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    <description>A quarterly magazine for fiddlers of all levels and styles. Site includes extensive excerpts from the magazine, hundreds of fiddle-related links, and much more.</description>
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      <description>&lt;!--StartFragment--&gt;
&lt;p class="BasicParagraph"&gt;Seamus McGuire, originally from County Sligo, enjoys a dual career: medical doctor specializing in pediatrics and professional musician. Born into a very musical family, his parents played music, as do his sisters and his brother Manus (by the way, also a doctor). Seamus now lives on the shores of Lough Swilly in County Donegal with his wife Una. Their sons Patrick and Neil are following in the McGuire family tradition &amp;ndash;&amp;ndash; both are medical students and both play the fiddle!&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="BasicParagraph"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%"&gt;From the beginning, Seamus managed to bridge the classical and traditional worlds &amp;ndash;&amp;ndash; winning prestigious fiddle contests (Fiddler of Dooney, The Oireachtas) and playing with the Dublin Symphony Orchestra. A bit later, the influential group Buttons and Bows featured Seamus, his brother Manus, Jackie Daly, and&amp;nbsp;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%"&gt;Garry O&amp;rsquo;Briain. His highly-acclaimed solo album &lt;/span&gt;&lt;i&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:
10.0pt;line-height:120%;font-family:Times-Italic;mso-bidi-font-family:Times-Italic"&gt;The Wishing Tree&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%"&gt; melds classical with traditional, as does his ongoing work with the West Ocean String Quartet, who have just released their third CD,&lt;/span&gt;&lt;i&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%;font-family:Times-Italic;mso-bidi-font-family:
Times-Italic"&gt; Ae Fond Kiss.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;
line-height:120%"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;img align="left" border="0" hspace="10" vspace="0" width="325" height="260" alt="" src="/_mndata/fiddle/uploaded_images/936580.jpg" /&gt;
&lt;p class="BasicParagraph"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%"&gt;I was delighted to be able to talk to Seamus about his background and influences, as well as his current work.&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="BasicParagraph"&gt;&lt;i&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%;
font-family:Times-Italic;mso-bidi-font-family:Times-Italic"&gt;You and your brother Manus are from Sligo, right? So you began your playing there?&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="BasicParagraph"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%"&gt;Yes, we did, starting at the early age of six or seven. Our parents, Paddy and Jo, loved music and both played &amp;ndash;&amp;ndash; our mom was a fine violin player and our dad played piano. They shared a particular love of Irish traditional music, and encouraged us to play from a very early age. I think we were very fortunate to grow up in the kind of musical environment in which classical music was encouraged as well as Irish music, and that gave us a broadly based interest in music of different kinds. Yehudi Menuhin was on our family record player as often as Michael Coleman and James Morrison!&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="BasicParagraph"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%"&gt;One of the interesting things that happened in our house as we grew up was the arrival of musical friends of our parents, including some from the United States. Among our visitors was the celebrated New York-based fiddler, Lad O&amp;rsquo;Beirne, whose younger brother, Dick O&amp;rsquo;Beirne, was an English teacher in Sligo Grammar School and a good friend of my parents. Lad was a very influential fiddle player in New York as a younger man, and his dad, Phil O&amp;rsquo;Beirne, taught Michael Coleman how to play. Lad would visit our home in Sligo, bring his fiddle, play great tunes for us kids, and send us recordings of sessions from New York. Looking back on it now, that was a really inspiring start to our traditional music education!&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="BasicParagraph"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%"&gt;I also met Paddy Killoran, another great US-based Irish fiddle player, at a Fleadh Ceoil in Mayo when I was a small boy&amp;hellip; So we had a very interesting time when we were kids, meeting other musicians and hearing lots of different types of music, and playing in competitions such as the Fleadh Ceoil and the Sligo Feis Ceoil, one traditional, the other classical.&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="BasicParagraph"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%"&gt;My sisters studied piano and the Irish harp, and Manus and I concentrated on the fiddle. One of my sisters, Fiona, played piano along with John Lee and myself on our album &lt;/span&gt;&lt;i&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%;
font-family:Times-Italic;mso-bidi-font-family:Times-Italic"&gt;The Missing Reel, &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%"&gt;which is an exploration of music from Leitrim and Sligo. So to get back to your question, I had a very musical family with lots of support and encouragement from the beginning &amp;ndash;&amp;ndash; a great start to my life in music.&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="BasicParagraph"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%"&gt;Sadly our dad, Paddy, died in June 2009, but his musical legacy lives on through his family &amp;ndash;&amp;ndash; most of his grandchildren are fine young musicians, something which made him very proud.&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="BasicParagraph"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%"&gt;To take my own musical story a step further, I had to make a big decision when I reached the age of seventeen &amp;ndash;&amp;ndash; I had to decide which career I was going to pursue and I was quite interested in music as a career. But I also enjoyed science in school and had an interest in studying medicine. My parents encouraged me, I think, in the direction of medicine rather than music. Initially I was undecided and I brought my fiddle over to college in Galway and played a bit, but I decided to concentrate on medicine as my career, and I&amp;rsquo;ve absolutely no regrets. I&amp;rsquo;ve had a very rewarding and interesting life in pediatrics, and I feel privileged to have had this most interesting career. I managed to keep my music going as well, which is something that some people find a little bit unusual &amp;ndash;&amp;ndash; but it can be done with a lot of careful planning and time management, and I don&amp;rsquo;t play golf [laughter], which is the standard answer I give when people ask me (which they often do) where I find time for music and medicine &amp;ndash;&amp;ndash; I don&amp;rsquo;t play golf, unlike many of my medical colleagues!&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="BasicParagraph"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%"&gt;My brother Manus is a doctor, too &amp;ndash;&amp;ndash; he&amp;rsquo;s a GP, a family physician, in East Clare &amp;ndash;&amp;ndash; in a place called Scarriff on the shores of Lough Derg &amp;ndash;&amp;ndash; where there&amp;rsquo;s a deep-rooted interest in traditional music. And I live in Donegal, in the northwest of Ireland, where traditional music is also very prominent &amp;ndash;&amp;ndash; we&amp;rsquo;ve got well-known groups such as Altan and Clannad, and many other well-known musicians such as Tommy Peoples and Dermot Byrne have also come from this part of the world.&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="BasicParagraph"&gt;&lt;i&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%;
font-family:Times-Italic;mso-bidi-font-family:Times-Italic"&gt;I read that you did an internship in Canada?&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="BasicParagraph"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%"&gt;I did my residency training in pediatrics at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, a famous medical institution with a world-wide reputation, an inspiring place to work and study. A life-&lt;span style="letter-spacing:-.1pt"&gt;changing experience which I still feel so lucky to have completed&amp;hellip;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="BasicParagraph"&gt;&lt;i&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%;
font-family:Times-Italic;mso-bidi-font-family:Times-Italic"&gt;Did that get you learning different styles of tunes?&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;
line-height:120%"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="BasicParagraph"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%"&gt;It was really amazing how it worked out. I went to Toronto as a young medical graduate to do my post-graduate residency in pediatrics, and purely by good fortune, I arrived in a place which introduced me to the world of non-Irish fiddle music! At Canadian folk festivals I had an opportunity to meet fiddle players from Cape Breton, the Ottawa Valley, Scandinavia, and the United States &amp;ndash;&amp;ndash; in fact, I played briefly in a band called Hang the Piper with Ian Robb, a well-known Ottawa-based folk singer. We played at a few festivals in North America &amp;ndash;&amp;ndash; including the Philadelphia Folk Festival one year&amp;hellip; and we performed at a very beautiful festival called Mariposa, held every summer on the magical Toronto islands. There I had the opportunity to meet Tom Anderson, the great Shetland fiddle player who was an iconic figure in Shetland and Scottish fiddling. I was really glad to have had a chance to meet him at Mariposa, and again some years later at a fiddle festival in Shetland. My brother Manus came to Canada when I was there, during his vacation from medical school &amp;ndash;&amp;ndash; he played the fiddle for the whole summer, and made some good friends in the music world in Toronto at that time.&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="BasicParagraph"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%"&gt;That was the period in 1980 when we recorded our first fiddle duet album, for a label called Folk Legacy, based in Sharon, Connecticut, under the kindly guidance of Sandy Paton, a great supporter of our music. The album was titled &lt;/span&gt;&lt;i&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%;font-family:Times-Italic;mso-bidi-font-family:
Times-Italic"&gt;The Humours of Lissadell&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;
line-height:120%"&gt; after a reel of the same name. Lissadell is a beautiful coastal place in County Sligo made famous by W.B. Yeats. He wrote some of his most beautiful poems about Lissadell House and the Gore-Booth family who lived there.&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="BasicParagraph"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%"&gt;A short while later I met the great box-player, Jackie Daly, in Toronto. He was over there on tour with De Dannan and we played at a memorable session in downtown Toronto one evening. That was the start of the next chapter &amp;ndash;&amp;ndash; because a few years later, in 1983 back in Ireland, Manus and I and Jackie Daly formed a band with Garry O&amp;rsquo;Briain, the mandocello and guitar player. We called the band Buttons and Bows. We recorded two albums with Green Linnet and one with Gael Linn. The interesting thing for Manus and me was that we were able to bring back to Ireland a lot of the music which we had learned in Canada from such far-flung places as Sweden and Shetland.&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="MsoNormal"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt"&gt;Manus and I and Jackie recorded Canadian waltzes, which had never really been played very much in Ireland before. And this was a new, exciting time because we brought music from Canada, Nova Scotia, Cape Breton and Shetland, which we had learned in Toronto, back to Ireland, where some of the tunes may have originated&amp;hellip;you could say the circle was completed!&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="BasicParagraph"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%"&gt;&amp;hellip;.&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="BasicParagraph"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%"&gt;[For the rest of this interview, along with Seamus&amp;rsquo; transcription of &amp;ldquo;Esther&amp;rsquo;s Reel&amp;rdquo; (played on the West Ocean String Quartet&amp;rsquo;s new CD, &lt;i style="mso-bidi-font-style:
