Fiddle Club of the World

Mélodie de la semaine pour les Janvier 16, 2012

In the summer of 1982, I attended Northern Week of the Fiddle and Dance Workshops in Ashokan, New York (better known ‘Root Camp’) in part to study French Canadian fiddling with Lisa Ornstein. She taught a number of crooked and straight tunes with compelling melodic turns and interesting bowing. One of the simplest, but loveliest, was Sheepskin and Beeswax, a short modal tune from Eric Corrigan from a little town in Quebec called Stoneham. Even though Mr. Corrigan was of Irish ancestry, he culturally Quebecois.

Sixteen years later, I met Mr. Corrigan at another fiddle camp across the continent in Port Townsend, Washington. He and fellow fiddler, Eddie Whalen, had traveled from Quebec to lead workshops at the Festival of American Fiddle Tunes sponsored by the Centrum. So here’s their version of the tune of the week. Isn’t that just the coolest name for a tune? I wish I knew the story behind the name.

Sheepskin and Beeswax by Eric Corrigan & Eddie Whalen

The whole medley played by Mr. Corrigan and Mr. Whalen can be found on my Dr.Dosido.net website. The page also contains a link to Lisa Ornstein’s performance of the tune, recorded in 1982.

Filed under: Tune of the Week,Tunes by Paul | January 18, 2012 | Comments (2)

Old Town School East is now occupied

This was the vision, ten years in the making.

Eagerly anticipated. Much hard work to keep the promise. And so it was written: so “Come join us on Sunday, January 15 at 6:30 for a Housewarming Dance for the new Lincoln Square East building of the Old Town School of Folk Music (4545 Lincoln). We’ll occupy one of the fabulous new dance studios. All dancers, players and callers are welcome to help warm up the floor.” so so	Dance tonight in E326! (click to enlarge)
(click to enlarge)	(click to enlarge)
(click to enlarge)	(click to enlarge)
January 15, 2012 so 80 folks came to play or dance or both. Thanks to our 4 great callers: Paul Collins, Lynn Garren, Tom Senior and Bill Sudkamp. 30 musicians played-never more than 20 at a time-including 1 banjo, 1 accordion, 3 mandolins and the rest evenly divided between fiddles and guitars. so so	(click to enlarge)
Here’s our set list, as best I remember: (D tunes) Angeline the Baker Fly Around My Pretty Little Miss Soldier’s Joy Walk Old Shoe Heel Come a-Draggin’ Twin Sisters(G Tunes) Indian Corn	Sail Away Ladies Roscoe (A Tunes) Tippin’ Back the Corn Liza Jane Little Dutch Girl (final waltz in D) Tennessee Waltz

so
Photos by Gail Tyler, except the first and the last, which were taken by . . .
Paul Tyler, convener

Filed under: Photos,Reports by Paul | January 16, 2012 | Comments (0)

Tune i ugen for Januar 9, 2012

From one of my all-time favorite CDs

(click to visit CD Roots catalog)

This CD was put together in honor of Gunner Friis‘ 60th birthday in 2005. He is a highly-respected dance fiddle in Denmark. This wedding march, 1 of 2 in a medley, was learned from Jens Frederiksen, who I assume was a fiddler from the previous generation.

Brudemarch fra Himmerland 1

Gunner Friis on fiddle with Ben Melvij Nielsen on harmonika, a variety of pump organ.

The Abcs are below. A simple tutorial on Abc is can be downloaded here.

Paul Tyler, convener

X:2
T:Brudemarch fra Himmerland 1
S:Gunner Friis efter Jens Frederiksen
M:6/8
L:1/8
K:G
D | GBD GBd | g2B BAB | c2A AGA | B2G G2D |
GBD GBd | g2B BAB | c2A def | g2g gag |
e2c c2e | edc B2d | dcA def | g2g gag |
e2c c2e | edc B2d | dcA def | g2g g2 ||

Filed under: Tune of the Week by Paul | January 12, 2012 | Comments (0)

House Warming Dance – January 15

Occupy the new Old Town School East (4545 Lincoln) on Sunday, January 15 at 6:30pm. It’s free. Come play and dance and dance and play. Callers welcome too. We’ve got sprung floors in the dance studios. The building needs some fiddle tunes to break it in right.

Room E326
(click to enlarge)
((just do it))

Filed under: Meeting Schedule by Paul | January 7, 2012 | Comments (0)

New for 2012, Tune of the Week

Happy New Year to all you Hoss-Hair Pullers and Friends

And my resolution is to provide you all with a rare and interesting Fiddle Club Tune-of-the-Week. Here’s the first one for week of January 2, 2012 . . .

