The official site for the Festival of American Fiddle Tunes, as well as other fiddle tunes education and performance programs at Centrum, the nonprofit center for the arts located at Fort Worden State Park, in Port Townsend, Washington.
When Larry first started researching dances in Western Pennsylvania, every single caller he knew was a fiddler. If you're a fiddler, or a budding dance caller, you'll want to know about this track at Fiddle Tunes.
This special workshop for dance callers will focus on calling square dances and community dances. It is geared towards both intermediate and beginning callers, though the level will be somewhat dependent on who shows up. Intermediate callers will have the opportunity to improve their skills and broaden their repertoires and newer callers will be able to learn to call from scratch. All sessions feature calling to live music with live dancers. The class will meet every day from 9 a.m. - noon and each session will build on the previous one, so plan to come all week.
Our good friend, Bertrand Déraspe, is one of the great fiddlers from the last bastion of traditional Acadian culture, the Magdalen Islands. He visited the Northwest in 2011 and attended the Festival of American Fiddle Tunes to great success. He wasn't able to bring his recordings last summer, but now he's sent us a stash of recordings.
Albums cost $20 each, and that includes shipping. You can pay with PayPal or check. Make checks out to Hearth Music and mail to: Devon Leger, 14879 6th Ave NE, Shoreline, WA 98155. All money goes straight to Bertrand.
Mes Racines Bertrand Déraspe 2006 This is the first of Bertrand's solo fiddling CD's and definitely the one to start your collection. What you get is just Bertrand on fiddle and feet and Alain Turbide on piano, exactly as they appeared at the Festival of American Fiddle Tunes last summer 2011 and with many of the tunes that they taught, including "Pu yèque sur le pu yinque" and "Cé fret su'l picassou". There are also some of Bertrand's beautiful waltzes. Bertrand channels tunes from the Magdalen Islands as well as Cape Breton in this recording. A must-have for any fiddle fan.
Vent Arrière: Bertrand Déraspe, Patrice Déraspe, Carole Painchaud 2003 This is the cd that started it all for us at La Famille Léger and especially the first track: "Reel à Célestin à Jos". The track starts off with the sound of the ancient Toc à Toc motor of the maritime fishermen and Bertrand dives in with his fiddle, never missing a beat and keeping the motor going feverishly to the end. It took our breath away and we wanted to hear more of this great "madelinot" fiddler. Vent arrière means tale wind in French and there definitely is a strong wind driving this collection of songs and tunes.
As the weeklong Festival of American Fiddle Tunes gathering winds to a close, the artist faculty are set to take the stage for two performance showcases on Friday, July 8, 2011 and Saturday, July 9, 2011.
July 8, 2011 ====== Country Cajun Stomp 6:00 PM, Littlefield Green
Dance to the sounds of Cajun artists from The Festival of American Fiddle Tunes, plus Marley’s Ghost on the lawn at Littlefield Green. Bring a picnic and a low-back chair.
Marley’s Ghost (Country roots and classic Americana)
Marc and Ann Savoy, Joel Savoy, Wilson Savoy, Courtney Granger, and friends (Cajun favorites from the legendary Savoy family)
July 9, 2011 ====== The Master Hands Project: NEA National Heritage Award Winners Concert 1:30 PM, McCurdy Pavilion
Centrum and the National Endowment for the Arts are proud to present an historic celebration of National Heritage honorees and recognized American treasures.
We've posted this year's tutorial staff on the faculty page - scroll down to see who's teaching. Beginning tutorials are geared towards real beginners; intermediate tutorials will incorporate some stylistic instruction. We'll see you all very soon!
One of the things I love about Fiddle Tunes is that some of the faculty are NOT full-time professional musicians; they might be farmers or furniture makers or school bus drivers.
Quebecois fiddler Bertrand Deraspe comes from a long line of fisherman. He just recently retired from fishing and gave his boat to his son, otherwise he wouldn’t have been able to come to Fiddle Tunes as it’s right at the height of fishing season!
Bertrand plays in a different style of Quebecois fiddling than what we’ve had at Fiddle Tunes in the past – it’s a style that is unique to the Magdalen Islands, where Bertrand was born and still lives. The islands form an archipelago right smack in the middle of the St. Lawrence Bay, 50 miles by boat from anywhere! This is one of the places that the original Acadians (who became the Cajuns after settling in Louisiana) retreated to, where the British didn’t come after them.
Here’s a description of Bertrand by National Geographic writer Kennedy Warne, who plays fiddle and was in the Magdalen Islands investigating harp seals:
“Bertrand was amazing. He would lean forward on his chair, say something like "'Ere is a tune I learned from a woodcutter," and start into some soulful melody that gradually increased in volume and speed until both his legs pounded up and down on the wooden floor, beads of sweat stood out on his forehead, and the musical equivalent of sparks flew from his bow.”
Thirty five years ago, nearly to the day, my life was changed forever by a performance of Cajun music by Dewey and Rodney Balfa, Marc Savoy, and Ally Young. Why that music got to me in that way, I’ll never know – it is one of the beautiful mysteries of the power of music. Marc is of course most famous for his accordion playing and building, but on this tour (we’re talking about way back in 1976, when I was 21 years old) he was playing second fiddle, because the elder Balfa brother, Will, didn’t want to travel. So there we are, on the floor of the big hall at San Diego State, sitting right in front of the stage, and Dewey Balfa and Marc Savoy are playing fiddles and I’m crying my eyes out, feeling that my whole life is about to undergo a huge shift. Which it did.