normal"&gt;Ae Fond Kiss,&lt;/i&gt; as well as on Buttons and Bows&amp;rsquo; first album, entitled &lt;i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"&gt;Buttons and Bows&lt;/i&gt;), &lt;a target="_blank" href="Store-Subscribe.page"&gt;subscribe to &lt;/a&gt;&lt;i&gt;&lt;a href="Store-Subscribe.page"&gt;Fiddler Magazine&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;a href="Store-Subscribe.page"&gt;, or purchase the summer 2010 issue&lt;/a&gt;.]&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="BasicParagraph" style="text-align:justify"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;
line-height:120%"&gt;[The West Ocean String Quartet&amp;rsquo;s new CD, &lt;/span&gt;&lt;i&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%;font-family:Times-Italic;mso-bidi-font-family:
Times-Italic"&gt;Ae Fond Kiss, &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;
line-height:120%"&gt;with special guest Maighread Ni Dhomhnaill, has just been released. For more information, please visit their website at &lt;a target="_blank" href="http://www.wosq.com"&gt;www.wosq.com&lt;/a&gt;.]&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="BasicParagraph"&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%"&gt;[Tim McCarrick works as a music editor for J.W. Pepper. He has written about fiddle playing for Fiddler Magazine and Mel Bay&amp;rsquo;s Fiddle Sessions website. He has nearly 20 arrangements published for school orchestras from Mozart and Beethoven to Gershwin and Led Zeppelin, and he is also working on a string method book, and that, ladies and gentlemen, is why he never updates the Irish Fiddle website! He lives in Chester County, Pennsylvania, with one wife, two daughters, two dogs, and lots of stringed instruments.]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;em&gt;  &lt;!--EndFragment--&gt;   Photo above by Shane McCarthy. West Ocean String Quartet, left to right: Seamus McGuire, Niamh Crowley, Ken Rice, Neil Martin.&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/em&gt;</description>
      <link>http://www.fiddle.com/Articles.page?ArticleID=49744</link>
      <pubDateParsed>2010-07-30T14:11:27.9341758Z</pubDateParsed>
      <title>Seamus McGuire: An Ocean of Music</title>
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    <item>
      <description>&lt;span style="font-size: small; "&gt;It was past four in the morning when the man with the white hair and the black vest walked into the campsite at the Galax Old Fiddlers&amp;rsquo; Convention. A band of twenty-somethings were already there, charging through a romping version of some old time tune or other. When they were done, the fiddler nodded toward the fiddle case the man in the straw hat had brought with him.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;!--StartFragment--&gt; &lt;/span&gt;
&lt;p class="BasicParagraph"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small; "&gt;&lt;span style="line-height: 120%; "&gt;&amp;ldquo;Can you play that thing, old man?&amp;rdquo; the fiddler asked.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="BasicParagraph"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small; "&gt;&lt;span style="line-height: 120%; "&gt;&amp;ldquo;I might be able to get a little something out of it,&amp;rdquo; he answered.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="BasicParagraph"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small; "&gt;&lt;span style="line-height: 120%; "&gt;Saying that his hands were a little stiff, and that he didn&amp;rsquo;t know how well he&amp;rsquo;d be able to do this late at night, the newcomer took a while to get his fiddle out and rosin his bow. When he finally started fiddling, you could almost hear the jaws around the campsite dropping.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="BasicParagraph"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small; "&gt;&lt;span style="line-height: 120%; "&gt;Buddy Pendleton has that effect on people.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;span style="font-size: small; "&gt; &lt;img align="left" border="0" hspace="10" vspace="0" width="225" height="338" alt="" src="/_mndata/fiddle/uploaded_images/936567.jpg" /&gt; &lt;/span&gt;
&lt;p class="BasicParagraph"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small; "&gt;&lt;span style="line-height: 120%; "&gt;Buddy was a mailman in Patrick County, Virginia, for just over forty years. His previous job was fiddling for Bill Monroe&amp;rsquo;s Bluegrass Boys. Before that, he played and recorded with the Greenbriar Boys and performed with Joan Baez. After Buddy became a mailman, he won the title of World Champion Fiddler at Union Grove contest five consecutive years. And his fluid, powerful playing still takes people by surprise.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="BasicParagraph"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small; "&gt;&lt;span style="line-height: 120%; "&gt;Buddy lives about a mile and a half from where he was born, in Lone Ivy, just below Lovers Leap. He came into the world a little more than two weeks before Christmas in 1935. Buddy tried the banjo and guitar before settling on the fiddle.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="BasicParagraph"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small; "&gt;&lt;span style="line-height: 120%; "&gt;&amp;ldquo;Santa Claus brought me a fiddle when I was about eleven or twelve years old and I started trying to saw on it,&amp;rdquo; Buddy said. &amp;ldquo;At that time there wasn&amp;rsquo;t a teacher in the whole valley there. Not one close enough for me to tune in on.&amp;rdquo;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="BasicParagraph"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small; "&gt;&lt;span style="line-height: 120%; "&gt;So Buddy turned to the family&amp;rsquo;s crank-up record player for instruction. &amp;ldquo;After I got started working on the fiddle some, I liked Tommy Jackson&amp;rsquo;s fiddling pretty well. He had some records out and I used to get a few of those to learn tunes from,&amp;rdquo; he said. &amp;ldquo;And there was a fiddler, Buddy Durham. His records were advertised some. I used to hear some of that. And I listened to the Grand Ole Opry a little bit.&amp;rdquo;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="BasicParagraph"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small; "&gt;&lt;span style="line-height: 120%; "&gt;Buddy mentioned Howdy Forrester, Kenny Baker, and Chubby Wise as influences, too. &amp;ldquo;I liked that old Fiddlin&amp;rsquo; Arthur Smith,&amp;rdquo; Buddy said. &amp;ldquo;Not the one, you know, that came along later and created &amp;lsquo;Dueling Banjos,&amp;rsquo; but the one that was into the fiddling.&amp;rdquo;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="BasicParagraph"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small; "&gt;&lt;span style="line-height: 120%; letter-spacing: -0.05pt; "&gt;But not every song he learned came off a record or out of a radio.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="line-height: 120%; "&gt; &lt;span style="letter-spacing: -0.1pt; "&gt;His mother played guitar and harmonica. His father played Charlie&lt;/span&gt; Poole-style banjo. His uncle played fiddle.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="BasicParagraph"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small; "&gt;&lt;span style="line-height: 120%; "&gt;&amp;ldquo;I&amp;rsquo;d also been listening to my dad and my uncle play some music. Sometimes on a Sunday afternoon they&amp;rsquo;d have a little session at my Grandpa Pendleton&amp;rsquo;s home. So after Santa Claus brought me the fiddle, I started trying to learn to play it. And after I learned to keep time a little bit, I was able to pick up a few tunes from my uncle Delmar that way.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="BasicParagraph"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small; "&gt;&lt;span style="line-height: 120%; "&gt;&amp;ldquo;There was one other fiddler I would hear play some. But I didn&amp;rsquo;t concentrate on learning tunes from him as much as I did my uncle Delmar. The other fiddler was a Pendleton, too, and I guess we were related a little bit. His name was Gervis Pendleton. He played quite a bit around through the community there.&amp;rdquo;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="BasicParagraph"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small; "&gt;&lt;span style="line-height: 120%; "&gt;Pendletons settled in Patrick County nearly two decades before the Revolutionary War began and they&amp;rsquo;re still pretty thick on the ground there. And they&amp;rsquo;ve long been playing music there. His father and uncle played at Christmas parties back when Christmas was celebrated for two weeks or so.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="BasicParagraph"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small; "&gt;&lt;span style="line-height: 120%; "&gt;&amp;ldquo;And also there used to be old-timey corn shuckings going on up in the valley there,&amp;rdquo; Buddy said. Farmers would gather in their corn and then invite the neighbors. &amp;ldquo;And the neighbor farmers would come in and the women folk would cook up a big supper, and the men folk would shuck out the pile of corn. And I used to hear a little music, you know, the local music at those corn shuckings.&amp;rdquo;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="BasicParagraph"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small; "&gt;&lt;span style="line-height: 120%; "&gt;Buddy played at Lone Ivy gatherings, too. He played at frolics and square dances and the Buffalo Ridge Pentecostal Church. And when he was fourteen, Buddy played in his first fiddler&amp;rsquo;s contest. He won. &amp;ldquo;So I got interested in fiddlers&amp;rsquo; conventions,&amp;rdquo; Buddy said.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="BasicParagraph"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small; "&gt;&lt;span style="line-height: 120%; "&gt;He played and won at a lot of regional conventions. His best stretch was thirteen wins in a row. He won Galax. He won Union Grove. He&amp;rsquo;s the only person to win it five times in a row.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="BasicParagraph"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small; "&gt;&lt;span style="line-height: 120%; "&gt;It was at Union Grove that Buddy met Ralph Rinzler, mandolin player for the Greenbriar Boys. Buddy joined the band for its first album on the Vanguard label. He was with the band when they played with Joan Baez. A couple of years later, Rinzler was Bill Monroe&amp;rsquo;s band manager. He called Buddy to ask if he&amp;rsquo;d like to be a Bluegrass Boy. It sounded like exciting times, driving around in an old Oldsmobile station wagon with a bass fiddle tied on top, playing with legends and legends-to-be every night, collecting stories.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="BasicParagraph"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small; "&gt;&lt;span style="line-height: 120%; "&gt;Once, Buddy and his band mates didn&amp;rsquo;t think to haul the bass in when they stopped for the night. When Monroe caught up to the band the next morning, the bass was still on top of the car and water from the night&amp;rsquo;s rain was sloshing around inside.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="BasicParagraph"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small; "&gt;&lt;span style="line-height: 120%; "&gt;Another time, Monroe was napping in the front passenger seat while Buddy drove. Buddy didn&amp;rsquo;t slow down quite enough when he came to a set of railroad tracks. The station wagon bounced hard enough to break a bolt holding the steering together &amp;ndash;&amp;ndash; and to wake the Father of Bluegrass pretty completely.