You see, fiddle was my very first instrument to learn and I began learning it because I'd always wanted to play roots type music from the time I was about junior high age. I had this violin/fiddle laying around our house because I'd bought it for our son Tyler to learn to play in the school orchestra. He was very good on it and learned very quickly but he was also self conscious and shy so didn't stick with it...so here it was just laying in a closet and calling my name with the happy fiddling notes that maybe I could learn.
Here I was 35 years old and my kids were beginning to be old enough to not need as much of my care so I looked at that fiddle and decided "why not?" I began asking questions from fellow friends who played guitar, mandolin, bass and such and inquiring of them just how I could learn. I didn't find anyone who could help me and had become very frustrated, but then a lady in our church offered to help me learn to play it in a violin style. (Little did I know how valuable her teaching would be to me later on when I actually did learn to play in the fiddle style, because proper bow technique is very important and she got me started on the right track, holding my bow correctly, so it was a tremendous help making me a better fiddler)
I was very excited she was teaching me because, even though it wasn't fiddle style of playing that she could teach at least I was moving forward and learning how to play it no matter the style.
She worked with me for about a year or so and then we moved to Missoula and she moved away also. I kept on working on what she'd shown me and shortly after our Missoula move I took a job working at a rest home for the elderly. (I knew that we'd need an extra income in order for us to be able to build our own home and have the bank willing to loan to us and the rest home job was something I could get hired to very quickly).
Little did I know that this was fate and the Lord leading my life in the direction I wanted to go. I only worked for that rest home for 3 months but during the first month of working there one of my co-workers commented that we needed to feed the residents a little early and make sure that they were finished by 7:00 and everything cleaned up because the Old Time Fiddlers were coming to entertain that night. I was so excited and she even knew one of the fiddlers names for me to contact! My heart was racing, how could this be I thought, yay, yay, yay.... So afterwards I called one of the fiddler men and visited with him about how I could begin learning to fiddle.
His name was Frank Seitz and he had a grand daughter, Candice Seitz Neaves, who was 21 years old and had just won the Montana State Fiddle Championship that very weekend. She was going to take just 3 students because she was a college student and didn't want any more than that.
I promised her that I was serious and that I would practice and stick with it if she'd only say yes and I was able to convince her after about a half an hour of begging to take me on as one of those students. She taught me for 7 months and then in the Spring decided not to teach anymore. It was enough for me to get started though and from that point on I was able to teach myself. From the 2nd month of my lessons I began playing with that same Old Time Fiddlers group "The Centennial Fiddlers" who'd came to my rest home that first night. This also helped me to learn my fiddle faster and get more practice time in but I remember being so nervous at first and thinking that I'd never be able to play as well as those guys. I stumbled around on my fiddle those first few months, but then eventually I got better.
I joined the Montana State Old Time fiddlers and would go to their jams which were always held on Sunday afternoons. At those you would sign up on their list and as your name came up you'd take the stage and play 3 tunes while the people danced to your playing. I loved it and it was very fun but I wanted to play more than just my 3 tunes and then just sit and listen to the other fiddlers all afternoon, so that part was frustrating to me.
About 5 or 6 months into my learning the fiddle my daughter Gina who was 10 years old at the time was always tagging along with me to every fiddle event and one day a fellow fiddler named Dick Pederson asked her why she wasn't learning to play herself.
Up until now I hadn't even thought about her learning it as I was just so thrilled that I was learning, but she answered him, "maybe I will." So this got me thinking about how I could get her a fiddle and get her started too. (Looking back this was really the beginning roots to what has now become my Kids In Bluegrass program).
I remembered my father-in-law, John's dad commenting that he owned a fiddle and that one of the other cousins were using it. I think this was a prompting from the Lord to remind me of it too and so I contacted this cousin and found out that they were no longer using it and that it was just up in their closet. She told me that I was welcome to come and pick it up, and wouldn't you know it, the fiddle was a 3/4 size the exact size that Gina needed.
Thus began my years of fiddling and as I learned I taught her sort of like the blind leading the blind, but we learned together and played the nursing homes together and even went to the National Fiddle Contest in Weiser, Idaho together for many years and made many great memories, having so much fun.
So now returning to what I was talking about with me wanting to play more than just my 3 tunes at the fiddler jams, I decided to save up to buy myself a guitar and try to learn that. You see with each fiddler that would play at their jams the guitar players would remain on the stage and play the entire afternoon, one tune after another with each fiddler, and in this way I knew that if I learned guitar, I would be able to play all day too.
Thus began my learning of the guitar. I saved up and bought myself a $200 Sigma which I still own today and which Gina has used now as an adult. I asked one of the other guitar players to show me some chords of which he showed me 2 of them and a week later Gina and I headed to our annual trek to Weiser and the National Fiddle Contest. I took that guitar and I had people showing me and helping me all week long and I loved the new challenge and learning to play it. I couldn't hear the chord changes but I would watch the fingers of the other players and one lady would mouth to me the chord changes so this was my beginning to learning the guitar. I was at Weiser for 10 straight days and I played that guitar for over 12 hours each day, getting blood blisters that would pop on the tips of my fingers but then would only hurt for the first hour of my playing and after that I was good to play the rest of the day once again.