Sleeping Giant Two-Step

By Andy De Jarlis (1914-75), a Métis fiddler from Canada’s Red River country, one of two hundred or so tunes he composed and recorded. Some people give him credit with popularizing “Whiskey Before Breakfast,” a tune that started out in the mixed Native and French communities of Western Canada. Many other Andy De Jarlis tunes can be found on YouTube.

Sleeping Giant

As played by Glenn Berry of Seabeck, Washington. I met and recorded Mr. Berry in 1998 at the Festival of American Fiddle Tunes in Port Townsend, Washington.

At the bottom of this post are the notes for “Sleeping Giant” in Abc notation, a good tool to learn and use.

And now a word from our sponsor. The new session of Old Town School classes starts next Monday (January 9). It’s important that you don’t wait until the last day to sign up. Low enrollment classes will be cancelled 3 days before the first class. My Fiddle 4 Old Time class on Mondays at noon still needs a least one student, as does my Fiddle 4 Cajun class on Tuesdays at 8pm. Other fiddle classes are on the bubble, so don’t wait only to find out the class you wanted to take was cancelled. They are listed here.

Paul Tyler, convener

X:1
T:Sleeping Giant Two-Step
S:Andy DeJarlis
M:C|
L:1/8
K:D
A2d2 | f3g f2d2 | A4 F4 | G3G G2F2 | E4 E2F2 |
G3G G2F2 | E4 D2E2 | F3G F2E2 | F2F2 A2d2 |
f3g f2d2 | A4 F4 | G3G G2F2 | E4 E2F2 |
G3G G2A2 | c2A2 B2c2 | d4 d4 |1 d4 :|2 d2d2 c2=c2 ||:
B4 d4 | g6 g2 | f3g f2d2 | A4 d4 |
e4 e3f | e2c2 B2A2 | d2A2 F2G2 | A2d2 c2=c2 |
B4 d4 | g6 g2 | f3g f2d2 | A4 G2F2 |
E3F E2F2 | G2A2 B2c2 | d4 d4 |1 d2d2 c2=c2 :|2 d4 ||

Filed under: Tune of the Week by Paul | January 4, 2012 | Comments (2)

Michi Regier tunes

The next fiddle club meeting will be
Michi Regier with Peasants Abroad
Sunday, December 11 at 6:30p
Atlantic Bar & Grill (5062 Lincoln)

Michi Regier started out with classical violin lessons (lessons that were well-earned), but soon went off in search of Gypsy fiddling on paths that took her into the worlds of Mariachi bands and renaissance fairs. Among other gems, Michi will perform her “Fiddle Tree” travelogue in fiddle, English and Ukrainian, highlighting the musical folklore of the Ukraine, which she studied first-hand in 2003 at the Lysenko Conservatory in L’viv. She also plays with the Milwaukee based Water Street Bridge.

Peasants Abroad is the Madison, Wisconsin duo of Ashli Fain on mandolin and percussionist Richard Miller. Both will also demonstrate some dancing to the accompaniment of Michi Regier’s exotic fiddling. A few simple dances will be taught to Fiddle Clubbers, including one of my favorite, the lovely and simple Setnja from Serbia.

Ukrainian folk costumes
(click to enlarge)

Michi Regier with Ivan Andreiovich
(click to enlarge)

Michi’s tunes, and what she has to say about them . . .

Hutsulky

“I learned it from a Carpathian mountain fiddler (Ivan, in the picture) who refused to let me take notes!”

Arkan-Fire Dance

“I learned this tune from Oksana Moshinsky, bandura player from Ukraine. I met her when performing at the Colorado renaissance festival, and her great cooking is responsible for my weekly visits to her house to learn Ukrainian tunes.” [nb: a cd by Michi & Oksana is available here.]

Little Stream

“This one I learned from Oksana Moshinsky – it’s a traditional Ukrainian tune also.
Here’s a fairly traditional sung version. I recorded an instrumental arrangement of it on my first cd Curved Space (It is out of print but I still have download cards which I will bring to the club).”

Notation for Little Stream

To register for Michi’s visit to the Fiddle Club, show up at the Atlantic Bar on Sunday with $15 in hand (it all goes to the artist). Or join fiddle club with a year’s subscription for $60.