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="BasicParagraph"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small; "&gt;Buddy was with the band for less than a year. But it wasn&amp;rsquo;t his driving or his playing or his part in the soggy bass episode that ended his time with the Bluegrass Boys. Buddy didn&amp;rsquo;t like the traveling. He&amp;rsquo;d just gotten married. And he had a job offer back in Patrick County, working for the postal service. Those jobs don&amp;rsquo;t come along very often. People who get them tend to hold onto them until they retire. And that&amp;rsquo;s what Buddy did. He came off the road with the Bluegrass Boys to deliver mail along the rural roads of Patrick County.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="BasicParagraph"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small; "&gt;&lt;span style="line-height: 120%; "&gt;&amp;hellip;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="BasicParagraph"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small; "&gt;&lt;span style="line-height: 120%; "&gt;[For the rest of this article, as well as Jack Hinshelwood&amp;rsquo;s transcription of &amp;ldquo;Angeline the Baker&amp;rdquo; as played by Buddy Pendleton, &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%"&gt;&lt;a target="_blank" href="Store-Subscribe.page"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small; "&gt;subscribe to Fiddler Magazine, or purchase the summer 2010 issue&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small; "&gt;.]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="BasicParagraph"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small; "&gt;&lt;span style="line-height: 120%; font-family: Cambria; color: windowtext; "&gt;Recordings available from:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%;
font-family:Cambria;mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-bidi-font-family:&amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;;mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;
color:windowtext"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small; "&gt;&lt;span style="line-height: 120%; font-family: Cambria; color: windowtext; "&gt;&lt;a target="_blank" href="http://www.summerskyproductions.com"&gt;www.summerskyproductions.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%;
font-family:Cambria;mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-bidi-font-family:&amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;;mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;
color:windowtext"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small; "&gt;; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;a target="_blank" href="http://www.oldbluerecords.com"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small; "&gt;www.oldbluerecords.com&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="BasicParagraph"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small; "&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;span style="line-height: 120%; "&gt;[Tim Thornton grew up in Appalachia and then got a degree for studying it. He teaches English and works on the radio in Roanoke, but he lives, writes, and plays most of his music in Shawsville, Virginia. His fiddle is nearly six feet tall and is almost always played pizzicato.]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="BasicParagraph"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small; "&gt;&lt;em&gt;Photo above by Christine McKenney.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;!--EndFragment--&gt;</description>
      <link>http://www.fiddle.com/Articles.page?ArticleID=49743</link>
      <pubDateParsed>2010-07-30T14:11:27.9341758Z</pubDateParsed>
      <title>Buddy Pendleton: Still Delivering</title>
    </item>
    <item>
      <description>&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%"&gt;Fifteen years ago I listened for the first time to a two-CD compilation of Swedish folk music entitled &lt;/span&gt;&lt;i&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%;
font-family:Times-Italic;mso-bidi-font-family:Times-Italic"&gt;&amp;Aring;rsringar. &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%"&gt;Most of the Swedish folk music I had heard previously was very traditional, played on one, two, or three fiddles, usually with relatively fixed harmony parts. The wide-ranging &lt;/span&gt;&lt;i&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%;font-family:Times-Italic;mso-bidi-font-family:
Times-Italic"&gt;&amp;Aring;rsringar &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:
120%"&gt;collection presented quite a different picture. It covered the evolution of Swedish folk music between 1970 and 1990, a twenty-year period of great discovery and creativity. Its styles ranged from unaccompanied tunes played on fiddle, bagpipe, or whistle in the older styles to wild and newly composed pieces played by ensembles of percussion, horns, electric guitars, and synthesizers.&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;p class="BasicParagraph"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%"&gt;The recording opened with a beautiful tune called &amp;ldquo;Fast&amp;auml;n&amp;rdquo; played by a band called Groupa, with an enthralling arrangement of fiddle, flute, cornet, and bass clarinet. Though newly written, the tune sounded very Swedish, and the arrangement and instrumentation were innovative and captivating. There was a second very different and more traditional tune by Groupa on the same collection. Impressed with their music and curious to hear more, I bought a couple of their recordings and was hooked. While all Groupa&amp;rsquo;s musicians were excellent, the player whose music held me most was Mats Ed&amp;eacute;n. In addition to playing fiddle, button accordion, and something called a drone fiddle, Mats also composed several beautiful tunes on each Groupa recording. &lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;img align="left" border="0" hspace="10" vspace="0" width="225" height="290" alt="" src="/_mndata/fiddle/uploaded_images/936573.jpg" /&gt;
&lt;p class="BasicParagraph"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%"&gt;In the ensuing years I have come to appreciate Mats Ed&amp;eacute;n as one of Sweden&amp;rsquo;s greatest folk musicians, a multi-faceted player and composer deeply rooted in tradition, yet brimming with new ideas and possibilities. In both his traditional and contemporary music you will find a wide variety of musical modes, rhythms, and emotions. His tunes can be both melancholy and joyous, pensive and uplifting, startling and soothing. They can paint a picture of his favorite places, or make you want to dance, cry, or sit and wonder. But they usually make you feel good.&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="BasicParagraph"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%"&gt;&amp;hellip;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="BasicParagraph"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%"&gt;But that&amp;rsquo;s not all. Mats is also an accomplished composer of classical, contemporary, and folk-based music. He has written concertos for violin, cello, saxophone, and other instruments. In 2008 his set of five folk &amp;ldquo;suites&amp;rdquo; for recorder, accordion, percussion, nyckelharpa, viola, and cello was premiered on live radio throughout Europe. Those compositions, including a piece called &amp;ldquo;Bj&amp;ouml;rndansen&amp;rdquo; (Bear Dance), were meant to convey, in Mats&amp;rsquo; words, &amp;ldquo;a deep connection with history, close to the earth, which means it is natural, honest, and does not have a stiff upper lip!&amp;rdquo; &lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="BasicParagraph"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%"&gt;&amp;hellip;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="BasicParagraph"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%"&gt;In addition to accordion and a standard violin, Mats plays a unique instrument he calls a &lt;/span&gt;&lt;i&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%;font-family:
Times-Italic;mso-bidi-font-family:Times-Italic"&gt;bordunfiol,&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%"&gt; or drone fiddle. This instrument was inspired by Norwegian Hardanger fiddles and sympathetic string fiddles developed by Anders Ros&amp;eacute;n and others in Sweden. Mats&amp;rsquo; bordunfiol, made by Anders Norrude, a well-known musician and maker of fine and unusual instruments, has a viola body with the scale length of a standard violin. The five playing strings and five sympathetic strings can be tuned in various ways to suit each piece of music. &lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="BasicParagraph"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%"&gt;I interviewed Mats at his home in Harl&amp;ouml;sa, a small village east of Lund in southern Sweden. &lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="BasicParagraph"&gt;&lt;i&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%;
font-family:Times-Italic;mso-bidi-font-family:Times-Italic"&gt;I heard that your first musical influence was your stepfather, Sven Ed&amp;eacute;n. Did your early repertoire come mostly from what you were exposed to by him at home?&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="BasicParagraph"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%"&gt;Yes. But then also I had some friends, you know, my first fiddle &lt;span style="letter-spacing:-.1pt"&gt;mates. We all met in the same summer camp in 1971. Leif Stinnerbom,&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span style="letter-spacing:-.1pt"&gt;Ulf Jonsson, Bo Thal&amp;eacute;n, Mats Berglund, Lars Warnstad. But&lt;/span&gt; then after a while, the repertoire my father was playing, you know, it was a bit boring and so I was more fond of playing music from Dalarna. I listened to Bj&amp;ouml;rn St&amp;aring;bi, Pers Hans Olsson, and Thore H&amp;auml;rdelin. And then Anders Ros&amp;eacute;n and Kalle Alml&amp;ouml;f came with this groundbreaking record called &lt;/span&gt;&lt;i&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;
line-height:120%;font-family:Times-Italic;mso-bidi-font-family:Times-Italic"&gt;V&amp;auml;sterdalton. &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%"&gt;They played with scordatura, you know, A bass, and drone fiddling, and different tunings, and the sound of the music was fantastic. So that was the repertoire I liked to play. &lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="BasicParagraph"&gt;&lt;i&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%;
font-family:Times-Italic;mso-bidi-font-family:Times-Italic"&gt;Can you describe how the V&amp;auml;rmland style is different from the Dalarna style?&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="BasicParagraph"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%"&gt;Well, the music from the east and northeast of V&amp;auml;rmland is kind of the same as the west of Dalarna. It is not really the same as R&amp;auml;ttvik [style]. There is a slight difference. Because there have been a lot of contacts. The fiddle players didn&amp;rsquo;t bother with borders, there was just woods there, you know, and moose, so they cross over. So you can find tunes from the western part of Sweden, actually, from many places, that are very similar. If you generalize, one style is western style, one style is eastern style, one is south&amp;hellip;. &lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="BasicParagraph"&gt;&lt;i&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%;
font-family:Times-Italic;mso-bidi-font-family:Times-Italic"&gt;So the style of the region that is closest to Norway is more like Norwegian music?&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="BasicParagraph"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%"&gt;Yeah.&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="BasicParagraph"&gt;&lt;i&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%;
