Fiddle Studio
The glasses clink and the talk and laughter grow louder. In the corner of the pub, musicians sit and play traditional dance tunes that make your feet want to stomp and slide. Join fiddler Meg Wobus Beller as she brings you along into the world of fiddling and traditional music, from bow-grips and double stops to Old-Time tunes and Irish jigs.
Fiddle Studio
Signing up for a Fiddle Competition (Old Billy Hell)
Have you wondered what it's like to compete in a fiddle competition? So have I. So I signed up for one and we'll see how it goes. I talk a little about how I'm planning to prepare.
Our tune for this week is Old Billy Hell, a half length crooked Old-Time tune.
Our album release party contra dance will be May 30th at 7pm in Baltimore at the Mobtown Ballroom. Come on down!
Reach me at meganbeller@fiddlestudio.com.
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My website for learning to fiddle is Fiddle Studio which has courses and a mailing list and my Top 10 Fiddle Tunes!
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 the tune Old Billy Hell from a jam in Baltimore, Maryland. Hello everyone, I hope you are well. Today we're going to be talking about preparing for a competition and I have lots of exciting thoughts about this. But first a little bit of housekeeping. Sometimes I listen to podcasts and they call it housekeeping when they make an announcement. You know, Charley and I had an album come out this fall but we had a pretty busy winter and we never had an album release party. So we are finally having our album release party, for our album Broke the Floor. It's going to be in Baltimore on May 30th, which is a Thursday. It'll be a big contra dance and concert at the Mob Town Ballroom on Thursday, May 30th, from 7 to 9.30. So if you're in Baltimore or you're nearby, please come out that Thursday on May 30th and hear music from our album and have fun at a big contra dance at the Mob Town Ballroom. So let's talk about preparing for a competition. So let's talk about preparing for a competition.
Meg Wobus Beller:This is a topic that I have no experience in. You can go back and listen to some of my interviews. I know Joanna Clare talked about competing in fleadhs in Irish fiddle and Lissa Schneckenberger spoke about how she got into fiddling as a kid and a teenager by doing kind of a circuit of fiddle competitions that were at fairs in Maine and New England. And a few of my old-time fiddlers who I've interviewed have talked about competing at places like Clifftop and other old-time music festivals. But I've actually never competed in a fiddle competition, and not only that, I've never. I'm trying to remember to make sure I'm not stretching the truth here. I don't think I've ever been to a fiddle competition. They used to have a little showcase at an old-time fiddle fair outside of Syracuse that my dad would take me to Remember. He'd put me up on stage for that, but it wasn't a competition. Yeah, I don't think I've been to one. I've been to other competitions. I've competed in classical but not in fiddle. So I decided, partly just because of this podcast y'all inspire me to take on new things because it'll give me something to talk about. On the podcast.
Meg Wobus Beller:I was planning to go to Clifftop this year. My kids will be at camp during Clifftop. So my husband and I are going to go check it out after hearing about it for years from other musicians in Baltimore who go and who talk about it. And if you play old time music in Baltimore and you're just meeting someone for the first time, one of the first things they'll ask you is have you been to Clifftop? And I've had to say no, so I'd like to say yes to that. So I'm going to Clifftop and I thought, well, they have a competition there, why don't I enter it? And then I'll know what it's like to play for a fiddle competition.
Meg Wobus Beller:I've done a lot of performing in my day. I've performed well, I've performed classically, I've competed and done orchestra concerts and other kinds of recitals and such, and I've done a lot of performing on fiddles certainly dances for the last 30 years and a variety of other things Mostly dances, I would say Some concerts and stuff like that, open mics. So I feel pretty comfortable with the idea of getting up on stage and playing for people. That has never been something that bothered me too much. But I didn't quite know what to expect from Clifftop. The first thing I did, thinking about how to get ready for this competition. I went and I watched videos on YouTube of Clifftop winners so you can look at the videos people have put up Finalist in the Open Fiddle 2016. Finalist in the Open Fiddle 2018. And they have these videos that were taken. So that was really helpful because I could see like, oh okay, they play the tune a certain number of times. Some people have guitar accompaniment, some people don't, and these are the kinds of tunes they're playing, these are the kinds of tempos they're taking. This is the kind of playing that's getting at least to the finals.
Meg Wobus Beller:And there were it wasn't just one kind of old time playing. There were some people playing really smooth and some people playing with more of a rhythmic style, which was nice for me to see, because I can't really play fiddle totally smooth. I just because I played mostly just for dances. I keep the beat with my fiddle basically for dancing. I haven't really tried not to do that, but I don't think I could. I don't think I would feel comfortable getting up and playing for people and trying to make my tunes sound super smooth. Some people do that. You know, I get the bluegrass. They do these licks. It sounds great. That's not me. I want it to sound rhythmic, I want it to sound danceable.
