The evening also featured performances by the three top prize winners at the Youth Division competition held in June:
3rd Place – Ethan Matlin with Last Minute Deal
2nd Place – Abigail Burrus & Sean Mythen with Sarah Mythen
1st Place – Maddy & the Hillions, Max & Anna Hill, fiddles & Maddy Tyler, guitar

In reverse order, here are the top 4 prize winners in the Open Division.

4th Place – Twin Sisters, that is Debi Lewis on fiddle with Deborah Fausch on banjo

They started off with “Oak Ridge Stomp.”

3th Place – Chirish, Maggie Danaher & Kristen Bern, fiddles, & Andrew Serb, guitar
(It was too dark to film in the plaza when this group played, so all we have is an audio recording.)

They played a medley of “The Gentle Maiden” and “Tommy People’s Reel.”

2nd Place – Po’ River Boys, Dan Gillespie on fiddle, with Jeff Yonkis on fiddle & washtub bass & Evan Collins on banjo

Their first tune was “Black-Eyed Susie.” Later, in a playoff, they played “Gospel Plow.”

1st Place – Second String, Rachel Baiman & Eva Walsh, fiddles with Greg Reish on guitar and Ethan Philion on bass

They started with “Oh My Little Darling,” and performed “Red Rocking Chair” for the playoff.

Part 2 will feature videos of the four bands that competed in the Invitational Division at Folk & Roots.

Rudi Pietsch from Vienna gave an intimate concert, joined by his friend Jürgen Schempp, from Swabia (that’s in Germany) on guitar. Your humble convener was quickly trained for second fiddle. For the proper Austrian style we lacked a kontra (chorded fiddle or viola) and a bowed bass. Here is a slow yodel followed by a fast dance tune.

Meraner Jodler-Ischler Schläunige

Two days later, the Mostly Mountain Boys and the Polka Chicks dropped in for two evenings at the Old Town School. On Tuesday night they did a workshop for several fiddle class and the Fiddle Club.

The Mostly Mountain Boys (Paul Brown-fiddle, Teri McMurray-banjo and John Schwab-guitar) hail from Winston-Salem, North Carolina and Washington DC. They started out with a twisty but fine version of “Fisher’s Hornpipe” they learned from Esker Hutchins of Dobson, North Carolina.

Fisher’s Hornpipe

The Polka Chicks, from Helsinki (that’s in Suomi, aka Finland), are Kukka Lehto on fiddle and Tejia Niku on accordion. They started with song of poverty and sadness. The singer’s life is so sad that his parents don’t even care if he marries a girl in America.

unnamed song from northern Finland

Following this lovely introduction, Paul Brown taught us distinctive version of Sugar in the Gourd that he learned from Norman Edmonds of Hillsville, Virginia. And Kukka Lehto worked us through the haunting major and minor turns of Viktors Vals from Ostrobothnia, an area in western Finland with an especially rich fiddle tradition.

The following night, both the Mostly Mountain Boys and the Polka Chicks were on the stage in our concert hall for World Music Wednesday. A delightful performance.

Kukka Lehto & Teija Niku
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One morsel more. One of the oldest folk dance tunes from Austria, a ländler that was written down in 1702. Rudi plays a setting that imitates the dudelsack (German for bagpipes). Here’s another view.

My father’s day gift to all who are the child of a dad.
Paul Tyler, convenver

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Over 30 fiddlers, pickers and fans showed up at the Leadway Bar & Gallery on North Damon on a Saturday night to hear Dan Gellert. After serenading us with a dozen wonderful old fiddle and banjo tunes, Dan and Debbie led a jam session for the next hour through a number of old chestnuts and few rare treasures.
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The Fiddle Club of the World is not just for fiddlers. Players of all kinds are welcome to participate. And it’s okay to come just to listen.
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El Caballito, a carnival song.