font-family:Times-Italic;mso-bidi-font-family:Times-Italic"&gt;You sought out a lot of older fiddlers in V&amp;auml;rmland. What was it like to learn from them?&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="BasicParagraph"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%"&gt;It was a thrill. At that time Leif (Stinnerbom) and I lived together, and we went out [to look for older fiddlers] and sometimes we had luck, sometimes not. Sometimes we went to a little local grocery store and said &amp;ldquo;Hey, do you know some fiddle players, some musicians here?&amp;rdquo; &amp;ldquo;Yeah, these guys here.&amp;rdquo; And &amp;ldquo;Oh, I have not played for many years, I can&amp;rsquo;t play anything, but you can go to that guy.&amp;rdquo; And so it was. &lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="BasicParagraph"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%"&gt;Then we came home with the tape recorder, and as I was more skilled in writing down the music, I would do that. Leif was asking the questions, I made the music notes, and Inger [Stinnerbom] made the notes because she had better handwriting than me. We got a good understanding what the music was for the people. It was dance music for them. &lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="BasicParagraph"&gt;&lt;i&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%;
font-family:Times-Italic;mso-bidi-font-family:Times-Italic"&gt;Did you feel like you got a better sense of the musical heritage of your area by learning from all these fiddlers?&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="BasicParagraph"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%"&gt;Yeah, in a way, yes. And also you understand [how they learned tunes]. For example, Oskar [Andersson] played one tune, or his friend Alfred [Magnusson], who was born eight years earlier in 1890. We would ask &amp;ldquo;So what is this tune?&amp;rdquo; &amp;ldquo;Oh, it&amp;rsquo;s an old Norwegian tune that we learned from 78s.&amp;rdquo; So a lot of [fiddlers], they have a need for new tunes, so when they bought a new record they all learned it, you know, because it was a new tune.&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="BasicParagraph"&gt;&lt;i&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%;
font-family:Times-Italic;mso-bidi-font-family:Times-Italic"&gt;So it could be from records, radio&amp;hellip;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="BasicParagraph"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%"&gt;Whatever. Records, or &amp;ldquo;this is an old tune I learned from my father&amp;rdquo; or &amp;ldquo;this is a lyric from the very popular songwriter from the 1930s&amp;rdquo; and whatever, you know? In one way, Oskar was very observant how he played the melodies, in phrasing. Not exactly, we didn&amp;rsquo;t need to play exactly [his way]. But expression was important. To express yourself. He said that you have to express yourself, you know. If you just play the melody it is boring. &lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="BasicParagraph"&gt;&lt;i&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%;
font-family:Times-Italic;mso-bidi-font-family:Times-Italic"&gt;Would he correct you if you were playing for him, or suggest things? &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="BasicParagraph"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%"&gt;He&amp;rsquo;d just suggest things. One time he just rose up and said, &amp;ldquo;You are young. Why you play so boring? Just play off!&amp;rdquo; And he was not a good player because his hand was twisted from a whole life in the woods. But the music he knew. He was better playing accordion, but then he would have to stop because his hand was not working so good. So he would play violin again, and he said, &amp;ldquo;I know this doesn&amp;rsquo;t sound so good, but I know the melody, and you can listen. If you take away the [roughness] you can see this is some music inside here that is very interesting. The way of making the music.&amp;rdquo;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;i&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:
10.0pt;line-height:120%;font-family:Times-Italic;mso-bidi-font-family:Times-Italic;
color:windowtext"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="BasicParagraph"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%;
font-family:Times-Italic;mso-bidi-font-family:Times-Italic;color:windowtext;
mso-bidi-font-style:italic"&gt;&amp;hellip;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="BasicParagraph"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%;
font-family:Times-Italic;mso-bidi-font-family:Times-Italic;color:windowtext;
mso-bidi-font-style:italic"&gt;[For the rest of this interview, along with Mats&amp;rsquo; tunes &amp;ldquo;Ett Steg Till&amp;rdquo; (One Step More), &amp;ldquo;Blues in Bayreuth,&amp;rdquo; and &amp;ldquo;Chokladpojkarna&amp;rdquo; (The Chocolate Boys), &lt;a href="Store-Subscribe.page" target="_blank"&gt;subscribe to Fiddler Magazine or purchase the summer 2010 issue&lt;/a&gt;.]&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="BasicParagraph"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%;
font-family:Times-Italic;mso-bidi-font-family:Times-Italic;color:windowtext;
mso-bidi-font-style:italic"&gt;For more information:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%;
font-family:Times-Italic;mso-bidi-font-family:Times-Italic;color:windowtext;
mso-bidi-font-style:italic"&gt;Mats&amp;rsquo; website: &lt;a href="http://www.matseden.se/" target="_blank"&gt;www.matseden.se/&lt;/a&gt; &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%;
font-family:Times-Italic;mso-bidi-font-family:Times-Italic;color:windowtext;
mso-bidi-font-style:italic"&gt;Mats&amp;rsquo; MySpace page: &lt;a href="http://www.myspace.com/matseden" target="_blank"&gt;www.myspace.com/matseden&lt;/a&gt; &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%;
font-family:Times-Italic;mso-bidi-font-family:Times-Italic;color:windowtext;
mso-bidi-font-style:italic"&gt;Groupa&amp;rsquo;s website: &lt;a href="http://www.groupa.se/" target="_blank"&gt;www.groupa.se/ &lt;/a&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="BasicParagraph"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%;
font-family:Times-Italic;mso-bidi-font-family:Times-Italic;color:windowtext;
mso-bidi-font-style:italic"&gt;You can find sheet music with Mats&amp;rsquo; compositions at The Swedish music information centre: &lt;a href="http://www.mic.se" target="_blank"&gt;www.mic.se&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%;
font-family:Times-Italic;mso-bidi-font-family:Times-Italic;color:windowtext;
mso-bidi-font-style:italic"&gt;Mats Ed&amp;eacute;n video at Malm&amp;ouml; Academy of Music: &lt;a href="http://www.mhm.lu.se/o.o.i.s/14763" target="_blank"&gt;www.mhm.lu.se/o.o.i.s/14763&lt;/a&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="BasicParagraph"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%;
font-family:Times-Italic;mso-bidi-font-family:Times-Italic;color:windowtext;
mso-bidi-font-style:italic"&gt;[Allen Barnes has played American old time and other folk music styles on several instruments for over thirty years. He lives in Davis, California, and has been learning Swedish folk music on the fiddle, mostly in non-standard tunings.]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Photo above by Thomas Ringdahl.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="BasicParagraph"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:120%;
font-family:Times-Italic;mso-bidi-font-family:Times-Italic;color:windowtext;
mso-bidi-font-style:italic"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="MsoNormal"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Times-Italic;
mso-bidi-font-family:Times-Italic;mso-bidi-font-style:italic"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;!--EndFragment--&gt;</description>
      <link>http://www.fiddle.com/Articles.page?ArticleID=49742</link>
      <pubDateParsed>2010-07-30T14:11:27.9341758Z</pubDateParsed>
      <title>Mats Edén: Rooted in Tradition, Growing New Possibilities</title>
    </item>
    <item>
      <description>&lt;!--StartFragment--&gt;
&lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;
text-autospace:none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small; "&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial; "&gt;According to his obituary, Joe Wood was a life-long&amp;nbsp;Floridian, educator, musician, loving father, and friend.&amp;nbsp;The article supplied the usual&amp;nbsp; information&amp;mdash;date and&amp;nbsp;place of birth,&amp;nbsp; names&amp;nbsp; of surviving family members, employment history, and church affiliation&amp;mdash;but it&amp;nbsp;didn&amp;rsquo;t say anything else about his musical endeavors.&amp;nbsp;I wondered what he would have thought about that.&amp;nbsp;He might have been surprised to see musician there at&amp;nbsp;all, let alone in the first line. He had no formal musical&amp;nbsp;training, and only played and sang at family gatherings or social events. But from the time I was a little girl, my daddy rarely went anywhere without taking along his fiddle, guitar, or mandolin. My paternal grandfather told me Daddy&amp;rsquo;s interest in music was apparent from the time he was a small boy. &amp;ldquo;He&amp;rsquo;d sidle as close as he could get whenever my daddy played his fiddle,&amp;rdquo; Granddaddy said. It must have taken a lot of nerve for a quiet, shy little fellow to do that. Funny thing, when I asked Daddy about it years later, he had no recollection of ever hearing my great-grandfather play. &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:13.0pt;font-family:Arial;
mso-bidi-font-family:&amp;quot;Baskerville Semibold&amp;quot;"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;
text-autospace:none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small; "&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial; "&gt;But those were the days of the Grand Ole Opry, broadcast across the airwaves from Ryman Hall in Nashville, Tennessee. For most folks in rural North Florida, life consisted of back-breaking labor in cotton or tobacco fields, with little in the way of amusements. Music, like food, was homegrown and provided temporary escape from a careworn existence. Daddy&amp;rsquo;s elder sister, an able pianist who married a rancher and spent her adult life on a remote farm, once remarked, &amp;ldquo;I would&amp;rsquo;ve gone crazy if it hadn&amp;rsquo;t been for my piano.&amp;rdquo;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:&amp;quot;Baskerville Semibold&amp;quot;"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;img align="left" border="0" hspace="10" vspace="0" width="250" height="371" alt="" src="/_mndata/fiddle/uploaded_images/965772.jpg" /&gt;
&lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;
text-autospace:none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small; "&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial; "&gt;Both my aunt Clarice and her elder brother Halbert took piano lessons when they were young, although my uncle didn&amp;rsquo;t keep up with them. Clarice picked up guitar along the way, and Halbert played bass on an instrument made from a washtub. Their younger brother Gerald said, &amp;ldquo;I could always tell how Clarice was feeling by the music she was playing on her guitar. I learned to lay low if it was a mournful tune.&amp;rdquo;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:Times"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;
text-autospace:none"&gt;For Daddy, though, making music was pure fun. &amp;ldquo;He was about twelve years old when he bought his first fiddle from the Sears Roebuck Company for five dollars,&amp;rdquo; said Aunt Clarice. &amp;ldquo;And then, during the war, I taught school for a few years, even though I didn&amp;rsquo;t have any college training, because there was a teacher shortage. I was barely older than my students. By that time, Joe was sixteen or seventeen and had worn out his five-dollar fiddle, so he started badgering me to buy him a new one. I took fifty dollars out of my first paycheck and ordered him a new one.&amp;rdquo; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;
