Noah VanNorstrand (Sure Does!)

Noah VanNorstrand, a fiddler, singer, mandolin player, and percussionist joins us to discuss his unique approach to music and fiddling. Alongside his brother Andrew, Noah spent his childhood homeschooling and playing for contra dances, where he developed a habit for creating his own tunes instead of practicing existing ones. Hear all about Noah's new debut solo album Share the Moon. We present the tune Sure Does! from Noah's album.

Find Noah's music at greatbearmusic.com. 

Chapters

• 0:10 Noah VanNorstrand
• 8:21 Music in the Pandemic and Projects
• 18:52 Podcast Interview and Music Recommendations

Transcript

Meg Wobus Beller: 0:10

Welcome to the Fiddle Studio podcast featuring tunes and stories from the world of traditional music and fiddling. I'm Meg Wobus-Beller and today I'll be bringing you a setting of Sure Does! by Noah VanNorstrand from his debut solo album, Share the Moon. Hello everyone, I hope you are well. Today we're talking to Noah VanNorstrand. Noah is a fiddler, primarily also sings and plays mandolin and other instruments. He's a percussionist. We'll talk more about that. He composes music. Noah performs with his brother, Andrew, and other bands the Great Bear Trio, Buddy System, Wake Up Robin and the Faux Paws. Noah welcome, it's really great to have you here.

Noah VanNorstrand: 0:59

Thanks for having me Good morning.

Meg Wobus Beller: 1:02

Good morning. Noah and I grew up in the same area in central New York. I've talked on the podcast that I started playing for dances when I was really young. Noah, you did too. I think you started when you were younger than I was. Can you talk about what that was like when you were a kid and you were getting into traditional music?

Noah VanNorstrand: 1:25

Yeah, well, I started playing fiddle when I was about eight-ish I think that's what we say. Most of my story is very connected to my brother, andrew. I have a younger sibling, I guess, where I just copy the older sibling in many things in life. Music is one of them. He learned fiddle when he was eight. We say that about two years later I started playing fiddle. He got into playing for country dances. I was like, okay, I'll get into playing for country. My brother Andrew and I did this very much together, especially from my perspective. Yeah, we started playing for dances when I was eight, 10, somewhere in there with our mother Kim.

Meg Wobus Beller: 2:11

I played with my dad, who played piano. You were playing with your mom, who also played piano, and touring around playing for dances. You all were homeschooled, right? How did that play into your music? You had a little bit of an unusual I guess older childhood in that you were so immersed in music with your brother and family. At some point that took over your lives as a teenager, right?

Noah VanNorstrand: 2:36

Yeah, that's true. We were homeschooled. My mom says that the plan was always homeschool us through elementary age, then in junior high or high school we would go to public school. That was the plan. Then, when we started diving into music a lot, right Right at the end of that elementary age, it just kind of didn't happen. We just kept on homeschooling and kept on doing more and more. I don't want to throw anyone on the bus, but we definitely did more music than other subjects at school. It worked out well for us. It's definitely had. You know, realizing now as an adult like, oh well, maybe school would have also been good.

Meg Wobus Beller: 3:28

I feel like at some point, you know how you know a little kid and they get to be a bigger kid, all of a sudden you turn around and they're like a grown up and you're like what happened? That happened to me a little bit with your fiddling, where I was like, oh yeah, no place to fiddle, no place to fiddle. You know, we brought you to fiddle camp to teach. Then maybe you came back the next summer and I heard you and I was like what happened? Oh my god, I mean this is just my own personal curiosity, but you got really good really fast.

Noah VanNorstrand: 3:58

I think what happened is to put an over easy answer is that Andrew. Andrew started playing guitar, so he was no longer playing double fiddle for the most part. Andrew learned guitar and then I was the only fiddler. There was just a lot more. I was just fiddling a lot more Because the first when I run Great Bear, that was the band with my brother and my, our mom. When that band first started I was like exclusively percussion, hand percussion, children, remote drums, and then I would play like fiddle on one or two things that I could play that fast when I was like 10. And so slowly Andrew learned guitar, I learned mandolin. I played a whole lot more fiddle when Andrew was playing guitar and I that's. That's the only answer I can think of.

