Articles
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Fiddler Magazine has over 10 years of great reading. You
can see parts of past issues here. Feature
articles and tunes are listed for the issues spanning from our
premier issue in Spring '94 to Winter '98/'99. Spring '96
marked the birth of this web site and the inclusion of article
excerpts. Many back issues are available for sale in the Store.
Current issue - Fall 2006
Features
Departments
- The Practicing Fiddler: Developing a Rock Guitar Sound
with Matt Turner, by Hollis Taylor
- Cross-Tuning Workshop, Part 32: ADAE, by Jody
Stecher
- On Improvisation: Checking Your Pitch with Open Strings,
by Paul Anastasio
- Bluegrass Fiddling: Fiddlin’ Arthur Smith, by Paul
Shelasky
- Irish Fiddling: Variations, by Brendan Taaffe
- Cross-Canada Fiddle Tour: King Ganam, by Gordon
Stobbe
- Reviews
Tunes
- Schottis fran Rödön, by Rickard Näslin (Jämtland)
- Tibrandsmarschen, by Rickard Näslin (Jämtland)
- Czardas from Kalotaszeg, from a book by Márta Viágvölgyi
entitled Kalotaszegi Népzene II
- Podrauska Polka, traditional, as played by Marko
Dreher
- Hora, Romanian hora as played by Marko Dreher
- Arkansas Traveler, transcribed by Gene Silberberg and
Stuart Williams as played by Floyd Engstrom
- Mexican Waltz, transcribed by Gene Silberberg and Stuart
Williams as played by Floyd Engstrom
- Cotton Patch Rag, as played by Jim Wood (A “Winning”
Contest Round)
- Soldier’s Joy, transcribed by Jody Stecher as played by
Fulton Myers (Cross-Tuning Workshop)
- Dixie Stomp, transcribed by Paul Shelasky as played by
Arthur Smith (Bluegrass Fiddling)
- John McHugh’s, transcribed by Brendan Taaffe as played
by John Carty (Irish Fiddling)
- The Farmer’s Schottische, by King Ganam (Cross-Canada
Fiddle Tour)
Article Excerpts
The Circle
Remains Unbroken
By Leo Hickman
The silver-haired old man sitting on the porch of the
rustic Camp Washington Carver lodge with fiddle in hand, eyed
the young fiddler approaching him. As the young boy drew
nearer, the old man asked the boy if he knew any of his tunes.
The older man was not aware that the young fiddler had wanted
to meet him for two years and had carried his picture in his
fiddle case all that time. The young fiddler timidly answered,
“Yes, sir. I know a few of your tunes.” And they began to
play. Unknowingly, with the start of this interaction, a
friendship and mentorship began that was to last for nine more
years. The older man was West Virginia fiddler Melvin Wine and
the young fiddler was Jake Krack.
At the age of six years, Jake began to learn to play the
fiddle. He soon became immersed in learning the old fiddle
tunes of West Virginia and the heritage behind them through
the oral tradition (learning by ear). Jake’s first teacher,
Brad Leftwich, introduced him to the music of the old fiddlers
of West Virginia and passed on his knowledge of the music to
Jake for three and a half years. The value of Brad’s
mentorship was immeasurable in the laying of the strong
foundation he gave to Jake. During this time Brad instilled in
Jake the wonderful opportunities that could be his if he were
able to get to know the older fiddlers before they vanished.
Jake’s family took this advice to heart for the next year by
making constant trips to West Virginia from southern Indiana.
Later, with a five thousand dollar grant from the Indiana Arts
Commission, the Krack family was able to continue their
travels to West Virginia until eventually moving there in
1998. Continuing on since that beginning, Jake has spent the
last fifteen years learning from a number of West Virginia
master fiddlers and has immersed himself into the wonderful
opportunities Brad had told him about.