text-autospace:none"&gt;Daddy was a self-taught fiddler, aided by the instructional book that came with his first fiddle. He kept the book all his life and it belongs to my brother now. My brother, sister, and I used to joke about Daddy&amp;rsquo;s philosophy of teaching music&amp;mdash;&amp;ldquo;Read the book.&amp;rdquo; That never worked very well for us and truth be told, it wasn&amp;rsquo;t the sole source of Daddy&amp;rsquo;s music education. Although he taught himself to read music from the very beginning, Daddy picked up many tunes by ear. He learned by playing with more experienced musicians, watching what they did, and asking for pointers along the way.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;
text-autospace:none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small; "&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial; "&gt;Uncle Gerald told me that when Daddy was about eighteen years old, he passed up an opportunity to go to the Grand Ole Opry and play fiddle professionally with Chubby Wise. Wise, also from Lake City, was one of the greatest fiddlers in country music. He, along with a number of other folks, claimed authorship of the tune &amp;ldquo;Orange Blossom Special.&amp;rdquo; Considered one of the best-known fiddle tunes of the twentieth century, it is sometimes referred to as the &amp;ldquo;fiddle player&amp;rsquo;s national anthem.&amp;rdquo; It was one of Daddy&amp;rsquo;s favorite pieces, and he played it often. I especially liked the ending, which incorporated fiddle techniques that produced sounds reminiscent of a train&amp;rsquo;s bell and whistle, the chug-chug-chug of its wheels on the tracks, and the final lingering squeal of its brakes as it ground to a stop.&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:Times"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;
text-autospace:none"&gt;&amp;ldquo;I reckon Joe didn&amp;rsquo;t take the job because Mama didn&amp;rsquo;t want him to,&amp;rdquo; my Uncle Gerald said. &amp;ldquo;She knew it&amp;rsquo;d be a hard life, living on the road, a lot of drinking and bad influences. She asked him not to go and he abided by her wishes.&amp;rdquo;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;
text-autospace:none"&gt;I don&amp;rsquo;t think Daddy ever regretted that. He said he always wanted to be a teacher, although when he passed up Wise&amp;rsquo;s offer, he didn&amp;rsquo;t think he&amp;rsquo;d have the opportunity to go to college. But he did, and that&amp;rsquo;s another story.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;
text-autospace:none"&gt;During his college years, the slim country boy picked up pocket money playing for square dances. He played for hire occasionally until after the birth of his first child. &amp;ldquo;I played at a dance on New Year&amp;rsquo;s Eve. The next Sunday, the preacher made a disparaging reference to all the carousing&amp;mdash;booze and dancing&amp;mdash;associated with the holiday. I took that as my cue to give it up.&amp;rdquo;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;
text-autospace:none"&gt;But he didn&amp;rsquo;t give up music, no sirree. Daddy did well as a teacher, quickly moving into school administration. Within a few years, he was principal of a small kindergarten through twelfth grade public school in Alachua County. All three of us children started our formal education there. I loved being the principal&amp;rsquo;s daughter, partly because Daddy was popular with students and well-known around town. School assemblies often started with Daddy rendering a few guitar numbers, or accompanying the student body while we sang along.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;
text-autospace:none"&gt;Daddy stored his pick inside the hollow body of the instrument. In order to retrieve it, he had to turn the guitar upside-down and shake vigorously. He apparently saw no reason to do this before he took the stage, and his pick-retrieving gyrations quickly became a school favorite.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;
text-autospace:none"&gt;When we children were old enough, our parents saw to it that we had music lessons. Mother had taken piano lessons from childhood through college, so my sister and I started lessons with her and progressed to studying with other private teachers. Later, when Daddy was principal of an elementary school in Gainesville, he met Mrs. Sonnhild Frey Kitts, a German immigrant and accomplished violinist whose children attended school there. When she learned that Daddy was a fiddler, she introduced him to her father, a violinmaker who spoke very little English. Although they didn&amp;rsquo;t speak the same language, they became friends, communicating through music. Eventually, Mrs. Kitts persuaded Daddy to send my brother Joseph and me to her for lessons. By that time, I was twelve years old and she suggested I study viola, which is slightly larger than a violin and has a lower range.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;
text-autospace:none"&gt;We both learned to play, and of course, played music with Daddy. Every now and then, we&amp;rsquo;d be called upon to perform at church or some other gathering. Music did not come as naturally to me as it did to others in my family, and I learned a technique of playing that was very different from my daddy&amp;rsquo;s fiddling style. Needless to say, we didn&amp;rsquo;t see eye-to-eye, and our musical collaborations were not ideal. However, Joseph inherited Daddy&amp;rsquo;s natural talent, and they played together many times over the years.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;
text-autospace:none"&gt;Right before Daddy died, he gave all his musical instruments to Joseph. By then he&amp;rsquo;d accumulated quite a collection, including a Martin guitar, several violins, a viola, and a couple of mandolins. The fifty-dollar fiddle was still in playing condition, and it is now one of my brother&amp;rsquo;s most prized possessions. Joseph graciously shared four of the instruments from Daddy&amp;rsquo;s collection with me. They are stashed, in their cases, under my bed. They are calling to me, and someday I&amp;rsquo;ll tune one, rosin up a bow, and play. But not yet&amp;mdash;not yet, but soon.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;
text-autospace:none"&gt;Though Daddy&amp;rsquo;s fiddle now is silent and his bow has long been still, Daddy&amp;rsquo;s music continues to cast an ethereal glow, illuminating the dark corners of my heart, like the light from a far-off train. &amp;ldquo;Look a-yonder comin&amp;rsquo;, comin&amp;rsquo; down that railroad track&amp;hellip;.It&amp;rsquo;s the Orange Blossom Special, Bringin&amp;rsquo; my baby back.&amp;rdquo;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;
text-autospace:none"&gt;&lt;em&gt;[Mary Wood Bridgman, a lawyer and native Floridian, lives in Jacksonville. Her work has been published in national and local publications. She received two first place prizes in the 2009 Royal Palm Literary Awards competition. Mary regularly reads her essays and short stories on In Context, a program of WJCT 89.9 FM.]&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;
text-autospace:none"&gt;&lt;em&gt;Above photo: Jim Wood as a teenager (right) with his mother Leila Wood and his younger brother Gerald, at the family homestead in Lulu, Florida, c. early 1940s. The fiddle Joe is holding is probably the $50 model his sister bought him from Sears Roebuck.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="MsoNormal"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small; "&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial; "&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family:Arial"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;!--EndFragment--&gt;</description>
      <link>http://www.fiddle.com/Articles.page?ArticleID=50574</link>
      <pubDateParsed>2010-07-30T14:11:27.9341758Z</pubDateParsed>
      <title>He Was a Musician (Essay)</title>
    </item>
    <item>
      <description>&lt;p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 10.0px Times"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small; "&gt;When I first started out to interview Matt Brown, I figured it would be a nice change of pace from my usual traditional Irish&amp;nbsp;fiddling interviews, a way to feature some&lt;span style="letter-spacing: -0.2px; "&gt;one local to me (in Pennsylvania), and a way&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="letter-spacing: -0.1px; "&gt; to help an up-and-coming young fiddler.&lt;/span&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Times; min-height: 13.0px"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small; "&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 10.0px Times"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small; "&gt;I was wrong on all counts! As for a change of pace, every striving, growing musician has common themes in their development &amp;ndash;&amp;ndash; in environment, relationships, teachers, and gigs, etc. As for featuring someone local to me, not anymore; Matt is almost always on the go &amp;ndash;&amp;ndash; touring weeks or months at a time, teaching and playing as he goes from place to place. And, as for, &amp;ldquo;an up-and-coming fiddler,&amp;rdquo; he&amp;rsquo;s not one any more! Once you are asked to perform at the Kennedy Center as part of the &amp;ldquo;Millennium Stage Artist Series,&amp;rdquo; you can no longer be considered &amp;ldquo;up and coming&amp;rdquo; in &lt;span style="letter-spacing: -0.1px; "&gt;any way. (You can watch Matt&amp;rsquo;s performance&lt;/span&gt; at the Kennedy Center online by following the link at the end of this interview.)&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Times; min-height: 13.0px"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small; "&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;span style="font-size: small; "&gt;  &lt;img align="left" border="0" hspace="10" vspace="0" width="200" height="222" alt="" src="/_mndata/fiddle/uploaded_images/888256.jpg" /&gt;  &lt;/span&gt;
&lt;p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Times"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small; "&gt;There&amp;rsquo;s no way I can match the excellent writing done by the folks at the Kennedy Center, who called Matt &amp;ldquo;an innovative fiddler, an intricate banjo player, a propulsive guitar player, and a powerful singer.&amp;rdquo; I mean, that&amp;rsquo;s a bunch of great adjectives! So let me just say, &amp;ldquo;here&amp;rsquo;s this young guy, who sings, plays guitar, banjo, fiddle, and is an expert on American roots music. And if you go see him you&amp;rsquo;ll learn something. And, oh yeah, he&amp;rsquo;s a really nice guy.&amp;rdquo; Ladies and gentlemen, here is Matt Brown.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Times; min-height: 13.0px"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small; "&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Times"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small; "&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Times"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small; "&gt;&lt;i&gt;Tell us about your beginnings. When did you begin playing music? Was there music in your household, or other environments, such as school, church, or neighborhood? &amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Times; min-height: 13.0px"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small; "&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Times"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small; "&gt;I began taking Suzuki violin lessons on September 8th, 1988, four years and one minute after I was born. My father bought his first banjo way back in1972, and by the time I was a reality, decided he wanted to raise a fiddler.