Meg Wobus Beller: 4:45

Okay, but I'm going to follow up because, because we were, we were at camp one year and the kids asked and they always ask this how much do you practice? And your brother gave this sort of, he gave an explanation of his own practicing. That went on for a little while I love your brother and then he was like no one never practices.

Noah VanNorstrand: 5:14

It depends on what we're, what we're defining the word to mean I would play constantly. I would be playing my instrument constantly, pract. I wasn't like, okay, I'm going to. I'm going to do this one thing repeatedly until I can play it better.

Meg Wobus Beller: 5:29

Did you ever play scales?

Noah VanNorstrand: 5:31

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no scales.

Meg Wobus Beller: 5:34

And you didn't. You didn't repeat something slow it down.

Noah VanNorstrand: 5:38

No, to the extent of the reason I especially like as a growing up learning. As a kid I wouldn't have the patience to like I don't want to learn a tune, I'll learn a tune. That takes so much time. I'm just going to write a tune I was writing my own and then, and then I don't have to learn a tune. It's like this easy little scapegoat I know a new tune now and I didn't have to learn it. So again like it wasn't like even learning repertoire, it was just writing tunes.

Meg Wobus Beller: 6:08

Well, thank you. Let's talk about writing tunes a little bit. Did you just write tunes from the start? When did you start writing tunes?

Noah VanNorstrand: 6:15

It was pretty much from the start. It was like right along with learning the first ten full tunes, I think the order things went in Andrew would go to a little lesson with this older lady, also in central New York. Her name was Granny Sweet. She was like right out of a comic book. She was amazing. She had like wore bonnet all the time the anime dresses. When I think back I was like, oh, it's just Granny Sweet and I think that's like what was that? Who was she?

Noah VanNorstrand: 6:44

Anyway, Andrew would have like weekly lessons with her and he would learn these little upstate New York tunes, central New York tunes, western New York tunes, and then I was too young to have the focus for like a lesson and he would come back and then I would learn it off of Andrew. He wouldn't really teach me, I would just like Andrew would be practicing and then I would soak it in, sponge it off of them. So right along with learning tunes like that, I would get frustrated and like, oh, I'll just write my own tune. So there was really both happening at the very same time of learning the instrument. There's tunes were not well, they were. They were what they were.

Meg Wobus Beller: 7:28

Well, the year that you brought your tune Griffin Road to camp, you told me, megan, my retirement plan is I'm going to teach all these kids to play my tunes. They're going to grow up and record them and pay me royalties and I have to tell you. Did you know that Cecilia Vacanti, one of the little campers, she has an album with King Fisher and she recorded Griffin Road?

Noah VanNorstrand: 7:54

My plans coming full circle. It's only took 15 years or whatever 10 years, so you have you're still writing tunes and you have an album coming out.

Meg Wobus Beller: 8:06

That is is everything on the album your compositions.

Noah VanNorstrand: 8:11

It sure is, yeah, a little more involved than that it's as a. It has a pandemic story, like many albums do nowadays. When the pandemic happened and hit and all the gigs all poofed away in that very surreal spring, you know, at that point I hadn't spent more than two or three weeks at a time at home, uninterrupted time at home, for more than two weeks in I don't know two decades, a very long time, and it was a very weird feeling and there weren't any gigs and so, kind of as a excuse to keep my instrument out of its case, I decided that I'm just going to write a tune every day, I'm going to wake up and I'm going to go on this porch. I had a gorgeous porch I could hang out on and I write a tune and post it, no matter how bad it was. Like that wasn't the point. The point was just to play my instrument and the way that I most easily can play my instrument is to write a tune.

Noah VanNorstrand: 9:08

So, especially in the beginning, especially in the first two years of the pandemic, there were these big chunks of time where, like I don't know, like a month and a half worth of every single day except weekends, I would write a tune and out of that about 19 were worth recording. I'll accept. I think two of the tunes on the CD are from that process, from that project where you want to whatever you want to call it tune a day, and it was really fun, and now that I'm busy again I miss it.