As he met more and more with his mentors, Jake did not just
learn their fiddle tunes but also learned about their lives
and their families and very quickly became intertwined with
them in friendship and family. Through these interactions
Jake, in short order, became aware of the priceless treasures
that would befall him in his journey “back in time.” One of
these treasured experiences took place during Jake’s first
visit to Melvin Wine’s home when Melvin patiently instructed
him in the fine art of flipping a pancake by using just the
pan and a skillful flip of the wrist. The ear-to-ear grin on
Jake’s face upon accomplishing this feat would last a lifetime
in his memory. Another treasured experience would be the hours
spent at the side of his old friend in the “sleepy corner” (an
old couch in the corner of Melvin’s living room).
Melvin Wine was born in Burnsville, West Virginia, in 1909.
At the age of nine he began to play his first fiddle tunes by
sneaking out his father’s prized possession (the fiddle).
Melvin eventually gained the courage to inform his mother of
the progress he had made with his father’s fiddle. One evening
his mother bravely shared this with his father. At the time,
Melvin believed he might receive a whipping for sneaking out
the fiddle. But instead, from this point on, Melvin’s father
supported the young boy’s efforts. Melvin’s father, Bob,
learned the fiddle tunes he passed on to Melvin from his
father, Nels (Melvin’s grandfather). Nels could only sing the
tunes he remembered from hearing Melvin’s great grandfather,
Smithy, play them on the fiddle.
This family heritage has now been partly continued through
Jake. Melvin, many times with tears in his eyes, told Jake
that he could rest peacefully knowing that his fiddle tunes
would be passed on and preserved by the young fiddler. Melvin
passed away in 2003 with Jake at his bedside. The Wine family
honored Melvin and Jake’s relationship by presenting Jake with
one of Melvin’s fiddles that Melvin had called “the lady’s
fiddle.”
As Jake’s father stood in the lobby of the Augusta Heritage
Center in Elkins, West Virginia, watching Jake play in a jam
with a variety of musicians, a man standing next to him stated
that the young fiddler had a very powerful bowing arm. When
Jake’s father turned to respond, he realized that the older
gentleman was Lester McCumbers of Nicut, West Virginia. Lester
was a fiddler Jake greatly admired and soon after he would
become Lester’s first apprentice. Later, on CNN, Lester stated
that “Jake is only one of a few young people I know that can
go as far back with the old time sound.”
Lester was born in 1921 and, like Melvin, came from a
musical family. Lester learned to play fiddle from his father
and from many local area fiddlers like Harvey Sampson and
French Carpenter as he played backup guitar for them. As time
went on, Lester began to pick up the fiddle and became an
accomplished bluegrass and old time fiddler and singer in his
own right. For many years Lester performed, with his wife
Linda and other members of his family, at many local festivals
and radio stations billed as the “Sandy Valley Boys.” Lester
has shared many stories with Jake about life in Calhoun
County, West Virginia, such as walking eight miles to the
movies, or catching a ride with the mail hack up the dirt
roads to town, or about his family’s first radio. Jake and
Lester have played many times together at the local community
centers and festivals, and for many hours in Lester’s
home.
Bobby Taylor of St. Albans, West Virginia, and Contest
Coordinator for the Appalachian String Band Music Festival was
the latest fiddler to agree to accept Jake as an apprentice.
As with Melvin and Lester, Bobby has a long family history of
fiddling, being a fifth generation fiddler himself. Bobby’s
father, ninety-four year old Lincoln Taylor, is the oldest
fiddler, and fiddle maker, Jake has known. Lincoln played the
first tune on Jake’s CD Hope I’ll Join the Band.
Getting to know Lincoln and Bobby was another of Jake’s
treasures and, true to the experiences with Melvin and Lester,
Bobby and his family became very close to Jake and his family.