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Times; min-height: 13.0px"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small; "&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Times"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small; "&gt;So I started with the Suzuki method, learning classical violin both aurally and by reading music, but I was surrounded by old time square dance tunes at home. We were at a square dance the night before I was born, and from my father&amp;rsquo;s band rehearsals to the fiddlers&amp;rsquo; conventions we visited in the summer, traditional American music was part of my environment. I will admit that for those first couple of years music was compulsory. I was a decent classical violinist, sang in a local men and boys choir, and dutifully learned &amp;ldquo;Cripple Creek,&amp;rdquo; &amp;ldquo;Old Joe Clark,&amp;rdquo; and a number of other fiddle tunes. As I entered my teenage years, though, I had a revelation. Classical music was obviously a serious pursuit that required discipline, isolation, and severe self-criticism, while old time music was inevitably accompanied by delicious food, dirty jokes, and good company. I know that the social aspect of old time music ensnared me.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Times; min-height: 13.0px"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small; "&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Times"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small; "&gt;Once I was hooked on being around it and participating, I began to realize how remarkably beautiful the tunes are. Even in my early teens, I had all the technical training to play a fiddle tune convincingly, whereas I still had hundreds of hours to go in classical music to reach a similar proficiency. I liked the approachable nature of the fiddle tune melodies, how the tunes are just the right length to be complete and developed, but short enough to be hum-ably satisfying. And they cover such a wide emotional spectrum. Some are so clearly exuberant, while others (like the &amp;ldquo;lonesome Kentucky tunes&amp;rdquo; that capivate some old time fiddlers) seem to embody melancholy and grief.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Times; min-height: 13.0px"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Times"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small; "&gt;&lt;i&gt;Who in your life has nurtured your talents? Teachers? Other fiddlers? Heroes? Or just plain drove you to where the music was?&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Times; min-height: 13.0px"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small; "&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Times"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small; "&gt;First of all, my parents&amp;hellip; Now that I think of it, I really had about the best possible parents. At least twice, my parents gave me a fiddle lesson with a master musician as a birthday present. One year it was Rafe Stefanini (by far the best Italian old time musician of all time. Also one of the few, but he is phenomenal). And I think the very next year, my parents flew Bruce Greene up from North Carolina to teach me some of those lonesome Kentucky fiddle tunes and give a concert. My dad also put on a one-time festival in Wilmington, Delaware, called the American Roots Festival. I don&amp;rsquo;t recall it being all that well attended, but it had an amazing lineup: Mike Seeger, Paul Brown, Dirk Powell, Tim O&amp;rsquo;Brien et al. If I recall correctly, I played an opening set one of the nights, then Paul was kind enough to include me on some of his songs along with Mike.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Times; min-height: 13.0px"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small; "&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 10.0px Times"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small; "&gt;I even was precocious enough to put on a full-length concert at my high school in tenth grade, and once again, my parents were instrumental (pun intended). They brought John Herrmann up from North Carolina to be my primary accompanist for the old time portion of the show. I played classical music to start the program, then my jazz teacher played an interlude while I got changed, then the second half was all old time with John and a few of our great local musicians (Rusty Neithammer, Nancy Neithammer, Paul&amp;nbsp;Sidlick, and my dad, Tim Brown).&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Times; min-height: 13.0px"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small; "&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Times"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small; "&gt;But that event, like a lot of the formative events in my life, would not have been possible without such supportive and enthusiastic parents. I cannot thank them enough, and they still help me in countless ways. My dad and I have a record company together called 5-String Productions, and 5-String has put out each one of my albums in addition to a bunch of others. There&amp;rsquo;s no way I could afford to put out a CD on my own, and Dad&amp;rsquo;s financial and time investment in my recordings and my career has been essential. Without his entrepreneurial spirit and my mom&amp;rsquo;s tireless support and encouragement, I would not be able to do this for a living.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Times; min-height: 13.0px"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small; "&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 10.0px Times"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small; "&gt;I have been graced with many extraordinary mentors. Linda&amp;nbsp;Litwin, of Newtown Square, Pennsylvania, was my Suzuki violin teacher from my fourth birthday into my teenage years. I then studied violin with Rich Amoroso of the Philadelphia Orchestra. Palmer Loux was my first fiddle teacher, and is one of the stalwarts of the Philadelphia-area old time scene. Others in the scene, Sue Shumaker, Paul Sidlick, and my father, Tim Brown, were my first band mates. There is an incredible group of local musicians who play old time music. They play dances, weddings, and other such events, but the focus for most is really just to jam. Rusty and Nancy Neithammer spent lots of time with Tommy Jarrell, for example, and most everyone in the scene can name the source of each tune they play. They can all learn new tunes up to speed in jam sessions. Some have studied music and can read from a page, but a lot of folks have just been drawn specifically to old time music, and have learned it organically, without any formalized training. They listen to the old commercial string band recordings or the variety of field recordings and really soak in the music that way.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Times; min-height: 13.0px"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small; "&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 10.0px Times"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small; "&gt;As a teenager, I started attending two of the week-long intensive camps that specialize in promoting traditional music: Old Time Week at The Swannanoa Gathering in Swannanoa, North Carolina, and Southern Week at Ashokan, in the Catskills of New York. At those two camps, I got to meet, learn from, and jam with Brad Leftwich, Rafe Stefanini, John Herrmann, Tom Sauber, Alice&amp;nbsp;Gerrard, Carl Jones, Bruce Molsky, Dirk Powell, Bruce Greene, Paul Brown, Rayna Gellert... the list is huge, and includes most of the best musicians of my parents&amp;rsquo; generation, as well as a few of the younger titans. I&amp;rsquo;ve had a few visits with some of the venerable senior musicians, including Red Wilson, Benton Flippen, Lester McCumbers, and Violet Hensley, but those visits have been too few for my liking.&lt;br /&gt;
...&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
[For the rest of this interview, and Matt's transcription of &amp;quot;Fire on the Mountain,&amp;quot; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;a target="_blank" href="Store-Subscribe.page"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small; "&gt;purchase the spring 2010 issue&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small; "&gt; of Fiddler Magazine.]&lt;br type="_moz" /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 9.0px Times"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small; "&gt;&amp;bull; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;a target="_blank" href="http://www.brownsdream.us"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small; "&gt;www.brownsdream.us&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 9.0px Times"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small; "&gt;&amp;bull; 5-String Productions: &lt;/span&gt;&lt;a target="_blank" href="http://www.5-string.com"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small; "&gt;www.5-string.com&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 9.0px Times"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small; "&gt;&amp;bull; Matt&amp;rsquo;s performance at the Kennedy Center:&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 9.0px Times"&gt;&lt;a target="_blank" href="http://www.kennedy-center.org/programs/millennium/artist_detail.cfm?artist_id=BROWNMATTB"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small; "&gt;www.kennedy-center.org/programs/millennium/artist_detail.cfm?artist_id=BROWNMATTB&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 9.0px Times; min-height: 11.0px"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small; "&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 9.0px Times"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: small; "&gt;&lt;i&gt;[Tim McCarrick works as a music editor for J.W. Pepper. He has written about fiddle playing for Fiddler Magazine and Mel Bay&amp;rsquo;s Fiddle Sessions website. He has nearly 20 arrangements published for school orchestras from Mozart and Beethoven, to Gershwin and Led Zeppelin, and he is also working on a string method book, and that, ladies and gentlemen, is why he never updates the Irish Fiddle website! He lives in Chester County, Pennsylvania, with one wife, two daughters, two dogs, and lots of stringed instruments.]&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/i&gt;&lt;em&gt;Above photo by Tim Brown, 5-String Productions&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;i&gt;&lt;br type="_moz" /&gt;
&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/p&gt;</description>
      <link>http://www.fiddle.com/Articles.page?ArticleID=49750</link>
      <pubDateParsed>2010-07-30T14:11:27.9497763Z</pubDateParsed>
      <title>Matt Brown: Living the Old Time Dream</title>
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    <item>
      <description>&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;div&gt;By stereotype, it might be expected that a violinist with a Bachelor of Music degree from Boston University with years of experience playing with symphony orchestras would be living in a metropolitan circle of culture. Deborah Greenblatt defies stereotyping.&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;&lt;span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"&gt;	&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;About forty-five miles south of Omaha, the Nebraska countryside features well-cultivated farmland. Houses are few and far between. A dead end &amp;ldquo;spur&amp;rdquo; off of a narrow rural road leads to the community of Avoca (population 270), which essentially has no commercial enterprises other than a feed and grain store. Since the town no longer appears on most maps, I was thankful that Google Maps provided directions for my visit to the storied Old Schoolhouse.&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;&lt;span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"&gt;	&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;img align="left" border="0" hspace="10" vspace="0" width="200" height="263" alt="" src="/_mndata/fiddle/uploaded_images/888109.jpg" /&gt;
