Champion Fiddler, Inspired Performer
Wayfaring Stranger has long been one of my favorite tunes. It’s so soulful, and has that minor grooving feel. It just may be one the the coolest tunes ever. I have a recollection of Shorty playing this tune, possibly at the Grand Lake Fiddle Festival in Grove, OK. I just love Shorty’s fiddling. He’s one [...]
Christina and I have been doing some rearranging of the furniture, and it really feels like things just keep settling in more and more. Tonight I was inspired to play Home Sweet Home, because as cheesy as it sounds, there really is no place like home. My favorite recording of this is Buddy Spicher playing [...]
Today is the 4th of July, and here in the United States of America, it’s the day we celebrate our Independence from England. And, to celebrate our Independence Day, I am playing our national anthem, the Star Spangled Banner. It’s a pretty song, and it’s kind of hard to sing because it has a huge [...]
Who knew there were so many flat-out beautiful tunes out there. Edelweiss is another one of those contenders for the most beautiful song contest in my book. Rodgers and Hammerstein really hit a home run with this one. There are a lot of good songs in “The Sound of Music”, but to me this one [...]
When I hear (or play) When Johnny Comes Marching Home, it totally transports me mentally to civil war times. I can hear the drummer and the marching, and I can Imagine a soldier coming home to his family who had been missing him, and wondering if he would ever return alive. It’s a sad melody [...]
How Great Thou Art is a beautiful old Hymn, and it was the most popular request on the Facebook Fiddler’s Association when I asked what the most beautiful tune ever was. My personal favorite is What a Wonderful World. So, by popular request, here is How Great Thou Art. How Great Thou Art [...]
I learned the Great Western Clog when I was 15 from Dale Morris. I had traveled to Shamrock, Texas before my first trip to the National Fiddle Contest in Weiser, Idaho. Dale taught me a bunch of hornpipes and reels, and this clog during the week I stayed with him. Click on his name to [...]
I wrote the Colorado Waltz when I was 12 years old. That was way back in the 1980′s for those of you young whipper-snappers. I was fooling around on my fiddle, and I started playing the A Part of the song, and my dad liked it, and he wrote the B part to it. So, [...]
When I was 15, I had an opportunity to study fiddling with Dale Morris. It was my first time travelling on my own, first time to fly on an airplane, and Texas was a foreign land. Everybody drove Lincolns, Cadillacs, or pickup trucks, and everybody called each other “hun”. I learned a lot from Dale [...]
Welcome to Day 9 of a Fiddle Tune a Day. I’m back home again in Colorado, and glad to be able to relax and catch up on my sleep after the Colorado State Fiddle Contest. Today, I’m playing Aura Lea, better known today as the tune that lends its melody to West Point’s “Army Blue”, [...]