At a young age Bobby was taken aback by the fiddling of two of
his mentors, Clark Kessinger and Mike Humphreys. Bobby
combined the styles of his mentors with his own to become one
of the most dynamic fiddlers of his generation. He is also a
historian of old fiddlers and their styles, and has continued
to incorporate many of their styles into his own playing. By
doing so he has saved many bow licks and phrasings that might
otherwise have been lost. So Bobby, too, undertook the task of
sharing and passing along the old fiddle tunes and the
heritage of the men behind them to Jake through an
apprenticeship program. On Jake’s first CD Bobby stated that
“Jake is the finest young fiddler I know. Even at a young age
he has already surpassed the talent and skill of many fiddlers
who have played for a lifetime.”
…
Many times at his father’s shop, “Krack’s Fiddle Shop”
(which can be found at most of the local old time music
festivals such as Mt. Airy, North Carolina, and Galax,
Virginia), Jake has often been informed by visitors to the
shop that unbeknownst to him, they had been learning to play
the fiddle by watching him and listening to his CDs. Jake
plays for hours at the shop on fiddles his father made, with
his mother backing him up on guitar. They have welcomed
musicians of all levels and styles from fiddle to banjo,
guitar, and mandolin players to join them and jam. He has also
shared many of his experiences and tunes with younger fiddlers
who stop by to see him. He sees this as a way to pass along
the traditions handed down to him the old way, in the oral
tradition –– a promise he made to his mentors and a promise he
continues to keep.
Jake, now twenty-one and a student at Berea College, is
planning a possible career in folklore or a musical career
with his fiddle. He currently works in the Berea College
library’s music archives preserving the old music from
reel-to-reel tapes in digital format. He finds great pleasure
in this. In fact, his first project was to save forty-three of
Melvin Wine’s tunes and put them on the archives’
website:
http://www.fiddle.com/www.berea.edu/hutchinslibrary/specialcollections/specialsound.asp.
So the circle remains intact. In the current culture, Jake
has been told that it is rare to see someone as young as he
was (and is) to take to the old ways as he has, to carry on
the traditions of a time gone by, and to keep alive a part of
our culture that is rapidly disappearing. Many people feel a
sense of peace knowing that the old ways are to be carried on
and remembered by some of the youth of today. John Lilly,
Editor of Goldenseal magazine, wrote in the liner
notes of Jake’s second CD, One More Time:
Folk culture is a lot like water. Where it comes from
and where it goes is a matter of endless mystery and
fascination to me. In this sense, Jake Krack is carrying a lot
of water. Jake’s intuitive feel for the flow and subtleties of
traditional fiddling is remarkable. His sense of rhythm and
timing is rich and fluid. And his playful intensity is
uplifting and refreshing. Still a young man, Jake is well
beyond his years musically. He continues to learn directly
from older musicians, particularly from West Virginia master
fiddler Melvin Wine, and he honors them each time he breaks
out his fiddle. Traditions survive one generation at a time.
So, it does my heart good to realize that somewhere out there
–– in Indiana or West Virginia or somewhere in between –– is
young Jake Krack, carrying water.
…
[For the full text of this article, subscribe to
Fiddler Magazine!]
Jake can be reached through his website: http://www.jakekrack.com/
[Leo Hickman is from southern Indiana and played fiddle
in country and bluegrass bands growing up. His favorite
fiddlers are Kenny Baker and Jake Krack, “and anyone else who
plays their music, and smiles.”]
 The Östersunds spelmanslag
Jämtland: Forests, Fjörds, and Fiddles
By Petra Jones
Covering 50,000 square kilometers, with beautiful fjörds,
mountains, and forests, it’s surprising more people haven’t
heard of Jämtland –– if not for the fiddle playing, then for
the sheer beauty of its countryside. Jämtland lies sandwiched
between Sweden and Norway and has, at various times, belonged
to both countries. Yoyo-ing back and forth between them,
Jämtland was finally annexed to the Kingdom of Sweden in 1645,
and has developed its own culture with a unique style of
fiddle playing.