-Paul Tyler, convener

Filed under: Meeting Schedule by Paul | December 8, 2011 | Comments (2)

Reels, Rants and Polkas

The next fiddle club meeting will be
Sunday, November 20 at 6:30p
Atlantic Bar & Grill (5062 Lincoln)
We’ll play a few English ceilidh (pronounced ‘kaylee’) tunes, which will be posted soon. Andwe’ll try them out with a couple of easy dances. Invite your friends and family to come along and dance. No admission fee. No registration required.

The story thus far. Long ago in a galaxy far away I started playing the fiddle and calling square dances, because I thought that was the most fun a group of people could have.

Al Smitley & Paul Tyler re-enacting frontier life in 1836
Conner Prairie Pioneer Settlement
Noblesville, Indiana – 1981
(click to enlarge)

(click to enlarge)

Way back then, I had the glimmer of notion that the American square dance was just one type of set dance among many. Even then I knew the fiddle was the universal instrument. But over the next thirty years, I concentrated on playing for and calling American square dances, in part, because they were easy for folks to learn, and required only a walking step. No aspiring dancer had to learn to do anything special with his or her feet.

But in the meantime, in merry old England, a set dance revival was growing that attracted thousands of people young and old, and several dozen high energy dance bands to a scene called Barn Dancing. In the last ten years it’s also become known as Ceilidh dancing, borrowing a term for similar explosion of old time dancing in Scotland. The dances are for sets of 4 to 6 couples, or for lines for “as many as will,” or for circles made up of couples or groups of 3. The dances are all easy to learn and great fun to do.

And part of what makes English Ceilidhs such big fun, is that the dancers use a few special steps that bring them to a closer connection with the music. These steps are the setting step (for reels), the rant step, and the polka. We’re going to try them out at the next meeting.

Here’s some tunes. My current favorite reel is Beatrice Hill’s 3-Hand Reel. Click the title for a slow version I posted on the Old Town School’s Flog, and click this link for the notes. If you want to get inspired, listen to this live version from the Old Swan Band, the top-of-the-heap band for English ceilidh.

Another great, and easy, English reel that has been played in Old Town fiddle classes is Albert Farmer’s Bonfire Tune. And for the right feel for an English reel, take a look at this video of the Old Swan Band playing “Speed the Plough”. For the last figure each time through, the dancers do a simple polka step (and-a|1 & 2 and-a|1 & 2).

Another step from the old-time polka (also known as a schottische), is the step-hop, step
-hop (1 & 2 &|1 & 2 &). At an English Ceilidh, reels and polkas dance alike, as seen in this video of the Old Swan Band playing a couple of well-known polkas learned from Walter Bulwar of East Anglia.

Check back in a day or two for part 2 of this post. I’ll provide some sounds and video for the reel setting step and the rant step.

Paul Tyler, convener

Filed under: Meeting Schedule,Musings by Paul | November 12, 2011 | Comments (0)

Fiddle fun

Hey Y’all,
Next fiddle club meeting will be
Sunday, November 20 at 6:30p
Atlantic Bar & Grill (5062 Lincoln)
We’ll play a few English ceilidh (pronounced ‘kaylee’) tunes, which will be posted soon. And we’ll try them out with a couple of easy dances. Invite your friends and family to come along and dance. No admission fee. No registration required.

And here’s some cool stuff I found that I wanted to share.

First off, is my snapshot of a photograph from the 1920s taken by Frank Hohenberger, a native of Indianapolis who opened a photo studio in Nashville, the county seat of bucolic Brown County, Indiana. Hohenberger is famous for his portraits of the people, homesteads and landscapes of Brown County. This photo, title “The Old Fiddler” may have been taken in Indiana, or perhaps on one of Hohenberger’s trips to Kentucky. The identity of the fiddler is unknown.

(click to enlarge)

This print is in a display of Hohenberger portraits hanging on the walls of the Indiana Memorial Union at Indiana University in Bloomington. I used to see it nearly every day as I cut through the Union on my way to the library. Several books of Hohenberger’s photos have been published by Indiana University Press. Most notable is the book compiled by my friend Dillon Bustin, a dance caller and banjoist now living in Massachusetts, with the great title If You Don’t Out Die Me.

And from a neighboring continent, the haunting sounds of a three string fiddle–rabeca de tres cordas–played by the makerLeonildo Pereira from the southern coast of Brazil.

Here are some photos of Sr. Pereira and his instrument.

(click to enlarge)

For more information and a fabulous map, check out rabeca.org.

