I know I’m a little late in this post, but I wanted to let everyone know what a great time the Grand Master’s Fiddle Contest is. I also want to give a special thanks to Ed Carnes, Howard Harris, and the rest of the GMFC board who have worked so hard to bring this great event back to us.
The Grand Master’s takes place in Nashville during the IBMA Bluegrass festival, and is one of the most competitive and prestigious fiddling contests in the United States.
The Grand Master’s consists of an open preliminary round, where anyone can come and compete, a second round where the finalists from the preliminaries face 10-15 invited fiddlers, and the championship round where the top 10 contestants from the second round compete for buckets of cash.
If jamming is your thing, there is plenty of that as well. If Old-Time Fiddling is your thing, you will want to stay in the Downtown Nashville Hilton. It is just a couple of blocks from the contest, and is where the fiddle jamming is. Jamming happens on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights, but Saturday is usually the biggest jam night, since everybody is done competing.
The thing that I like most about the Grand Master’s is the wide array of fiddlers that come out for the contest. I get to see fiddlers from all of the US, that I seldom get to hang out with. I know it will sound strange to those of you who aren’t fiddlers, but these are some of my closest friends, even though I see them at most 5-10 days a year.
I highly recommend coming to the Grand Master’s Fiddling Championship. I also highly recommend getting the Grand Master’s Championship round CD’s. I have been wearing out the 2006 CD. Hope to see you all there.
Here are some pictures from the 2008 Grand Master’s:
Vi Wickam (fiddle) warming up with Terry Ludiker (guitar)
Vi Wickam at the 2008 Grand Master's with Terry Ludiker and Anthony Mature
Vi Wickam at the 2008 GMFC with Anthony Mature and Al Mouledous
Warmup Room: Vi Wickam, Joel Whittinghill, Wes Westmoreland, Bill Jones and Doug Fleener
Young Person's Jam at the Downtown Nashville Hilton
The Murray Kentucky Fiddle Festival was a great time this year. The contestant turnout was decent, and the judging was excellent. And, I had a great time jamming with Tyler and Joel.
I ended up in third place in the Junior (17-49) category. Joel Whittinghill placed second, and Doug Fleener landed the win. Ed Carnes ended up in 4th after narrowly losing a 3rd place tiebreaker (1 point.) Much excitement was had by all. Wild Bill Jones made a brief appearance to perform accompanist services, but he missed out on the jamming fun.
Maddie Denton swept the Beginner (11-16) age group, and won the Grand Champion Fiddle off. Later at Los Portales Mexican Restaurant, Maddie was crowned the Western Kentucky Fiddle Queen.
Maddie Denton - Western Kentucky Fiddle Queen *Photo Credit and Sombrero Credit - Tyler Andal
Looking forward to the Western Kentucky Regional next year at Murray. I’m sure it won’t dissappoint.
Evansville’s West Side Nut Club Fall Festival is one of the largest street fairs in the US, and is famous for its outrageous foods. Here are a few of my favorite foods, and some things about the festival that aren’t foods, but were fun or interesting to me anyway.
10. Fried Green Tomatoes - Vanderburgh Humane Society booth. These are one of my all time favorites. They are served with either ranch or horseradish dip. (I prefer the horseradish.)
9. The Freak Out - This is the most in-demand ride at the Fall Fest. We skipped it this year, because you have to wait in line for about an hour to get a ride on it.
7. Pronto Pups - Corn Dogs have long been a mainstay of fair food, but the pronto pup is it’s sweeter, smoother cousin. The pronto pup is a hot dog deep fried in pancake batter. The only way to eat a pronto pup is hand-dipped and fresh fried.
6. Free Wi-Fi - When you are working a booth and have nothing better to do than google around, the Free Wi-Fi (powered by On-Site and Insight) was a good way to pass a few minutes in between the mad mass of people.
5. Deep Fried Bratwurst - This new favorite of mine was new to the Festival (at least to my knowledge). Think pronto pup on steroids. Awesome!
4. Brain Sandwich - I still haven’t tried it, but you can’t really mention the Fall Fest without mentioning the infamous brain sandwich. If you have a hankering for pig brain, this is a sandwich you don’t want to miss.
3. Montessori Booth - Evansville Montessori always has a great selection of gross out candy, and interesting food. The candy, called icky lickies are cancy pops and chocolate with either a bug or a scorpion inside. Their featured food this year was the Kangurito - a Kangaroo meat Burrito.
2. Various other Favorite Foods - I have so many other favorite Fall Fest Foods that I would be remiss to not at least mention them.
SWIRCA Cobbler
Walking Taco
Deep Fried Oreo
Buffalo Burger
Birch Beer Floats
Sweet Potato Fries
Ski Slushies
Pig Licker - Also new this year (really deserves its own number.) AKA Lipstick on a Pig, a Pig Licker is bacon dipped in dark chocolate. Central United Methodist had some rockin’ good pig lickers.
1. Overloading the Cell Phone Towers - It was impossible to use your cell phone at the Fall Fest this year. It was amazing to see how reliant we all are on our Cell Phones these days. So many people were trying to use their cell phones simultaneously that none of them would work right. AWESOME!
Hope to see you at the Fall Fest next year! You can join me for a basket of Lipstick on a Pig.
WNIN Public Radio took a moment to interview my fiddle student, Cameron Vaughn, about his 2nd place finish in the Indiana State Picking and Fiddling Championships in the Jr. Jr. Age Division. Cameron also fiddles a little bit on air.
They also spent a little time talking with me about fiddling. Cameron did a great job at the contest, and I’m very proud of him.
present International Bluegrass Camp September 25-28, 2008Come join us in beautiful Ridgetop, TN for a long weekend retreat filled with formal classes, incredible jamming, and tons of surprises. Improve on your bluegrass instrument of choice (or more than one – learn ‘em all!) with some of the best in the business. Become a better singer, work on the craft of songwriting, and meet people from around the world. On-site lodging is first come first served but there are many local hotel options as well.
I have been playing with Chrome most of the day, and I think that Chrome is wonderfully fast, but there is a serious issue with the Chrome EULA that needs to be addressed before I will make it my primary browser.
I hope that Google addresses this EULA issue soon, because I do like the clean layout, and responsiveness of Chrome.
Also after reading the Chrome Comic, I really like what they have done in the background with precise garbage collection, and multithreaded rendering. Overall, the product is pretty brilliant, but they really need to fix the EULA.