If there’s one name synonymous with folk music from
Jämtland, it’s Rickard Näslin who has done much to publicize a
centuries-old tradition of folk fiddle music of which he’s
justly proud. Owner of the prestigious title of Riksspelman
and the Lapp-Nils medal for his contribution to Jämtlandic
folk music, Rickard is keeping the tradition alive.
Following in the footsteps of Lapp-Nils
(1804-1870), the legendary folk fiddler from the mountains of
West Jämtland, Rickard is passing on the tradition to an
exciting new generation of fiddlers. Leader of a fiddle
orchestra, the Östersunds spelmanslag, and teacher at Birka
Folkhogskola, Rickard has brought many of the old traditional
Jämtlandic tunes to life on albums from the classic
Lekstulaget Mitt uti Jämtland (1976) to
Rödöpolskor och andra spelmanslåtar efter Ol Persa I
Vike (2005).
Jämtland seems to have a rich tradition of folk
fiddling. When did fiddle playing first become a part of
Jämtland’s folk music and how has it changed over the
years?
The first violins that we know of appeared in Jämtland in
around 1700 and within a couple of years, cheap German violins
were imported and sold all over the country. Some people made
their own violins and the first tunes that were played were
waltzes and things you might call “gesunkenes kulturguts” from
the French violinists in urban orchestras in Stockholm. The
music of the upper classes was transformed by unscholared
fiddlers into dance-music, like polskas or waltzes with a
local dialect.
During the nineteenth century, Jämtland was very crowded
with fiddles. It is mentioned that a church priest came to a
village called Haggsjovik and noticed there was a violin at
almost every wall in the houses that he entered and he said,
“There must live a very ungodly people in these areas!” The
fiddle was seen by the church to be “the instrument of the
devil” since it tempted the youth to sinful dancing and
meetings where a lot of unwelcome cradles were set in
movement!
Why fiddle playing was popular has much to do with how much
time there was in daily life for amusements and pleasures like
dancing and playing. In Haggsjovik, the farmers were quite
rich in those days and had a lot of spare time to nurture
those interests. But today these are deserted areas. People
left with industrialization and urbanization and many people
who still live in these areas think it’s backward thinking and
living to play these tunes! But many of their descendants in
the bigger communities and cities put more value into these
old traditions –– like me, for instance!
…
I had played the guitar and harmonica and learned a lot of
folk songs from records by Bob Dylan and Donovan. I started
wondering why we didn’t have our own folk-musical tradition
when I suddenly realized that we had indeed. A fellow student
during my studies in the beginning of the ’70s played some
tunes from Offerdal so I bought a fiddle and joined in. I
started to pay visits to the old fiddlers out in the
Jämtlandic countryside, learning hundreds of tunes during the
years to come.
…
I understand you were awarded the Lapp-Nils medal for
contributions to Jämtlandic folk music in 1998. Can you tell
us why this meant a lot to you and explain a little about the
award itself?
Well, of course, it made me glad then but all these things
give you temporary satisfactions and then you never think
about them! (But I have a small guesthouse where I have some
of my diplomas on the wall, so who is without vanity!) As far
as the Lapp-Nils medal is concerned, it is given to those who
have made some sort of contribution to the folk music of the
region.
You became Riksspelman in 1978. How important is that
for a Swedish folk musician? Can you tell us a little about
what being a Riksspelman means and how this title is
earned?
You are supposed to learn a special tradition and dialect,
and to play in the proper style of that dialect and to have
knowledge into that tradition. Then you must play before a
special jury called Zorn-juryn and if you are lucky you can
gain the title after three or four attempts. Some people never
get it and others get it quite fast. About ten new Riksspelman
are appointed each year and we have a total of about 200 in
Sweden as far as I know.
On the first of January 2006, I became chairman for the
folk fiddler association in Jämtland, and will be working with
different plans and projects. For example, at the end of
February there will be organized a folk music competition
called Gregorieleiken. Heimbygdas spelmansförbund has a
homesite where gatherings, concerts and so on are scheduled.
I understand you run a Jämtlandic folk music summer
course?