When we ended the week I could play that guitar so from that time forward every time we would play the rest homes with our fiddler group I would play guitar half the time and fiddle the other half of the time. I wanted to keep up on what I'd learned and I also wanted to keep up on my fiddle playing. At each of their jams I would play my 3 fiddle tunes but the rest of the day I was one of those guitar players who was playing with each fiddler.
The following year at Weiser I decided to wander more to further areas of the campers and jamming and I was walking down a closed off road by the Institute buildings carrying my inexpensive guitar in it's card board case all proud and excited when suddenly I hear a voice calling to me saying, "hey you, yes you, where you going with that thing." "We need you over here, come join us and pick a little bit." There were two people sitting along the irrigation ditch bank under the shade trees and it was a guy from Utah named Lonnie Hocket and his friend a lady also from Utah, named Sharon Mitchell. Sharon was playing a Hammer Dulcimer and Lonnie was playing the guitar and singing.
So I proudly walked over to them and took out my guitar jamming in my first ever jam that had bluegrass singing. It was so awesome and fun I just couldn't believe it. When we'd played for several hours Lonnie pointed out where he was camped and invited me back that evening to his campsite where I'd hear really good bluegrass music with all the instruments and great harmony vocalists too.
That evening I didn't hesitate to go meet up with them again and now this is where I really heard my first super good bluegrass picking and singing going on. The Spirit just overtook me and I felt it clear down to the very core of my soul with every song that was sung. I couldn't stop grinning ear to ear the entire night. Soon I was playing my guitar in the bluegrass style that they were playing and it was just coming natural to me to feel that feeling of having that bluegrass drive to my style too. Talk about an exciting moment in time for me, this was it!
From that point on I've never looked back and even though I continued to play with the Old Time Fiddlers at all their jams and at the rest homes for over 22 years, and still loved the old time fiddling too, my true passion was bluegrass. After that year I almost always played guitar and allowed my daughter Gina to play fiddle which was her first instrument. We even went on to form a band called "A Deeper Shade of Blue" with her on fiddle when she was a teenager along with a fellow friend who's daughters were learning bluegrass too.
Now I want to say something here before I go on.... I've always loved the Old Time Fiddlers and I've always had a very fun time playing with them throughout all the years, and I owe them a huge debt of gratitude for getting me started playing roots music and eventually finding bluegrass, so I have nothing but good thoughts and memories to say about them, but my passion was now bluegrass and so through the years I've taught myself guitar, bass, mandolin, and some banjo too, and I've gravitated to bluegrass almost exclusively, but I let Gina stay with her fiddle and I mainly played the other instruments just keeping up on my fiddling but not moving forward to learn anymore and sometimes even going backwards a little bit. I wasn't careful to keep practicing it very much through the years and now I have come to regret that.
So long story short, or I should say long story long with all this that I've written tonight, but anyway recently I've decided to pick my fiddle back up and begin learning to play it in a bluegrass style with bluegrass techniques which are different than the Old Time techniques. This has been a lot of fun and I'm enjoying my fiddle as much as ever now. I bought me a learning DVD on bluegrass technique and it's showing me how to play 6 or 7 tunes in a bluegrass style plus lot's of other bluegrass techniques. I've gone through it and learned it all in just a week. So today as we are at our kids' house down in Utah awaiting our grandsons departure as a missionary, I had a lot of time to just do what I wanted to do. I knew that most likely I'd have some down time while here so I thought ahead and brought several learning DVD's on several of the instruments that I'm always working on. I was able to spend 2 hours today honing my bluegrass fiddling skills and it was so, so, so, very much fun! I'm also planning on taking some lessons this summer from a super good bluegrass fiddler in Missoula named Ellie Nuno.
As a PS note.... our daughter Gina grew up and got married so she kind of left her fiddling for a few years. Suddenly about 5 years ago she picked her fiddle back up and gave me a call asking if we couldn't get together and play like the old days of her youth. I was of course thrilled to pieces and so the next time they were at our house we jammed and had so much fun again. After that she had the fire to want to play again and from that day forward she has had more passion to play her fiddle than she even had as a kid. You see when she was a kid she enjoyed it but she didn't have the passion like I did, and now as an adult she's picked it back up and she has the passion almost as much as I do.. :)
This is a portrait painted of me last year by a new friend Connie McLeod who lives in Clarkston, WA. She took the picture of me at an Old Time Fiddlers Jam last Fall.
We have lot's of great memories of our music and festival playing times and now we're building new ones having so much fun as mother and daughter.
So today as I said I spent 2 hours on my fiddle, playing bluegrass songs and then I got to spend another hour working on my harmony singing, something that Gina is very good at, but something that I need to work more on.
And as I close out this note, I just want to say how blessed I've been through the years with all the fun times and opportunities I've had through all my different types and times getting to play music. Included in these times are the two bluegrass cruises that I was able to go on with my current band Will Williams and Gravel Road and how we even got to play a set on the cruise ship stage both times.
I'm a very happy bluegrass mom.
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