About Me and Old-Time Music

(Me-2nd from left-with the Cliffhangers at Clifftop '02)

I’ve been a long-time devotee of traditional old time music—in my case, since I first heard the music in my late teens. (Actually earlier, if you count the fiddle and banjo music I heard at the Bar 717 Ranch in the Trinity Mountains of California, where I went to summer camp in my thirteenth and fourteenth years.) But I come to the music from my own direction, and when I play, or teach, or compose tunes or songs in the style of, old time music, it’s generally in the spirit of my particular approach and relationship to the music. That approach can be summed up with a few key observations.

First: from the beginning, I was exposed to old time music as one of many styles, both traditional and contemporary. I learned about old time music as one thread in a tapestry of many music traditions to which I was exposed, first in the wonderful music scene of California in the mid-70s where I came of musical age, and in the years since. Listening to and learning Southern old time music alongside related traditions such as Irish music, bluegrass, and fiddle music from New England, Quebec, Cape Breton, and so on, I’ve come to appreciate both its distinctness and its interconnectedness with other traditions. Some of these are historically related to old time music, like Irish music and bluegrass; others, like Balkan or Swedish music, may seem far afield yet, on musical reflection, reveal mysterious and wonderful points of comraderie with the old-time canon.

Players trying to develop their ‘home’ style in the face of many musical influences must decide where to keep things separate and where to allow musical ideas to blend and cross-fertilize. That’s a challenge I’ve wrestled with my whole musical life.

Second: I came along later than many folks who, while some near-contemporaries to me in age, I look up to as musical heros and mentors. This is the generation of "revivalists" who took the time to go out and find, meet and collect from older players, so many of whom are now lost to us. I’m eternally grateful for these ‘older siblings’ who did such great work preserving tradition, and I try to make the best use I can of the legacy they helped preserve.

While I had a few opportunities to meet and learn directly from that older generation of musicians, those chances were sadly few and far between. So, much of my music has been learned from secondary sources such as commercial or reissed field recordings; still more was learned from friends and associates, at festivals, camps, and late night parties. This is increasingly the reality faced by anyone learning fiddle music now; we must gather the shards wherever and in whatever form we find them, and breathe life back into the music as best we can. But there are specific skills we can hone to help with the challenges of learning the music in this way, i.e., from secondary sources like source recordings. These skills will become ever more important as the older generation of players is lost to us.

Third: Learning traditional music for me has never been divorced from my own musical expression, whether that lay in piecing together my versions of old tunes, improvising and varying the tunes while playing, or creating new tunes and new forms of tunes drawing in different ways on traditional models. So for me, old time music (despite the name) has always been music just as amenable to experimentation, improvisation, new composition as other genres or styles. It is precious in that it is of infinite value, but not in the sense of delicacy or frailness. It is there to be both delved into and tinkered with. And tinker with it I surely have, as I’ll be the first to admit.

While not every older player may have been an improviser or an innovator like an Ed Haley, improvisation and new composition has always had some role in every living tradition. So, in using what I’ve learned of traditional music as a stimulus to my own new creation, I feel I am respecting the spirit and even the letter of the older music, and maintaining my connection with it. I like to write new tunes that come to me as if I have remembered them from long ago; and I like to play old tunes as if I was making them up right here and now. Playing very interactively and responsively with friends, or to move a roomful of dancers, is also part of that pledge to keep the music living and breathing. Improvising, and for me even the creation of new tunes, is part of an active conversation with musical comrades, and with the music itself.

These three aspects—exposure to many different traditional idioms and regional styles, the necessity of working indirectly from secondary sources as well as personal contact with older musicians, and the impetus to add one’s own creative signature into the music one plays—are essential elements of the way I approach old time music. I wouldn’t call this a philosophy, since the first two aspects are really the direct result of the circumstances in which I found myself; and the latter is not so much a conscious choice as a gut-level aspect of my musical temperament. But they certainly shape who I am as a player and as a tunesmith. Thus they shape as well how I try to teach the music.