During the years, I have participated in lots of summer
courses but this summer I will join a course for youths as a
guest teacher in connection to our spelmansstämma in Vemdalen.
Well, it is fundamental to offer young people the opportunity
to learn Jämtlandic folk tunes so that the tradition will
survive. That is our number one task! At the courses you learn
by ear and this summer course we have twenty-five pupils
between ten and twenty years old. So that is in fact ten more
young folk musicians than last summer joining the course! Very
satisfying indeed! But this is a constant challenge with the
increasing impact from the commercial forces that want us to
play the same music all over the world!
Are there any younger players you’d recommend listening
to?
Yes, there are several younger fiddlers who have made their
names during the ’90s by recording CDs, leading courses, and
playing in modern folk-rock groups. There are some very good
fiddlers with a solid traditional background like Kjell-Erik
Eriksson in Hoven Droven and in Triakel, and Lasse Sörlin in
Nordman, and an even younger generation is on the way who
haven’t yet made their names.
…
Does the Storsjöyran festival incorporate performances
from fiddlers?
Now and then they have folk music groups. I have played
there a couple of times together with Östersunds spelmanslag
and some dancers, but it’s not fun to compete with electrified
bands all around on the other stages! But the folk rock group
Hoven Droven are often playing at the festival. There is a
certain amount of provincialistic atmosphere about it with the
Jämtland Republican Army peacefully patrolling the streets and
the President’s midnight speech at the town’s big square with
25,000 people shouting “Jämtland, now and always!”
We sing songs in our own dialect and there are lots of old
songs in the oral tradition. This Jämtlandic freedom movement
is not that seriously meant as in other parts of the world.
But there are people in Jämtland that want to become Norwegian
again, especially since Norway is outside the EU!
Do you have plans for a new album of Jämtlandic fiddle
music?
Of course I have plans. I would like to record a new CD
with tunes from eastern parts of Jämtland, which hasn’t been
done since 1979, when Göran Andersson and I made an LP with
that material. I have about fifty new fiddle tunes
notated!
[For more information on Rickard Näslin and the fiddle
music of Jämtland, as well as downloads of sheet music and mp3
files, visit http://www.jamtlandica.com/.]
[For the full text of this article, as well as Rickard’s
tunes “Schottis fran Rödon” and “Tibrandsmarschen,” subscribe to
Fiddler Magazine!]
[Petra Jones is a freelance writer and musician based
in England. Besides being an avid fan of fiddle music, Petra
has a house full of musical instruments from bass guitars to
banjos, and five strings through to twelve. Her articles and
reviews have appeared in Acoustic, Bass Guitar, Just Jazz
Guitar, and a host of other music publications on both sides
of the Atlantic.]
Floyd
Engstrom: An Old Time Fiddler from Washington
State
By Bríd Nowlan and Stuart Williams
The one-room schoolhouse in Cherry Gardens, Washington, was
a popular Saturday night dance spot in the 1920s and ’30s.
People came from miles around to dance, visit with friends,
and partake of the homemade spirits sold from the trunk of an
entrepreneur from Seattle, some twenty miles to the west. Lit
by gas lamps, fiddler Tom Somers led his band through old
favorites and tunes of his own composition. Joining him in
music-making were Hoover Austin on guitar and fiddle, a Mrs.
Brenneman on piano, his son Clarence on fiddle or clarinet or
whatever musical instrument he was dabbling in at the time,
and his young neighbor Floyd Engstrom on fiddle. Mr. Brenneman
called the dances. Close at hand was the coffee tin Tom kept
to spit his tobacco juice into.