Meg Wobus Beller: 9:39

So yeah, so you've got these tunes on the album. Who are you playing with them with? You're playing them on fiddle. Did you also do the percussion Noah plays? When he performs, he's often sitting on a box with shoes on that tap on the floor and then he's also fiddling. So he's yeah, I can't describe this. So can you talk about that and then maybe just tell us who you're playing with?

Noah VanNorstrand: 10:09

Yes, I could do that. The percussion thing I'm doing when I fiddle it's from a French-Canadian tradition Playing at festivals and stuff where they aren't very familiar with French-Canadian music and they're always like do you invent this thing? No, definitely not. This is not my thing. This is something when I was like 10 or something, a French-Canadian fiddler, I think Richard Forest, I think was showing me it. So it's a French-Canadian tradition and, yeah, it's a simple little footstep you can do while you're sitting.

Noah VanNorstrand: 10:41

And I have this like contraption box that I built so that I'm always at the right height. I was at the right height chair, but it's just a piece of plywood and leather bottom shoes. That's all that. That is my fiddling. Well, the other thing I would say is that I feel like, as I analyze my own fiddling more that hearing myself play fiddle when I'm not doing feet, it sounds really different, like my fiddling has evolved with my feet playing and when their shoe happened together it does sound. It sounds like me, it sounds, I think, better, but it sounds noticeably different, and so the two my feet and the fiddle are very interlocked. I feel like that's really interesting.

Meg Wobus Beller: 11:26

Yeah, and your actual, your fiddle style. When I hear you, I mean we grew up in the same area, even though New York is not technically part of New England, the New England and like the French Canadian influence there was so strong, I bet we were learning the same kind of New England and easy French tunes. And you, you play, the way you play sounds to me like new way. They know that. They got to get that.

Noah VanNorstrand: 11:56

Up bow stuff yeah.

Meg Wobus Beller: 11:58

Is it. Is that how you would describe your basic?

Noah VanNorstrand: 12:01

Yeah, yes, yes, okay, how would I do you believe me? So my fiddling, my fiddling, definitely is for contra dancing. I did, that is what I lived and breathed for 20 years. This is all I, all I ever did. Now I did, but when I did do other things, I was just still playing for a contra dance. Just no one was dancing.

Noah VanNorstrand: 12:30

So my fiddling is like a lot of music and contra dancing there isn't. I'm not playing. I'm not really playing Celtic music Like I wouldn't. I wouldn't sound Celtic next to like Liz Carroll or Martin Hayes or someone. It's Celtic it. And then I'm not really playing old time music. I wouldn't sound like a Appalachian old time fiddler next to Bruce Molsky. Same thing with French Canadian, the same thing with New England, like it's. I'm playing all of these different things and they're borrowing little bits of all of the traditions but it's really like mashed together to hopefully make a good contra dance experience. Like that's what I did for so long was just like what are the bits of all these traditions that make the best, make the best contra dance?

Noah VanNorstrand: 13:17

I'm doing less contra dances nowadays and trying to find what that means for my fiddling. How do I market myself? Like there's, like a bluegrass festival doesn't know what a contra dance even is.

Meg Wobus Beller: 13:30

So what do you? What are you doing instead of dances?

Noah VanNorstrand: 13:36

Our main project that I'm part of right now is a band called the Faux Paws. You mentioned Faux Paws. Paws like little puppy Paws, it's a pun. It's with my brother and then our friend basically other brother at this point Chris Miller, who plays saxophone and banjo. That band is very much trying to we're trying to not like we don't want to like disrespect or shake or shake off the contra dance community at all, but it is so easy to get pigeonholed into one thing and we're trying to like we can do concerts too. So we're trying you have to be very on purpose, basically. So we're trying to really focus. We're playing concerts, we're trying to get festivals and and that's where our energy is all going into is to convince the organ, because our festival organizers will be like oh, you guys, you guys were a great pair of trade, you want to play a little contra dance at our festival. We're like no, actually, maybe not Give us a different kind of chance, please. So anyway, that's where we are right now.

