Champion Fiddler, Inspired Performer
Over the past few months, a number of you have asked me, “How do I watch Fiddle Tune a Day from the beginning.” Up until now, the answer was to get on my blog and start at the beginning. Which, to say the least, is a pain in the tush. Starting today, there is a [...]
I don’t remember who I first heard play Shuckin’ the Bush, but I remember thinking it was a super cool tune, and starting to work it out immediately. My coolest memory around this tune was at the Royal Gorge Fiddle Contest, when Herman Johnson judged it and some amazing fiddlers showed up (including Matthew Hartz, [...]
Bitter Creek is a cool breakdown in the key of G. I have some good memories of playing it with Bill Jones and Ed Carnes at the Indiana State Fiddle Contest a few years back. It’s fairly straight ahead as a tune. I didn’t realize it at the time I wrote it, but Harlaxton Hornpipe [...]
Today, I had the second opportunity to be on Pirate Radio with Charlie Wrobbel. This time, Steve Eulberg was available to join me. After playing Silent Night the first time, I had a brainstorm of the perfect song to play on Pirate Radio – What do you do with a drunken Sailor? My mom used [...]
Tonight, as I was thinking about what to play, I thought, “I haven’t played a jig in a while.” So today is a jig day. I pulled out Cole’s 1000 fiddle tunes and started playing through a few jigs. Most of them really didn’t catch my ear, but when I got to Haste to the [...]
Tonight, after I finished teaching my lessons, Palm Trees of Kerry was the tune that that was in my head. The reason it was in my head is that I learned it an hour and a half earlier when one of my students played it for me. Palm Trees of Kerry is a relatively simple [...]
The only things I could remember about Missouri Waltz before I looked it up tonight so that I could play it were: I played it once as a kid. It was kind of slidey. It was pretty. That was enough for me to decide that tonight’s tune would be Missouri Waltz (after I listened to [...]
Black Mountain Rag is one of the top Show Fiddle Tunes of all time. It would definitely make my top 5 list. And, this recording I found of Buddy Spicher playing it is hands-down the best rendition of Black Mountain Rag that I have ever seen or heard. Before tonight, I hadn’t ever worked up [...]
I think that Ed Carnes may have been the first person I heard play General Longstreet’s Reel. When I see Ed at Fiddle contests, he is one of the few people that will surprise me with an obscure tune that I don’t know, and maybe haven’t even heard of. General Longstreet’s is also one of [...]
I learned Lost Indian from a recording of Benny Thomasson playing it. I have a lot of recordings of Benny, and I have to say that I am as impressed by the breadth of his fiddling repertoire as I am about how well he played the tunes. He played hornpipes, and cross-key old-time fiddle tunes [...]