&lt;div&gt;In this distinctly isolated area, Deborah Greenblatt and her husband, David Seay, live in the Old Schoolhouse (there is no longer an active school in Avoca). Their 10,000 square foot musical mecca has a sunken gymnasium and a lovely auditorium with a stage; most of the space is devoted to teaching studios, computer labs, instrument storage, and performance areas. The two live in a relatively small area of the Old Schoolhouse. Yes, Deborah Greenblatt is the modern-day equivalent of the &amp;ldquo;prairie school marm&amp;rdquo; with a world-class folk music school.&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;&lt;span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"&gt;	&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;Deborah was born in Lynn, Massachusetts, on July 24, 1951, &amp;ldquo;the same day that Henry David Thoreau got busted for tax evasion&amp;mdash;to commemorate it, my father insisted later that the whole family walk the circumference of Walden Pond.&amp;rdquo; For her first four years, she lived in Belmont, Massachusetts, moved to Providence, Rhode Island, at the age of eight, and then at age ten to Warwick, Rhode Island.&amp;hellip;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;&lt;span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"&gt;	&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;By her high school years, Debby&amp;rsquo;s talent for music was obvious. She played in the school orchestra, and was studying violin with Ermete Maiani. &amp;ldquo;Because my parents took the family to the Newport Folk Festival, the first music book that I ever purchased at Axelrod&amp;rsquo;s Music in Providence was a book of fiddle tunes. Mr. Maiani took one look at it, got mad, and told me that &amp;lsquo;if you are going to play that kind of music, you need to take lessons from someone else.&amp;rsquo;&amp;rdquo; So she stayed on the classical straight and narrow road, and was soon playing with the Rhode Island Philharmonic Youth Orchestra. In her senior year of high school, she began to study violin with Professor Gerald Geldbloom at Boston University. Little did anyone realize what lay ahead for her in the fiddling world.&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;&lt;span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"&gt;	&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;Deborah continued her commitment to classical violin by majoring in violin performance at and receiving her Bachelor of Music degree from Boston University (1973), and playing with the Portland (Maine) Symphony Orchestra. In the process, she studied with Professor Gelbloom, and Eugene Lehner served as her chamber music coach (both Gelbloom and Lehner played with the Boston Symphony Orchestra). Onward she went, playing with the North Carolina Symphony Orchestra (Durham, NC, 1973-74), Brevard Symphony Orchestra (Cape Canaveral, FL, 1974-75), and Florida Symphony Orchestra, along with gigs at Disneyland (Orlando, FL, 1975-76). And then her life changed in many ways&amp;mdash;she moved to Nebraska.&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;In 1976, she was recruited to play principal second violin with the Omaha (NE) Symphony Orchestra. She arrived to find that the ensemble was in great turmoil. The conductor, perhaps at the mandate of the board of directors, had declared that, to upgrade, the orchestra would replace members from the community with professional musicians from elsewhere. In a roughshod manner, local musicians were fired and emotions flared&amp;mdash;some sources, to this day, believe that the schism between the Orchestra management and the community has never been adequately bridged. Into the swirl of negativity came twenty-five year-old Deborah; she was forced to share a stand with the violinist she had displaced (Virginia Moriarty): &amp;ldquo;She was diplomatic about my replacing her as principal, but there was tension&amp;mdash;we came to be, however, great stand partners.&amp;rdquo; Deborah stayed with the Omaha Symphony Orchestra for two years (1976-78).&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;&lt;span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"&gt;	&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;The unpleasant atmosphere in the Orchestra opened her mind to other possibilities. When she met David Seay and he asked her to play fiddle with his bluegrass band, her musical route shifted dramatically. And they married about three months later (July 27, 1978) in Omaha.&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;&lt;em&gt;Why did you take up the fiddle?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;&lt;em&gt;Deborah&lt;/em&gt;: A simple answer, the sound of the strings appealed to me.&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;&amp;hellip;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;&lt;em&gt;Given your classical training, are you tied to the page, so to speak?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;Being with symphonies, I read well, so I got calls to play for major acts coming to Omaha&amp;mdash;George Burns, Bill Cosby, the Fifth Dimension, and many others&amp;mdash;which really diversified my musical interests and expanded my knowledge of my instrument. In the early years of making a living with my music, I was not very good at improvisation, but I am better now. Playing bluegrass requires connecting into what the other musicians are playing, so improvisation is required.&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;&lt;em&gt;Was David Seay your biggest influence to move into old time fiddling?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;To some extent, but when I first came to Omaha, a year before I met David, I became friends with a colorful old fiddler in Council Bluffs, Iowa, Carl Wilson Carson. He was a street musician and he taught me how play folk music to connect to an audience. Carl taught me a lot of fiddle tunes, and would take me to local fiddle jam sessions.&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;&lt;em&gt;I am aware that you and David have a very active performance schedule, playing a lot of concerts and doing residencies in the schools, but you also seem to have developed a well respected and recognized publishing company.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;We play about fifty gigs a year in a wide variety of venues and with audiences of all ages. Our repertoire is all over the place. We tell stories, play unusual instruments, dress in old time clothing, and really try to entertain folks. For our publishing, we do compositions and arrangements for string instruments and recorders that range from folk to ethnic to ragtime to jazz to whatever. We especially like to do songs for kids. We have received some very positive reviews in music magazines, including Fiddler Magazine. Our website has also been productive (&lt;a href="http://www.greenblattandseay.com" target="_blank"&gt;www.greenblattandseay.com&lt;/a&gt;). At first, we thought we were lucky to get an order once per week, and then almost suddenly, orders became a steady flow. We have been fortunate.&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;&amp;hellip;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;[For the rest of this interview, as well as Deborah&amp;rsquo;s song/tune &amp;ldquo;Practice, Practice, Practice,&amp;rdquo; &lt;a href="Store-Subscribe.page"&gt;purchase&lt;/a&gt; the spring 2010 issue, or &lt;a href="Store-Subscribe.page"&gt;subscribe&lt;/a&gt; to Fiddler Magazine!]&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;Publications and Discography&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;Greenblatt &amp;amp; Seay have a &amp;ldquo;cornucopia of musical publications and recordings,&amp;rdquo; including (but certainly not limited to) collections of fiddle tunes (solos, duets, and trios for numerous instruments), string arrangements (trios, quartets, quintets, and orchestras), and recorder arrangements (solos, duets, trios, and quartets), and recordings. A few of the CD products are:&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;&amp;bull; Barn Dance Fiddle Tunes for Two Violins&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;&amp;bull; Irish Fiddle Tunes for Two Violins&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;&amp;bull; Wedding Fiddling Tunes for Two Violins&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;&amp;bull; Freakin&amp;rsquo; Fiddles &amp;nbsp; &amp;bull; Fiddle Fables &amp;nbsp; &amp;bull; Noah&amp;rsquo;s Ark&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;Additional information: &lt;a target="_blank" href="http://www.greenblattandseay.com"&gt;www.greenblattandseay.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;[Robert &amp;ldquo;Doc&amp;rdquo; Woody is a professor of psychology at the University of Nebraska Omaha and a consulting psychologist and an attorney in private practice. He is the leader of Doc Woody and the River City Ragtime Band (see &lt;a target="_blank" href="http://www.docwoodymusic.com"&gt;www.docwoodymusic.com&lt;/a&gt;). He frequently contributes articles to music journals and magazines.]&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;</description>
      <link>http://www.fiddle.com/Articles.page?ArticleID=46928</link>
      <pubDateParsed>2010-07-30T14:11:27.9497763Z</pubDateParsed>
      <title>Deborah Greenblatt: The Fiddlin' Prairie School Marm</title>
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      <description>&lt;div&gt;Sheffield is an industrial city in north central England, more noted for its checkered history of factories, slums and disease than any musical legacy. But in the midst of the industrial revolution, fiddle music managed to thrive in the hands of a small group of blind fiddlers who congregated at one of the local pubs. Some two hundred years later, they caught the attention of morris dance fiddler Paul Davenport as he was collecting old fiddle tune transcriptions for the South Riding Folk Arts Network. He ended up writing his Masters thesis at the University of Sheffield about them.&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;img align="left" border="0" hspace="10" vspace="0" width="300" height="225" alt="" src="/_mndata/fiddle/uploaded_images/887046.jpg" /&gt;
&lt;div&gt;When I visited Sheffield in the summer of 2004, my inquiries about local fiddle traditions all led to Paul. He was kind enough to meet me at the Fat Cat Tavern one afternoon to share tunes, beers, and his well-researched perspectives on the history of English&amp;nbsp;fiddling.&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;&lt;em&gt;Paul: &lt;/em&gt;I published a number of tune books for the South Riding Folk Network a few years ago. And in the process of getting the information for these books &amp;ndash;&amp;ndash; they were all from manuscript collections, all unpublished, dating back to the early 19th century &amp;ndash;&amp;ndash; I rang a guy up to ask him about recording CDs and he said, &amp;ldquo;Well, I&amp;rsquo;ve got one of them.&amp;rdquo; I say, &amp;ldquo;One of what?&amp;rdquo; He says, &amp;ldquo;One of those manuscript books.&amp;rdquo; &amp;ldquo;Oh really?&amp;rdquo; He says, &amp;ldquo;Yeah, do you want to use it?&amp;rdquo;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;The book was found in an attic. It was one of these incredibly romantic things &amp;ndash;&amp;ndash; discovered in an attic in an old fiddle case with an old fiddle in Worsborough near Barnsley. And it was full of hornpipes. 2/2 hornpipes, the cut-time hornpipes, which kind of dates it to being early 19th century, because the cut time doesn&amp;rsquo;t appear till about the Regency period (1811-1820) when we start to see the shift from 3/2 hornpipes or 9/8 hornpipes &amp;ndash;&amp;ndash; triple time tunes &amp;ndash;&amp;ndash; to the 2/2 tunes. I have a theory about that which I&amp;rsquo;ll tell you later. But this guy gave me a photocopy of this manuscript notebook and in it was mainly traditional stuff but some very weird stuff, mostly in flat keys. So that was a challenge from the start. I found myself having to learn to play in flat keys.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;&lt;em&gt;And I suppose the tunebook must have been for the fiddle since it came with a fiddle.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;Absolutely. We knew they were fiddle tunes. But in the UK in general, the fiddle keys are perceived, rightly or wrongly, as being G, D, and A. &amp;nbsp;[The key of] A mainly in Scotland because bagpipes are nominally tuned in A. But it&amp;rsquo;s kind of strange to find this body of tunes in flat keys.