wolves howl. dogs bark.

I do not know of anything so far, that feels better than playing hundred-year old songs in firelight with pleasant company. I don’t know of anything more beautiful than when you look up at low-hanging branches, with green leaves tinted yellow and coal gray by the flames and smoke, and then look beyond them at a deep night and hollow stars.

I don’t know of anything more comforting than understanding that I can sing a verse, and you can sing a verse and we can sing it together without knowing our last names or what cars we drive, or caring about those things, but understanding with complete certainty that those same words were whispered before us by long-dead people and will be sung by those long-alive. Because of this, it is forever.

Us musicians, singers, and storytellers know that every time we gather in the glow of a campfire, we're just a small piece of a bigger story. We happen to be holding the songs for a short time, till we pass them on, and we're okay with that mortality. We drink and laugh and dance to it. And between songs we'll sip some libations and talk about the night we heard St. Anne's Reel shake Quebec, or how a stranger asked us to play a tune at a mountain lake in Idaho. And we'll do this like it's the most important thing in the world. Because at that moment, it is.

Wolves howl. Dogs bark. Humans sing old-time songs. These are the sounds animals make. You can disregard this music, laugh at it, or live your whole life without lifting an eyebrow at dorian chords. But regardless of you, it will keep on padding through our culture like a yellow-eyed sheepdog in high grass. Hidden and wild with a unwavering focus. And like a lowline dog in the grass, you can see it if you look for it. It is there.

This all happens, all this emotion and loyalty, because we all know the words. It's a language we picked up here and there. We did it without amps, or outlets. We learned it by ear. We play it because of how it makes us feel. Old time music is, and always will be wet rocks and green moss in a shaded creek in Tennessee. It is bonfires in the shadows of Idaho hills. It is being alone in a blizzard in farmhouse owned by woman named Hazel. It is a campfire by a strangers garden in New York. It's Brian. It's Heather. It's Emily. It's Dave. It's even Erin on the indie rock lam.

I love this music. It writhes and quivers and will keep running uphill when I am dead and forgotten. I don’t understand how it can be ignored. I shudder under thick skin when it is mocked. I feel bad, horrible for those who can’t hold it in their fists and know what it feels like. Like a clump of grass you just submerged in a creek.

It is absurd to feel this way about the matted old dog that is these songs. But this is how I feel.

And I love it with the all.

out of the woodwork!

It's early summer and fiddlers are coming out of the woodwork. In the last few days I've had four people contact me about getting started with lessons. Some have fiddles on loan, some are getting starter ones through me, and some are renting while their kids take suzuki lessons. Everyone seems to have the same goal in mind, to learn something they've been wanting to learn for a long time. They'll be driving into sandgate Sunday evenings here at the cabin for streamside frontporch beginner lessons. If you saw the flyers around town, heard through a friend, or found us online and are interested in joining our old-timey pack of fiddlers please email me at jenna@itsafarwalk.com

Songcatcher

Anyone who is just getting involved in mountain music, should make it a point to watch the movie "Songcatcher." Songcatcher is the story of a woman named Lilly, a music teacher from the northeast who visits her sister in rural western North Carolina. While escaping the pressures of her job as a professor, she discovers that the same old ballads she was teaching in Boston are writhing and pulsing in the mountain people's everyday life. This fairly recent film not only explains the origins and of old time music, it does it in a stunningly beautiful way. Filmed right in the southern Appalachians where the first ballads were discovered, it features several songs you'll be learning on the fiddle in no time. Songs like Pretty Saro, Old Joe Clark, and Sally Goodin. It's important to see the not only the people singing them, but the culture that surrounds it - how the hollers cooked and fermented those old Scott/Irish ballads and made them into something new.

Dulcimer too!

Above is a picture of my dulcimer taken at a streamside jam back in 2006 in the smokey mountains. Like the fiddle, dulcimers are portable, easy to play and perfect for campfires and fireplaces alike! The Green Mountain Old Time Association, has plans to not only help people get started in the fiddle but also the Dulcimer. If you or anyone you know in the area would like to learn this calming, beautiful instrument (that also has the ability to get down and dirty at a barn dance), than let them know lessons are also available at the cabin. Just like with fiddle students, I can help you get a student dulcimer to learn from.

The difference

Modern Bluegrass has nothing to do with modern country music, and the three camps seem fairly arms-crossed and certain about that. But behind both of them is Old-Time. Which, whenever I say that to people who aren’t familiar with it, seem to get this glazed-over look of arthritic sarsaparilla drinking Alzheimer patients clapping their hands at a flat picked guitar.

No.

Old Time music means exactly that. That is comes from an older time in musical history than recent acoustic mountain incarnations. Old Time is the merging of Scotch/Irish reels, jigs, hornpipes and slides and the rhythm and energy of African music. Like all great American music. Throw in some old English Ballads about murder, love and vengence and you've got it. This blending of white and African sound made mountain music what it is. Energetic and heart racing or somber and lonesome at others. It has it’s own heartbeat of deep African drums and it’s arteries and ventricles are immigrants like the Italian mandolin, the Irish fiddle, the Cuban guitar and the German dulcimer. For an “American” invention, it is completely non-native. But like most things that are great about this country, it takes the best things of so many different cultures and fuses them together to create brand new animals. Think jazz, baseball, and the south beach diet. (I kid about that last one)

So, no disrespect to Bluegrass, which I recently would happily prefer to listen too than 70% of other types of music, but it is not old-time. To us historians it’s the excessive dressing up and nickel plating of something already utilitarian in it’s perfection.

Classes Starting Soon!

People have been signing up for classes, hoping to start them next Sunday. Call or email if you would be interested in a 6pm time slot Sunday afternoons. Also, if you are brand new to fiddling and have no instrument to speak of, I found a dealer who has decent beginner outfits that include a violin, case, bow, rosin and some other extras for around $60.00. Which is what you pay to get takeout pizza three times and learning to play the fiddle is totally worth that. These fiddles are maple backed and sided and have a bear claw spruce top. The bows are real horse hair.

extra gear that helps

To get started with the fiddle, you’re supplies are limited to just a few beginner must-haves. Besides your violin and bow, you’ll need to get a few little extras to make the whole process of learning a new animal easier on you. I suggest an electronic tuner, fine rosin, an old handkerchief for wiping your strings and fiddle with when the rosin cakes on (can hurt the stain), and fine tuners if you’re instrument didn’t come with them. These four things are inexpensive and can make a world of a difference in how fast and easy your training will be. You can order a tuner for fewer than twenty dollars and a decent rosin cake can wage about ten. If you need help finding a place to obtain them, email me for suggestions or hunt on ebay. You can get a great used tuner, spare bows, rosin and more on there for a steal.