Meg Wobus Beller:I found it interesting there were a variety of tunes. Some people were playing really fast, kind of major breakdowns. There were a lot of funky modal tunes. A lot of them are crooked, so you have to come with a couple of tunes. So I thought, okay, well, go and dig up some tunes. I got to dig up a cool modal tune and maybe some kind of fast breakdown. A couple tunes like that I already know. Many of them are tunes I learned off my dad's old records. There was a breakdown, kind of old time, maybe more of a bluegrass breakdown, called Snowflake Reel that I play, that I have my own version of. So that might be something I do I play, that I have my own version of. So that might be something I do. And I do know some old modal tunes. Sweet Milk and Peaches is one I have off of one of his records. I have a couple of others that I learned just sort of straight from those recordings from hearing them so many times growing up.
Meg Wobus Beller:I'm going to listen to some old time fiddle between now and then and develop my playing. I mean I don't think I'm ever going to be an old time fiddler. When I'm working on other genres outside of New England I'm not usually trying to become that kind of player, but I love playing music with people. I love being able to hang in a jam. If I know half the tunes and I can keep up and my playing isn't sticking out as not matching the style of the other players, then that's enough for me to enjoy it. So that's usually about what I'm aiming for in Irish that I've been working on in old time, even in French Canadian, which doesn't get played as much down here. But when I go up north and I play some French tunes, working on getting enough of this style that I can blend in with other people, getting enough of the tunes that I can play a few of them and pick up a few, not be lost the whole time. A few of them and pick up a few, not be lost the whole time. So I don't think I'm going to become an old time fiddler before August. But I'm going to work on my sound a little bit, try to make sure it sounds reasonably old time, and I'll probably just be listening to recordings and getting myself out to jams a couple of different-time jams I go to around here.
Meg Wobus Beller:I emailed my dad to ask him about tunes. He had a lot of good ideas. If you are looking around for tunes, if you're thinking about doing a competition or any kind of open mic or performance, you know. He suggested the LPs. He gave me his collection and pointed out that there's the anthropological like the Smithsonian Institute has a lot of recordings they made and there's also commercial people trying to make a buck. And he said you know, don't ignore the commercial recordings. There was some good stuff there, said you know, don't ignore the commercial recordings, there was some good stuff there.
Meg Wobus Beller:People were rushing at one point, rushing around the South trying to record folks and producing it to try to meet the demand. You know, in the late 60s, early 70s, the folk music revival. So they were finding folks and recording them and we have some of those records. There were also folk music revival bands from the 60s and 70s. What do I have? I have Fuzzy Mountain, Hollow Rock, new Lost City Ramblers, a bunch of stuff, Cranberry Lake, Highwood String Band, Delaware Water Gap and of course a lot of people look on YouTube. So you've got YouTube, they've got all the CDs up now. You can find so much of that.
Meg Wobus Beller:My dad had another suggestion. He heard that a lot of old-time players would swap iPod libraries with thousands of tunes. So he said, go ask around in your community, see if you can get one of these old libraries that might be from the days of Napster. Anyway, if you're an old-time musician with a tune library, maybe hit me up. Help me prepare for this competition. So my practice schedule is it's April now and Passover is coming up, which means that I'm a busy lady until May. So I'll be doing a lot of practicing in May and June getting ready for this, and it'll mostly be working on tunes working out tunes that I want to play, working out my own versions and how I want to play them and if I want to do them in a special tuning and how that's going to work, and working on them with Charley trying to work them up. We'll see how that goes. I will let you know.
Meg Wobus Beller:Our tune for today is called Old Billy Hell. The tunes this month were pulled from a jam in Baltimore that was at my friend Heather's house a jam in Baltimore that was at my friend Heather's house. I get together with some folks on some Monday nights and we play tunes. I'm very lucky to have friends who know a lot of tunes from studying the fiddle, and old time tunes especially for many years. So a lot of these tunes are tunes I learned from Brenna and Shane and Heather and John, who I jam with. So this was from a jam and we played Old Billy Hell the way that they played.
Meg Wobus Beller:It comes from an album called Just Tunes and it's from Claire Milliner and Walt Kokum. You can buy that on their website. It's $15. It's called Just Tunes. This is a G major reel played in standard tuning. A common source for it is Bingham. Here's the little blurb from Fiddle Archive Old Billy Hell was a euphemism for the devil or hell itself. As in, we're going to raise Old Billy Hell or get drunker than Old Billy Hell. Bruce Green did a field recording of Estill Bingham. Yeah, so it was Estill Bingham playing the fiddle tune in 1989. But it's a breakdown from Kentucky area Old Billy Hell. So we'll play this version for you now that we got from Brenna and Shane. You, you, you. Thank you for listening. You can find the music for today's tune at fiddlestudiocom, 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.