And come back in a few days for some fun English tunes to learn.

Paul Tyler, convener

Filed under: Musings by Paul | November 10, 2011 | Comments (0)

Tunes from Lynn Frederick

These tunes were originally collected by the late Jeff Goehring in the 1980s from traditional fiddlers in south and central Ohio. Jeff and Lynn played together in the Red Mules String Band. Many of Jeff’s field recordings are available on CD from the Field Recorder’s Collective, including albums featuring Lonnie Seymour, Jimmie Wheeler and John Hannah mentioned below. Also available are CDs featuring Cecil Plum, Arnold Sharp and Ward Jarvis. All can be found at www.fieldrecorder.com.

The guitar accompaniment heard on the recordings below is by Beth Braden, who was also a Red Mule. (Click the arrow to play and listen; right click the blue link to download mp3 to your computer.)

Two tunes from Lonnie Seymour of Chillicothe, Ohio. Lonnie’s playing can be heard on Field Recorders Collective CD FRC403.
Tomahawk in A

Tomahawk slow

Log Chain in D

Log Chain slow

A tune from Jimmie Wheeler of Portsmouth, Ohio (FRC401) . . .
Cauliflower

Cauliflower slow

. . . and one from Estil Adams of Washington Courthouse, Ohio
Putner’s Run in G

Putner’s Run slow

Here’s a tune from John Hannah, a native of West Virginian who moved Columbus (FRC405).
Daddy Whipped the Baby in G

Daddy Whipped slow

This one is from Missouri fiddler Bob Holt. Lynn learned it from Jeff Goehring.
Blue Mule in G

Blue Mule slow

Lynn Frederick with Fred Campeau will guest at the Fiddle Club of the World meeting onSunday, October 23 at 6:30p at the Atlantic Bar & Grill (5063 Lincoln). More info here. Single meeting dues are $15. Register here by date (10/23/2011). For yearly dues of $60-which covers all meetings for the next 12 months–click here.

Filed under: Tunes by Paul | October 6, 2011 | Comments (0)

Meetings & Guests for Fall 2011

All events happen at the Atlantic Bar & Grill (5062 Lincoln)

You can now join Fiddle Club of the World for $60 yearly dues. This allows you to 1) support our effort to bring notable fiddlers to the Old Town School for friendly and up close interactions with our local players, 2) save up to 50% off of single meeting dues, and 3) get a cool Fiddle Club card with your name and renewal date inscribed. You don’t have to be a fiddler to join or attend. Everyone is welcome.

Lynn Frederick with Fred Campeau
Sunday, October 23, 6:30 – Old-Time

A Midwestern mainstay of old-time music,* Lynn Frederick, a native of Indiana now living in Ohio, played with the Rhythm Gorillas in the ’80s and the Red Mules String Band in the ’90s. From Red Mules fiddler, the late Jeff Goerhing, Lynn learned the half dozen Buckeye tunes he will share with Fiddle Club (watch for a forthcoming “Tunes” post). A multi-instrumentalist, singer and dance caller, Lynn will also give us a few of the great old songs in his repertoire.

This Fiddle Club will feature Lynn paired up with Fred Campeau, of Volo Bogtrotters fame. They make up half of the Knock Knock Hoosiers that have performed annually at a festival in Nappanee, Indiana for the better part of three decades. Songs and tunes don’t get much older or timelier than this.

(click for another view)

* Or is he a mainstay of Midwestern old-time?

Go here for tunes from Lynn Frederick. Learn some or all. We’ll play them together after Lynn’s program.

Square & Ceilidh Dance workshop
Sunday, November 20, 6:30 – dance band practice** dancers welcome

Michi Regier with Peasants Abroad
Sunday, December 11, 6:30p – Ukrainian &c

(click image for another view)

Single dues for a meeting with a featured fiddler are $15. Register here by date.
Or you may choose the yearly dues option for $60.

** To be a Fiddle Club player, come to a Fiddle Club event. There are no single dues for meetings at which we just play tunes, watch films or dance. Come and join us, even if you don’t have a Fiddle Club card. If you decide to register for one, we appreciate your support.

Mélodie de la semaine pour les Janvier 16, 2012

Old Town School East is now occupied

Tune i ugen for Januar 9, 2012

House Warming Dance – January 15

New for 2012, Tune of the Week

Michi Regier tunes

Reels, Rants and Polkas

Fiddle fun

Tunes from Lynn Frederick

Meetings & Guests for Fall 2011

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