New Fiddle Camp Dates Announced! Registration Open!

If you want to come this late winter/early spring to enjoy a smaller, more one-on-one fiddle experience come to Winter Fiddle Camp! It's going to be held on March 29th and 30th 2014. Winter Camp is special, even if it is a little less conveient travel wise. There is always the rist of date change due to weather delays and such. It will be held here in the farmhouse this year and half the size of summer camp. This means all who attend get a lot more time to work with me one-on-one and do so right in the heart of my homestead. Winter camp includes a camp t-shirt I design as well as a fiddle. I use a student model Cremona that is affordable and sounds good out of the box! It comes with a bow, case, and rosin and the only things you need to bring with you are the text book, a guitar clamp-on tuner, and a spare set of stings in case your fiddle breaks. We start the Saturday morning at 10AM and go until 4PM or so. Sunday the camp starts at 10 and the lessons are over by noon. This leaves an afternoon for people to travel or stay to jam, practice with me, or just hang at the farm a few more hours. I can not stress enough this is for total, hopeless, beginners! If you ever dreamed of being a fiddler and worry you can't read music, are too old, too busy, or just plain scared then come over. We start so basic and everyone is new. By Sunday you'll be well on your way playing tunes.T I heard back from a few students already and they are a handful of songs into the book and have them memorized! isn't that awesome?! They went from being unsure of how to tune the devil box to memorizing jaunty airs in under a week. Fiddle camp is magic. It's yours for the taking and I hope some of you sign up so we can close registration fast! Three of the eight spots are taken already!

P.S. Next summer's August Camp will be the second-last weekend in Augst 2014. If you want one of those fifteen spots, holler! It would be an awesome chirstmas present, and if you want I can ship you a hand-written invitation so you can give it as a gift for the holidays, a birthday, or anniversary. I had two gifted campers this year (meaning they got the camp as a gift!) and they both loved it, both were men, and both left handed. It was neat seeing them shine. One prefered to play it as if he was right handed and the other swapped the chin rest and we re-strung the instrument backwards so it mirrored a right-handed fiddle. We make it work at this scrappy farm, and the music and laughter flows.

Gibson in a Hay Barn

Threshing Barns and Metal Strings

Fiddle Camp was two days, twenty people, and a very foreboding weather forecast. Rain storms were in our future and that made things a little hairy. Luckily, I have some amazing friends here in the W.C. and was able to get all of us an indoor amphitheater in the form of an 1800's threshing barn! Patty and Mark, good pals and fellow farmers here in the county, let me use their beautiful barn Saturday while the rain cursed and taunted. It may have been my favorite part of the camp, actually. To see an old barn loaded with fiddlers!

While the rain did cancel any camping or campfire plans, it didn't stop the music. Everyone who came was able to accomplish the goal of the camp: to leave with an instrument, one song to play on it, and the realization you are now familiar enough with to continue teaching yourself. Thanks to Wayne Erbsen's amazing book and the dedication of the students this year had some really talented beginners. But I must share with you what I shared with them: learning to fiddle has nothing to do with "beginner's luck" or "natural talent." Yes, some people are more musically inclined and pick up the basics faster, but thinking you can't play some fiddle tunes because you aren't a musician is like thinking you can't drive your car because you aren't a race car driver. You can achieve a pretty respectable fiddle status based on sure stubbornness alone. I'm living proof.

The camp runs like so: people arrive Saturday morning with little or no musical know-how. The first thing I teach them is which side is the front. I'm serious, it really is that basic. And to have a circle of hopeful students all holding their new instruments in their hands with that excited look in their eyes is reason enough to keep running this camp. They start out learning the parts, the bow stroke, and the finger positions and by the time the first day is over they have learned their first song. The next day of camp is about practice, lecture, and a few fiddle techniques such as shuffling and droning with your bow. It seems like a lot to take in, and it is, but the nature of camp is so beginner friendly and everyone is just so eager the days fly. I think Fiddle Camp may be the four fastest days of my year…

I'll leave you with this little concert by Riley of Ontario. He and his girl Jess came down from their little homestead in Canada to pick up their fiddles and learn how to use them. When Riley arrived he had never even pulled a bow across a string but here he is less than 48 hours later jamming with Becca on guitar. He's playing his own improv version of the first tune in the book, Ida Red. (For the record, almost any non-professionally record violin sounds a bit screechy, but in person it was divine!)It's just a ten-second video but it makes me swell with pride for him and all the students who came out for two days to get started on their musical journeys. My darlings, Music is out there for whoever wants it. You just need to ask.



P.S. Winter Camp, which is the last weekend in March, is open for folks to sign up. Three spots are already taken which include the lovely Kathy Harrison! I only allow five more people for this intimate winter camp at the farmhouse, near a roaring woodstove. Last winter camp we had a goat kid born during Sunday's lesson and this year there very well may be kids in the house jumping around while you learn your D scale! Email me if you want to sign up, first reserved first served! Also, The price has gone up $30 to help set off the costs of a tent and porta potty for next year.

P.P.S. If you have photos to share I could post, please email them too!

Back From Camp!

The days leading up to Fiddle Camp were an absolute blur. There was the regular sort of preparation (tuning sixteen instruments, readying the campsites, chopping firewood, and cleaning up the joint) but there was also the mental sort of flux you find yourself in before a big event. People were going to be traveling from other countries, from all over America, and they were coming to my scrappy six and a half acres with the expectation of leaving as musicians. That is one tall order to fill, and some serious customer service expectations. So the days before (and of) Fiddle Camp leave this blog fairly sparse. I'm running around getting all the ends tied up, mowing the lawn, getting things like port potties and last-minute book orders arranged. It's a Hootenanny of the biggest sort.

That said! I have much to write about here! Fiddle Camp, Falconry, hay and firewood, and more. The autumn is coming along and swiftly. Last nights rainstorms were the sounds of summer but left this morning feeling the wet decay of early fall. The lawn is covered in downed, slightly colored leaves. There is that muddy premonition of wet dirt that will soon become stiff with cold nights and frost. I am getting a little worried about getting all my firewood split and stacked but like all things, it'll get done because it has too. This morning after adding fresh bedding to the muddy pigoda I had to run to a welding shop to pick up a custom bow perch the guys at Common Sense whipped up for me. It needs to be wrapped in rope and mounted inside the (almost completed!) mews, but that too will get done. I was going about all these chores, thinking about a life where a Tuesday morning means pig bed-changing services and hawk footrests and tried to remember if Fiddle Camp actionably happened? It did. There is photographic and video evidence! I'll share some of the piled up videos and stories often as I can this week.

Fiddle Camp!

Pick Apples With Us!

So Apple Cidering is coming up early this year. I blame it on the rain followed by intense heat. I need to collect as many wild apples as possible from the local forests and trails here on the mountain. I'll be asking neighbors for permission for their drops and wild forage as well. But I had an idea. If anyone out there is horse friendly and in good shape, do you want to come for a potluck/apple picking day with the horeses? I can lead Merlin and his cart and pack saddles with Jasper and with their help we can carry out three times as many apples as we could with backpacks or sacks. It would be a fun couple hours of work followed by a shared meal on the farm. This isn't a workshop, or an Indie Day, it's just a community project and while the bulk go to the cidering coffer I see no reason why you couldn't go home with a basket or two for your own home use as sauce or pie fodder. It would be the afternoon of September 14th! If you are interested let me know.

Joel on The Next Generation of Farmers