Tom began teaching Floyd fiddle tunes in 1930, when Floyd
was twelve. Floyd says, “Tom coaxed me into learning to play
the old time music, so I’d go down there to his place and
listen to him play and learn like that.” An uncle had given
Floyd a violin some years before, and his family had found the
$2 needed for lessons from a Mr. Miller of Renton, south of
Seattle. Floyd’s father Axel worked in the saw mills and the
family moved often following his work. They settled in Cherry
Gardens in 1928, when Axel began working in the mill at
Monroe. By then, most of the lowland and foothills had been
logged over. The mill could not withstand the Great Depression
of 1929 and the Engstrom family and their neighbors were left
“up there in the sticks, about seven miles out of Duvall [on]
twenty acres of stumps with all the other poor people. Nobody
had any work up there.”
Tom hailed from Iowa, and was “a rough player,” as Floyd
puts it. But he was a well known and popular fiddler on the
local scene, and played for house dances as well as the weekly
schoolhouse dances. One family held a regular dance, and “They
would get the floor bare; if there was a rug they’d get rid of
the rug and stomp around in the living room.” In those days, a
fiddler was still an important person who provided the
necessary music for family and community celebrations, and
especially dances. A young child learning to play a musical
instrument was expressing his or her desire to take on that
role of community music-maker and was usually supported and
helped by the older generation.
“Turkey in the Straw” was probably the first fiddle tune
Floyd learned, followed closely by “Buffalo Gals.” Playing
with Tom was different from learning from Mr. Miller: “That
was all [written] music; that was violin stuff; with Tom
Somers it was all by ear.” Floyd adapted quickly and soon
joined Tom, Hoover, and the Brennemans at the schoolhouse
dances. Square dances, known locally as “quadrilles,” were
popular, as were couple dances, such as waltzes, foxtrots,
schottisches, polkas, the Varsouvienne, Tuxedo, and Circle
Two-Step. There was no set program for the night, the band
would “just go as [they] were led,” usually playing four or
five couple dances in between squares. People “really liked
square dances. They were the simple ones, not all these
complicated ones that they have now.”
Floyd left Cherry Gardens to finish his senior year of high
school in Seattle. His mother also moved into the city to find
work; they lived with one of her sisters, returning to the
country on weekends whenever they could get a ride at least
part of the way. A high school friend, Don Michel, played
mandolin and guitar and would often join the Cherry Gardens
band. When Floyd graduated, there was no work in Seattle, so
he and Don set off with Don’s father, Ed Michel, to mine for
gold in the rivers of southern Oregon. Ed rigged up a “suction
device” with a nozzle made out of scrap metal that they would
maneuver into the middle of the river. With an old engine they
would suck up the sand and gravel from the river bed and run
it through a series of sluices. They didn’t find much gold,
but they “played a lot of music out there, every night just
about, out by the campfire. Ed Michel played banjo, Don played
mandolin and guitar, and once in a while some drifter would
come through, some musician, and stop by and we got some other
music.”
Such musical intermingling was a common feature of American
migrations that influenced the development of local styles. In
northwestern fiddling, the predominant influences come from
Canada, Scandinavia via the Northern Plains, and the
Missouri/Arkansas heartland. These permeate the local
repertoire and are reflected in local and individual playing
styles: some fiddlers relish each and every note of the
tightly-woven reels, sounding Canadian, or even Scandinavian
to a southern ear; others hone all their tunes to driving
shuffles around the key chords and a distinctly southern, yet
not quite Appalachian, sound; most fall somewhere in between.
Floyd left his fiddle behind when he joined the Civilian
Conservation Corps in 1939. On his return, he found work in
the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Bremerton. He married in
1942, went into the army in 1944, and was stationed in Italy
for eight months. He returned to work at the shipyard until
retiring in 1973, with a stint in Alaska and another in
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. During that time he focused on work and
family and played fiddle only on rare occasions. With the rise
of new technologies, especially sound amplification, and the
social disruption wrought by the Depression and the Second
World War, the fiddler and his music had lost out to other
instruments and instrumentation; with the demise of the small
community dance in favor of larger venues and bands he lost
his social context.