Meg Wobus Beller: 14:41

I heard you guys. That was such a fun house concert.

Noah VanNorstrand: 14:46

Yeah, both of them were.

Meg Wobus Beller: 14:48

Yeah, and even though your basic style, I would agree, is Contradance, you learn some tricks somewhere, noah. When you take a solo, you do not sound like a Contradance.

Noah VanNorstrand: 15:01

Maybe it's from playing solos next to a saxophone for the past 10 years. The weird things happen.

Meg Wobus Beller: 15:08

You need to hear some of these weird things. Are you soloing on the album?

Noah VanNorstrand: 15:14

Yeah, a little bit. The album is my solo album. I guess by the time this comes out it'll be out. It's kind of going a little bit back towards what Andrew and I were doing in high school. It is more tune-based. You had mentioned to ask who else is on the CD, and so it's part of how it sounds.

Noah VanNorstrand: 15:36

The original plan for my CD was like you know what, I'm going to play all the instruments myself and then it'll be like my solo CD where I play all the instruments, and that would have been fine and fun in its own way, I guess. But then I was like my brother is one of the best guitar players in the country. Why would I play guitar? I can fake it, I can get by, but my brother is Andrew. So that idea chained into actually getting musicians that were good at the instruments that they play. So Andrew plays guitar and our friend Rachel Bell plays accordion and Dana Billings was the engineer for the CD and he also played the drums in percussion. Well, he played the drums, I played the percussion, but he played the drums for the couple tracks that have drums. And then we had a bass player. A friend, Jordan Morton, was their bass player and those people just hold up in an electric Wilberland in Ithaca and made it, and a couple years ago now it feels like.

Meg Wobus Beller: 16:47

Where can folks go to check out that CD and also the faux pas? I know you guys have a great EP, a couple of them.

Noah VanNorstrand: 16:54

Yeah, yeah. And greatbearmusic. com is a place you can go and that has all of the things that Andrew and I are involved in together. So it has all the great beer albums from the past and then faux pas albums, and then this, my new solo album, is also there, along with buddy system albums. Make a problem thing. Anything that Andrew and I do together goes there.

Meg Wobus Beller: 17:20

Okay, and people can. Can they order CDs? They could get the digital downloads.

Noah VanNorstrand: 17:25

You do both those things. Yep, they can order. Order the physical CD through, I think, at the grapebearermusiccom takes you to our bandcamp page. So it's all the things that bandcamp offers.

Meg Wobus Beller: 17:37

And musicians sell through bandcamp, because we we don't actually get income from streaming. So, or I don't know, three cents, I wouldn't count it as income. We're not paying taxes on that Three cents.

Noah VanNorstrand: 17:50

We have to put a good stream for three cents.

Meg Wobus Beller: 17:53

So pay your. If you want to pay a fairer price for music, check out yeah, check out bandcamp. Our tune for today is off of Noah's new CD, and this tune is called Sure Does.

Noah VanNorstrand: 18:08

With an exclamation point.

Meg Wobus Beller: 18:10

Sure Does ! Noah, can you tell us about this tune a little?

Noah VanNorstrand: 18:14

Again, it's a cute little kind of New England-y, french-canadian type again, not really but type tune, and it's named after I got. I got a great friend group, great friend group, a bunch of contra dancers that all went to the same Great Bear weekends for three years and so they really became like little contra family and there's a. There's a really dumb joke. That punchline is Sure Does, and I figured those friends needed a tune on the CD. So this tune is called Sure Does.

Meg Wobus Beller: 18:52

Hey, Noah. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. It's been a real treat. We're very excited. Make sure to check out Noah's album and go to GreatbearMusic.

Noah VanNorstrand: 19:07

Yes, greatbearmusic. com. Yeah, okay.

Meg Wobus Beller: 19:11

We're going to hear this tune now. Okay, okay, okay, thank you for listening. You can find the music for today's tune at fiddlestudio. com, along with my books, courses and membership for learning to fiddle. I'll be back next week with another tune for you. Have a wonderful day.