We started making trips to southwest Louisiana to visit and learn from the musicians there – I sometimes wonder if they ever regretted being so open-hearted with us – they certainly told everyone they met wherever they went (and the performance I saw was at the end of a national tour) to come down to Louisiana and visit. It was on our first trip to Cajun country that we first met Michael Doucet.
At that time, there were just a handful of young people from southwest Louisiana who were interested in Cajun music, and the undisputed leader of them was Michael Doucet. His fire and dedication, his insistence on having the music be part of a living breathing tradition (not a museum piece), and his musical creativity – these are qualities Michael shares with the greatest of Cajun fiddlers, Dennis McGee and Dewey Balfa. I think it is no accident that Michael studied with both of them, but he did exactly what they did: took the music that had been passed on to him, and both preserved and changed it at the same time, putting his own stamp on the music.
On that same first trip, we got to know Ann Savoy, by that time she and Marc were married and living in their beautiful old home. Ann is a marvel – an unassuming but killer strong rhythm guitarist, the possessor of a voice with a beautiful timbre, a treasure house of hundreds (perhaps thousands) of Cajun songs, from centuries-old traditional ballads to dance hall favorites of the 1950s, and she is a famous style icon as well. I’ve lost track of all the albums she’s done, with Marc and Michael, with the Savoy Family Band, with the Magnolia Sisters, on her own with the Sleepless Knights, and most famously her collaborations with Linda Ronstadt. She’s also done music for films and appeared in films, written the best book so far about Cajun music, and there’s probably dozens of other projects I can’t remember right now.
Wilson and Joel Savoy (two of Marc and Ann’s talented kids) will also be on hand – it is a great pleasure to welcome Michael Doucet and the Savoy family back to Fiddle Tunes!
First of all - this is not the rockabilly star Eddie Bond!
The Eddie Bond who will be at Fiddle Tunes next summer is about the age of the rockabilly Eddie's grandkids (I have no idea whether they are related.) I've heard him tear it up on fiddle, banjo, autoharp, and guitar, sing, yodel, tell stories, and his flatfooting is exceptional. Like so many of our finest Fiddle Tunes faculty, music is Eddie's avocation rather than his job; he works full-time for Pepsi and so those of us on the “Left Coast” have rarely had the chance to see him perform since he hardly ever tours. Thank you Pepsi for letting us have him for a whole week!
Kirk Sutphin has been at Fiddle Tunes many times before - I don't know him well, but I think of him as an old soul in a young man's body. A protégé of Tommy Jarrell starting in childhood, he carries on the legacy of his Round Peak forebears with a sort of relaxed yet expert panache - no "hey look at me" stuff, but he is one of those gifted people who make whatever they are part of sound better without doing anything obvious. I also greatly admire his Charlie Poole-style work in the New North Carolina Ramblers, with Kinney Rorer, Darren Moore and Jeremy Stephens. It is a pleasure to welcome Kirk back to Fiddle Tunes!
When I checked out Trio Chicontepec on YouTube, it made me want to put on my dancing shoes and stomp around – even though I’m pretty much of a non-dancer.
There is something that you can absorb about a traditional style by dancing to the music, trying to move the way the genuine people move, walking in their shoes in a way – just as you absorb some important aspects of a traditional music by listening to the way the musicians speak – the lilt of their voices, the way their voices rise and fall plays into the way the music is phrased, even for instrumental music.
Rolando “Quecho” Hernandez, founder and patriarch of the group, is truly a fiddle virtuoso, with cascades of elaborate flowery notes, but his music sounds like fun, and the vocal harmonies are wonderful. He started Trio Chicontepec in the 1950s and they’ve played all over the globe, but they also have a music school in Chicontepec where kids and adults of all ages come to learn how to play the fiddle and the jarana.
They are super-welcoming people who will encourage you to express yourself and take part in the festivities, whether by playing a tune or by dancing. There is a saying “El que lo pida, lo baila” – whoever asks for the tune, has to dance it – so I hope that folks will not be shy about making requests!
Bobby Hicks is the king of harmony bluegrass fiddling. He is one of a very small handful of fiddlers still alive and actively playing, who worked with the father of bluegrass music, Bill Monroe – you’ve heard Bobby’s fiddling on classic instrumentals like “Wheel Hoss,” “Big Mon,” “Roanoke”. These are tunes with two and sometimes three fiddles, playing in perfect harmony with plenty of grit and groove.
Bobby joined the Bluegrass Boys as a bass player at the age of 21, and switched over to fiddle after Gordon Terry was drafted. He played with Bill Monroe until early 1960, then went on to play with various country music stars including Mel Tillis and Porter Wagoner, then 21 years with Ricky Skaggs.
His honors include five Grammy awards, 3 gold records, 8 IBMA (Int’l Bluegrass Music Assn’) awards, etc. etc. After more than 50 years in the fiddle business, Bobby is still playing great and has also been actively teaching, so if you are interested in learning bluegrass/Texas swing fiddle with lots of double stops, he’s your man!