Meanwhile, a new generation was discovering the pleasures
of “folk music” through the revivals launched on the East
Coast by Pete and Mike Seeger, among others. Many of these
participants were college-educated; turning instinctively to
documented sources, they enthusiastically embraced the
material collected in the 1920s and ’30s by John and Alan
Lomax and Charles and Ruth Seeger, much of it from the South
and Southeast. Rural America was largely untouched by these
folk revivals, but there were still many fine fiddlers out in
the hinterland who had learned their music from their parents,
sisters, brothers, and neighbors. These men and women realized
that their music was not being passed on and began their own
revival work establishing state fiddlers associations
(including the Washington Old Time Fiddlers Association,
established in 1964) to provide a new forum for their
traditions and repertoire.
In 1978 some friends invited Floyd to a fiddle show
organized by the local district of the state fiddlers
association. He says, “I liked the music and I thought, maybe
I’ll try that. Hubert Mitchell –– that guy could really play
–– kindled my interest.” (Hubert Mitchell was a local fiddler,
active in the fiddlers association, who inspired many new and
old local fiddlers.) So he retrieved his fiddle from the
closet, had it fixed up, and began playing again. At his first
jam, he says, “About all I could play was ‘Snow Deer’ and
‘Turkey in the Straw’ and they were pretty bad,” but it didn’t
take long to get going again. He started taping other
fiddlers, at local events and at the national fiddle contest
in Weiser, Idaho, and learning new tunes. Floyd’s three
children had never known him as a fiddler, but his playing
inspired his granddaughter Tammi, a music teacher, and her son
Hunter took up the fiddle.
…
He says, “I practice, too, I get the urge and I go back in
my little room and practice. I think Mr. Miller [his violin
teacher] taught me how to hold the bow, he must have, and that
you’re supposed to have your elbow underneath, that way your
fingers can reach the strings better. All I was taught was the
first position and the third position. I don’t know how people
can play in second position, halfway between first and third,
that’s gotta be tough; third, you just bring your wrist up
until it hits the fiddle and there you are.” But Tom Somers’
midwestern influence is apparent in the way Floyd’s bow
shuffles through the old dance tunes. Floyd’s earliest fiddle
tunes were the classic American standards: “Turkey in the
Straw,” “Soldier’s Joy,” and their companions. These he plays
with a steady dance rhythm established by down-bow oriented
saw-strokes, using a short bow stroke, with a sprinkling of
two, three, or even four note slurs to add interest and
phrasing.
…
When learning a new tune, Floyd says he is usually “not
thinking about the bowing –– whatever happens, happens. And
then if I’m having trouble, being out of sync or something,
then, maybe I’d better try something else. Maybe I’d better
think about my bowing and give a bow for every note. Sometimes
the bowing seems to be more important than other tunes, it
gets a little bit trickier to get through the tune without
butchering it up too bad.” He likes to learn new “different”
tunes but says, “I’ve noticed that the audience really likes
to hear those tunes they’re familiar with. I like to learn
different ones all the time and I think we wear them out more
than the old standbys.”
Now eighty-seven, Floyd recently released his first CD,
Kitsap County Fiddler, on Voyager Recordings. A
second CD of popular hymns (played on Floyd’s fiddle) is in
the works. He can also be heard on the new compilation
Roses in Winter: A Celebration of Old Time Fiddlers in
Washington State.
[For the full text of this article, as well as
transcriptions of the tunes “Arkansas Traveler” and “Mexican
Waltz” as played by Floyd Engstrom, subscribe to
Fiddler Magazine!]
[This article was adapted from the book and compact disc
compilation: Roses in Winter: A Celebration of Old Time
Fiddlers in Washington State. This publication of the
Washington Old Time Fiddlers Association grew out of a series
of workshops taught by the twelve fiddlers featured in the
book. The tunes on the CD (two from each fiddler –– including
the two notated here) reflect the diverse origins of Northwest
traditional fiddle music and are written out in standard
notation in the book. The stories in the book show how fiddle
music has been treasured and passed down from generation to
generation. For more information see http://www.wotfa.org/.]
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