Felipe Valle (click to enlarge)

Felipe was joined by Juan Rivera of Sones de Mexico, and Irekani Ferreyra and Anabel Tapia of Tarima Son. (By the way, Tarima Son won first place in the Fiddle Band division of the Midwest Fiddle Championship at the Chicago Folk & Roots festival earlier in July.) Juan and Irekani both played fiddle with Anabel on jarana. Felipe often plays with a haupanguera strapped to his back, so he can quickly change between strumming the chords and bowing the fiddle. The deep voice of the huapanguera is prominent in this sample of the conjunto sound of Son Huasteco.

La Polla Pinta, a huapango

Anabel, Felipe, Irekani & Juan

The typical line-up for a Son Huasteco trio is fiddle, jarana huasteca and huapanguera. The jarana, an 8 eight-string instrument with 5 courses (a bigger version of the ukulele), is also common in Son Jarocho and other regional styles of Mexican folk music. Here, the jarana section was augmented by the late-arriving Juan Dies of Sones de Mexico.

La Xochipitzahuatl, a danza

Felipe & Juan Rivera

Fiddle Club members had a chance to learn and play four or five pieces from the Son Huasteco tradition.

Juan & Paul

Thanks to Debi Lewis and Pete Janotta for the photos.

Go here for tips and troubleshooting on how to get at these .mp3s.

An announcement of the Fall 2008 season of the Fiddle Club will be forthcoming in the next month. Stay tuned.

Paul Tyler, convener

Chirps cut his old-time teeth during his college days in Charleston, Illinois, where he played with the Indian Creek Delta Boys. More importantly, following the lead of fiddler Garry Harrison, the “Crik Delters” recorded and learned tunes from scores of senior fiddlers in the southern and eastern reaches of the Prairie State. Several of these tunes showed up in Chirps’ performance at the Leadway Bar & Gallery.

Ten Cents
Joe Wingerter tune
Stella’s Jig
Gallatin Special

He started his set off with a version of “Paddy on the Turnpike,” which may owe something to Harvey “Pappy” Taylor of Effingham. But then again, it may have been closer to the “Paddy on the Handcar” recorded in 1928 by Texas fiddler A.L. “Red” Steeley.

For the last several decades, Chirps has lived in the Chicago area. For much of that time, he played with the Volo Bogtrotters an old-time string band named after a natural feature located a short hop away from Chirps’ home in Grayslake. Representing that period of his life are tunes he learned first-hand from elders elsewhere in the Midwest, including Les “Red” Raber from Michigan, Nile Wilson from Missouri, Dwight “Red” Lamb from Iowa, and Lotus Dickey from Indiana.

Ten Strike
Old Reunion
Old Ladies Pickin’ Chickens
Sweet Bundy

Other pieces he played were learned from lesser known recordings of Nebraska fiddler Bob Walters, and a favorite piece of the Native and Métis fiddlers from Central provinces of Canada.

Bob Walter’s Hornpipe
Red River Jig

Finally, we must note that Chirps is now a resident of Wisconsin. Thus he performed a piece learned from a recording of Leonard Finseth of Mondovi, and a waltz from Madison-area concertinist (I believe he calls a bandoneon), Bruce Bollerud.

Stegen Waltz
Leonard Finseth’s Polka

Around 30 musicians enjoyed the performance and the jam that followed. We played all six of the tunes posted earlier on this blog. Plus a bunch more. A request was made for “Ten Strike,” the Les Raber quadrille piece, to be posted here. The tune is, in fact, the melody to be played for the 4th figure of the Ten Strike quadrille, as printed in Gems of the Ballroom (compiled circa 1890 by Geo. B. McCosh of Dekalb, Illinois). Les learned the tune from the book, which he had just acquired in 1981 when I brought him to perform at the Indiana Fiddlers Gathering in Battle Ground. Here’s the the tune as played by Chirps. It’s in C.

Ten Strike

The next Fiddle Club of the World meeting is coming up soon, on Saturday, May 10. It will feature the Cajun team of Will & Holly Whedbee.

Paul Tyler, convener