Sound Technology majors at South Plains College and are consistently on he president’s list for academic achievement. They also play fiddle in the South Plains College Irish band, County Hockley. ...
The twins had been volunteers at Lubbock’s Ranching Heritage Center since the first grade and learned numerous historical dances they demonstrated with the band on special ranch days. When they were sixteen, their mother asked them if they would like to start fiddle lessons. Tracy remembers thinking, “No way,” but Stacy liked the idea and soon they were taking weekly lessons with Fiel. Having a practice partner helped them progress quickly. “I don’t remember ever practicing without my sister,” Stacy recalls. With only a few tunes learned, Fiel invited the girls to play at a ranch dance. “He told us we could just stand in the back, but at the dance he pushed us to the front. We were scared to death!” Tracy remembers. Stacy recalls, “He told us he wouldn’t make us play solo, but he did!” She continues, “That was much of Lanny’s approach. He wanted to convince us we could do it and he knew our personalities. We wanted to stay in the background and make sure we got it right. He was like, ‘Come up! You’re doing a solo.’”
Very soon, the twins were learning and memorizing much of the ranch dance repertoire. Stacy typically learned the high harmony (called second in Fiel’s band) and Tracy played third (below the lead.) Four months after they started, and knowing only five tunes, Fiel had them play with the band at a Ranching Heritage Center dance. Tracy remembers the first tunes included “Tommy, Don’t Go,” “Westphalia Waltz,” “Texas Waltz,” and “Little Brown Jug.” In addition to lead and harmony parts, Fiel started the twins improvising solos very early on. Tracy remembers, “As soon as we understood some scales… we hadn’t been playing but a couple of months when Lanny sat down at the piano and said ‘Here are your options, this is D pentatonic, here are the notes you can play –– GO!’” Stacy explains, “I remember the lesson the first time we sat down and played a solo [improvised] and Lanny called it a ‘quantum leap.’ We had broken through and understood it.” Tracy also remembers Fiel using the question and answer technique and him yelling encouragement during their solo attempts –– “More guts, more guts!”
...
Tracy and Stacy took on some responsibility to help set up and run the band’s sound system. They also began working after school and on weekends in Fiel’s home recording studio. It was shortly after this that Stacy took over the maintenance of the band’s website. Stacy says that by the time they graduated from high school, they were really interested in studio work. This led them in 2002 to become Sound Technology majors at South Plains College. The girls are attracted to both the musical and technical worlds. Stacy comments, “I’d love to sit down and run front of house [sound] for the Ranchdance Fiddle Band but I want to be up there playing, too!”
...
At nineteen, Kalli Harbin is the youngest of the quartet. After beginning piano at age six, she started competing in guild competitions. Her grandfather bought her a violin when she was eleven and she started lessons with Sue Baer. She eventually started playing in the Lubbock Youth Symphony. Because she kept asking to learn some fiddle tunes, Baer arranged for Kalli, at age thirteen, to have a few lessons with Fiel. “The first time we went it was to see if I would want to take from him, but he never gave me a chance to just see... as soon as I was there, I was already his student,” Kalli remembers. With ten tunes learned, Fiel made Kalli a member of the small fries group. Kristi and the twins were already playing with the big group at this time. At a Ranching Heritage Center dance, Kalli and the other small fries got to play with the big band. “That’s when I decided I wanted to get a lot better,” she recalls. Her strong reading skills helped her learn much of the band’s repertoire in a short time. She was also learning to improvise solos. During a live radio broadcast featuring the band, Fiel announced on air after Kalli soloed, “That’s it folks! She’s officially a medium fry now.” From then on, she played with the big band.
Kalli learned open position pentatonic scales for improvising and was comfortable in several keys. The next step was learning pentatonic patterns in position. She recalls, “He [Fiel] showed me in the key of C, how you move your hand, first finger up to second position and just play patterns. Then he showed me how, if you have this pattern on these strings, you just move it over to the other strings for another key.” Kalli finally got her own microphone for the first time at a performance in Claude, Texas. Although it wasn’t announced officially, she knew she was a “big fry.”
Kalli took an interest in teaching young fiddlers at a time when Fiel had less and less time to devote to teaching. Her fiddlers learn the ranch dance repertoire. She now has around fifteen students. Despite her plans to major in Engineering, she will keep performing in the band as long as she is in the Lubbock area. She, in many ways, is the answer to Fiel’s desire that some of his students would pass on the band’s music to future generations.
...
[For the full text of this article, subscribe to Fiddler Magazine!]
[Since 1985, Joe Carr has been a music instructor specializing in bluegrass, western swing and Irish music in the Commercial Music program at South Plains College in Levelland, Texas. Joe is a former member of the internationally-known Country Gazette bluegrass band, and also toured extensively with banjo player Alan Munde throughout the U.S., Canada and England. He has developed and appeared in over thirty instructional music videos for Mel Bay Publications and Texas Music & Video. He has written many instructional book/CD combinations and has a growing number of DVDs available. Joe writes regular columns for Flatpicking Guitar Magazine and Mandolin Magazine, and is the editor for Mel Bay’s webzine Mandolin Sessions (www.melbay.com/mandolinsessions). Joe can be seen and heard at www.acousticmusician.com/JoeCarr.html] |
