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.

makin' music

Green Mountain Old Timers is going to be a casual group of musicians who are either brand new to their entrustments and want to learn in a friendly atmosphere, or seasoned players who want to jam and network with other locals who share their love of mountain music. I'm trying to start up this group as someone in the middle of these two types of people. I've been playing fiddle and dulcimer for a few years, making me a little beyond a beginner but certainly far from seasoned with a lot to learn. But I feel confident and comfortable getting other started on their own paths as music makers and feel I can introduce the fiddle, dulcimer, banjo and other like instruments to new players in an easy to understand and comfortable way.

Group lessons, private lessons, music festivals, trips to the smoky Mountains, concerts and more are all in store for the Vermonters, New Yorkers, and anyone else interested in picking up a fiddle and playing a few songs on their front porches. The real point is to teach without making time or finances and issue to the students, and to keep a style of music alive for generations to come. Please comment, or email me at jenna@itsafarwalk.com if you would like to know more about lessons, events, or anything else related to mountain music here in the green ones.