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;People try to define English-style fiddling and you can&amp;rsquo;t. It defies explanation. You&amp;rsquo;ve got musicians like Bertie Clark, who was one of the fiddlers for Bampton Morris [dance group] many years ago. He was classically trained but when you heard him playing for the morris, he did something and it was just indescribable. But it was rhythmic. He&amp;rsquo;s there to drive the dance. That is the thing about English fiddling &amp;ndash;&amp;ndash; it has this verticality. It tends to be driven more by its rhythm than by the flow of the melody.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;&lt;em&gt;But what about this book of hornpipes? Was that more on the melodic side of things?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;Well, David Shepherd of Blowzabella [traditional dance band from London], who is also a local, was talking about the cut-time hornpipe, the 2/2 hornpipe, as the quintessentially English tune. When you play one and you ornament it, the ornamentation just gravitates to 12/8. Given that the written text is nothing more than the framework, it&amp;rsquo;s sort of a suggestion &amp;ndash;&amp;ndash; &amp;ldquo;This is so and so&amp;rsquo;s hornpipe and it kind of might go like this, if you feel like it and if it&amp;rsquo;s all right with you. But if it&amp;rsquo;s not, then fine, play something entirely different. Or play it your own way.&amp;rdquo; There is that sort of sense with written text. So when you play a hornpipe, there is a tendency to use the triplet as the basic unit of division: da-da-da, da-da-da, da-da-da, da-da-da. Which is effectively playing in 12/8. So it&amp;rsquo;s an interesting style. People talk a lot about it being for step dancing and loads of people tell me that there is a tradition of step dancing in Sheffield, but I have never come across it. I&amp;rsquo;ve never come across a written reference. That isn&amp;rsquo;t to say that it doesn&amp;rsquo;t exist, but I&amp;rsquo;ve never found it. So we go back to this music manuscript. You have seventy-odd tunes, most of which are hornpipes, a very large proportion of which are in flat keys. And only one name &amp;ndash;&amp;ndash; we know that the owner of the book was Joshua Burnett. Joshua Burnett was a Scotsman. He came from Perth and his book was written around 1841. In the book, there is a hornpipe and it says &amp;ldquo;by James Knight, a blind man.&amp;rdquo; &amp;nbsp;I thought no more of this until maybe Christmas &amp;rsquo;97 when a friend of mine bought his wife a book called &amp;ldquo;A Pub on Every Corner&amp;rdquo; [by Freddy O&amp;rsquo;Connor]&amp;hellip;. Anyway, he rang me up and he said, &amp;ldquo;Hey! I&amp;rsquo;ve found James Knight! James Knight was one of six famous blind fiddlers in Sheffield. They were really famous and they worked at a pub called the &amp;lsquo;Q in the Corner&amp;rsquo;, in Paradise Square.&amp;rdquo; I said, &amp;ldquo;Aha!&amp;rdquo; and I guess these last five years, I&amp;rsquo;ve been chasing these blind fiddlers. And a lot of their music seems to be in the Joshua Burnett notebook. Some of it is really difficult music, by folk standards. Others are merely quirky. And some of the stuff is just local variants of very familiar tunes. The blind fiddlers, they weren&amp;rsquo;t just fiddlers, they were musicians. &amp;nbsp;It seems to go back to an extraordinary man called Samuel Goodlad. And Samuel Goodlad was first violin in the Assembly Orchestra. Assemblies were a bit like what you have in the States as &amp;ldquo;contra.&amp;rdquo; They were not like ceilidhs in the sense that you could just turn up and do any old thing and somebody would call the tunes. They were by subscription. They were for the more well-to-do, the merchant classes particularly. If you could get a lord or lady to be patron of an assembly, then that was excellent. And the upshot of this was that Samuel Goodlad was also the publican of a pub called the Q in the Corner. Which was in the corner of Paradise Square. It&amp;rsquo;s now a solicitor&amp;rsquo;s office. My investigation showed a large number of blind musicians congregated at this pub.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;Now what you&amp;rsquo;ve got to bear in mind is that, from the point of view of Sheffield, which was an industrial city based on small unit industry &amp;ndash;&amp;ndash; so that a factory could be the size of the room you are sitting in now &amp;ndash;&amp;ndash; there was literally a pub at every corner. Because the work was incredibly dry. Sheffield was a city built on seven hills, like Rome. The sanitation in the Regency period was pretty bad, so what went out of the closet in the house on the top of the hill went through the ground and came up through the bedroom wall or the kitchen wall of the house at the bottom of the hill. That&amp;rsquo;s one of the reasons we had the great cholera epidemic in 1832. Anyway, to cut a long story short, there was a pub literally on every corner, one-room places, and people drank beer instead of water &amp;ndash;&amp;ndash; because of the sanitation problems. So beer was safer to drink than water, and that&amp;rsquo;s been a world-wide phenomenon. Yet, what I was finding was that these men traveled past any number of pubs to go to this one particular pub. Remember, they were blind men and walking considerable distances to get to that pub! One guy came from Darnall, which isn&amp;rsquo;t even within the city limits. And when they got there, the evidence is that they played music and there are some wonderful stories.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;There is a story of Blind Stephen, who lived on Pinstone Street in Sheffield. Sam Goodlad had been down to London. London is the place where all fashion came from. It grew out of there and was disseminated across the country by whatever means. If you lived in London, you were fashionable. If you lived outside of London, you were provincial. There is a social connotation to both those terms. On this occasion, Goodlad had come back from London and he had learned a new tune. And all of these guys had phenomenal memories for learning tunes. He&amp;rsquo;d learned a new tune and he said, &amp;ldquo;Nobody knows this in Sheffield because it&amp;rsquo;s of the latest fashion&amp;rdquo; and the banter went on as you can imagine the banter went on in pubs and they said, &amp;ldquo;Well we reckon that one of these lads probably knows it,&amp;rdquo; indicating the blind musicians. &amp;ldquo;Oh,&amp;rdquo; he says, &amp;ldquo;I doubt it.&amp;rdquo; &amp;ldquo;Well,&amp;rdquo; they said, &amp;ldquo;Put your money where your mouth is.&amp;rdquo; So he bet them &amp;ndash;&amp;ndash; drinks all around and a mutton supper for the whole company if one of the blind fiddlers actually knew this tune. And so they took all the blind fiddlers outside. There were many pubs in the square, so they took them to a pub. And he went to get his fiddle, and when he came back he didn&amp;rsquo;t notice that a chap had come in through the door carrying a large sack which he put down on the floor to have a pint. So Sam plays the tune and everybody agreed it was a fine tune. And then they said, &amp;ldquo;Well, go and fetch the blind fiddlers back.&amp;rdquo; So they went off and the bloke with the sack picked up the sack and walked out. A short time later the blind fiddlers came back in the pub and made various attempts to play the tune and in the end Blind Stephen gets the fiddle and starts playing and says, &amp;ldquo;Oh, it wouldn&amp;rsquo;t go like this, would it?&amp;rdquo; And he played the perfect tune. And so Goodlad was forced to pay up. And what this tells us about Blind Stephen, it tells us quite a bit. It tells about his oral acuity. He could learn a tune in one hearing. The reason being because he was sitting in a sack at the time! He was quite a small man. [laughs] It&amp;rsquo;s a lovely story.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;&amp;hellip;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;[For the rest of this lengthy article and three accompanying tunes, &lt;a href="Store-Subscribe.page"&gt;purchase&lt;/a&gt; the spring 2010 issue, or &lt;a href="Store-Subscribe.page"&gt;subscribe&lt;/a&gt; to Fiddler Magazine!]&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;For more information on some of the topics discussed in this article, check out these websites:&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;South Riding Folk Arts Network: &lt;a target="_blank" href="http://www.folk-network.com/"&gt;www.folk-network.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;Village Music Project: &lt;a target="_blank" href="http://www.village-music-project.org.uk"&gt;www.village-music-project.org.uk&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;Hallam Traditions research and manuscripts: &lt;a target="_blank" href="http://www.hallamtrads.co.uk/Research.html "&gt;www.hallamtrads.co.uk/Research.html&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;Nottingham Folk Music Database: &lt;a target="_blank" href="http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~ef/music/tunes/playford.htm"&gt;www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~ef/music/tunes/playford.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;[Peter Anick, author of Mel Bay&amp;rsquo;s &amp;ldquo;Old Time Fiddling Across America,&amp;rdquo; teaches fiddle and mandolin and performs with the Massachusetts bluegrass band Wide Open Spaces (&lt;a target="_blank" href="http://www.wideospaces.com"&gt;www.wideospaces.com&lt;/a&gt;).]&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;</description>
      <link>http://www.fiddle.com/Articles.page?ArticleID=46857</link>
      <pubDateParsed>2010-07-30T14:11:27.9497763Z</pubDateParsed>
      <title>Quintessentially English: An Interview with South Yorkshire Fiddle Tune Researcher Paul Davenport</title>
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      <description>&amp;nbsp;Check out this adorable commercial!&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93AYSmrij_k" target="_blank"&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93AYSmrij_k&lt;/a&gt;</description>
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      <title>Fiddling Beaver Superbowl Commercial (Monster.com)</title>
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      <description>Prince Edward Island fiddler Kim Vincent died of cancer at age 52 on December 16 in Ottawa.&amp;nbsp;This is another huge loss for the fiddle community.&amp;nbsp;Samples of Kim's fiddling can be heard on &lt;a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pASn1f0iV3c&amp;amp;feature=related" target="_blank"&gt;YouTube&lt;/a&gt;.</description>
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      <pubDateParsed>2010-07-30T14:11:27.9497763Z</pubDateParsed>
      <title>Kim Vincent, RIP</title>
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      <description>&lt;h3 class="UIIntentionalStory_Message" data-ft="{&amp;quot;type&amp;quot;:&amp;quot;msg&amp;quot;}" style="font-size: 13px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; font-weight: normal; overflow-x: hidden; overflow-y: hidden; "&gt;&lt;span class="UIStory_Message"&gt;East Tennessee fiddler Charlie Acuff recently celebrated his 90th birthday! Unfortunately, health problems have required him to be in a nursing home. If friends or fans would like to send him a card, please &lt;a target="null" href="mailto:info@fiddle.com"&gt;contact Fiddler Magazine&lt;/a&gt; for his current address. Charlie was featured in the Winter 95/96 issue of Fiddler Magazine and was in our &amp;quot;Carrying on the Traditions: Appalachian Fiddling Today&amp;quot; video. Let's hope he'll be feeling &amp;quot;fit as a fiddle&amp;quot; again soon!&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/h3&gt;
&amp;nbsp;</description>
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      <pubDateParsed>2010-07-30T14:11:27.9497763Z</pubDateParsed>
      <title>Charlie Acuff</title>
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    <lastBuildDate>7/30/2010 10:11:27 AM</lastBuildDate>
    <link>http://www.fiddle.com/</link>
    <title>Fiddler Magazine</title>
    <pubDate>7/30/2010 10:11:27 AM</pubDate>
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