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
Ellery Klein (York Street Stepper)
This week I have a conversation with Irish fiddler Ellery Klein. Ellery Klein performs across New England with the fiddle, flute, and guitar trio Fódhla and nationally with the three-fiddle Celtic powerhouse group, The Bow Tides, whose debut album, Sailing On, was released in 2022. She also teaches fiddle to all ages in the Boston area and beyond.
Ellery graduated with a major in instrumental music from Cincinnati’s public magnet School for Creative and Performing Arts in 1992. She received an MA in Irish Traditional Music Performance from the University of Limerick in 2001. She toured nationally with the Irish supergroup Gaelic Storm from 2003-2007.
Ellery and I talk about teaching and learning, switching from classical to fiddle, all about the Irish roll (with tips!), and how three former Gaelic Storm fiddlers formed the Bow tides and how they work together as a fiddle trio. We had a great time!
The tune this week is York Street Stepper by Ellery Klein.
Ellery Klein's website is elleryklein.net
Find the Bow Tides at thebowtides.com
Reach me at meganbeller@fiddlestudio.com.
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YouTube
Fiddle Studio books
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 Wolvespeller and today I'll be bringing you a setting of the tune York Street Stepper from the album Sailing On from the Bowtides. Hello everyone, I hope you are well. Today we're going to be talking to Ellery Klein. Ellery Klein performs and teaches across New England with the fiddle, flute and guitar trio, fola and plays with the three-fiddle Celtic powerhouse group, the Bowtides. So she plays in a band with three fiddles. We're going to hear about that. They had an album Sailing On that was released in 2022. She earned an Emmy in Irish traditional music from the University of Limerick in 2001. That's cool. This is how I knew Ellery that she toured with Gaelic Storm from 2003 to 2007. She teaches in Boston and online. Welcome, ellery, it's great to have you here. Thank you, it's great to be here. Thanks for having me. Thank you for making time to do this on your birthday. Happy birthday, thank you very much.
Speaker 1:What better way to spend my birthday than talking about fiddles? It's great, exactly.
Speaker 2:So, to start off, I would just love to hear a little bit about, yeah, what brought you into fiddling, how you got started with fiddle or violin, what your journey was there at the beginning.
Speaker 1:Well, the very beginning. I was in second grade at St Ursula in Cincinnati, ohio, and Mrs Walker came around the second grade and she had her daughter with her who was playing like the sample tune to try to lure us all into this world of music. And actually, even though she was sort of a standard school music teacher, her daughter played turkey in the straw, which you know is like a fiddle tune. So it's kind of funny that, although I think it, that tune is like a minstrel tune, so it's like one of those ones that now you're like you know, but anyway it was turkey in the Straw.
Speaker 1:And then I, you know, I got into Suzuki and learned violin and I ended up going to the School for Creative and Performing Arts in the eighth grade in Cincinnati, which is a magnet public school, doing orchestras and quartets and violin lessons there. And then at the end of high school I was sort of feeling like you know, I didn't want to do a conservatory thing, it was 1992. So I feel like the fiddle music school thing hadn't, I didn't know that that was a thing, yet it wasn't really, I didn't know. Yeah, it didn't really exist. Then, you know, it was the fiddlers after us like started going to Berkeley and stuff and went down that track. But for me it was like, oh well, if I don't want to do a classical music career, then I guess I'll. So I went and studied geology actually at the University of Vermont, okay and met some fiddlers up there Sarah Blair is a great fiddle player and an Irish piper named Benedict Kohler and lots of other great musicians up there in Vermont.
Speaker 2:So they kind of took me under their wing and taught me lots of tunes. And yeah, why didn't you want to go to conservatory?
Speaker 1:I don't know. I just felt like I didn't want to do classical music. So I felt like I do have a very strong save the world kind of event, so I wanted to major in environmental studies, I think. I don't know. I just, yeah, I wasn't thinking I was going to have a music career a hundred percent when I went to college either. Yeah, I don't know if I still think a hundred percent.
Speaker 2:I'm going to have a music career, but you know I was just curious.
Speaker 1:I've always like had this life of maybe I should get another job, you know, but it always kind of, no matter how I try to do something else, I always end up just doing music. So, um, same, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So you were introduced to Irish music up up in Vermont, or were you into it before that?
Speaker 1:I kind of met. There was an Irish Harper named Nancy Bick Clark who really writes lovely tunes actually, but she's just a local musician in Cincinnati. She took me under her wing, like I met. We had a family friend who was from Northern Ireland who played Boron very low key, but he would do gigs with Nancy sometimes and he introduced me to her and that was kind of fun because I met her and it was like January and by March she was like come play these Irish gigs with me and I think I was reading tunes off sheet music, you know, at these Irish gigs but I was like, oh, this is kind of cool, like I'm already the most I've ever made money, you know, playing music, immediately the minute I started playing fiddle music.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you take those harp gigs. That's the way to do it. Yeah, there's a harpist in our area, lexi Boatwright, and she said I'll never do a St Patrick's Day gig except solo harp. Make all the money and it's chill, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that summer actually. So I learned some tunes from Nancy and met some of the local Cincinnati folk, of which there weren't many at that point. Malcolm Daglish and Gray Larson had used to live in Cincinnati and so there was, oh, we remember when they lived here, but I still have never met either of them. But they were like legends. You know, when I started playing in Cincinnati, when I started playing in Cincinnati, so there were only two or three people left playing Irish music in Cincinnati at that point. But one of them was a fiddle player named Susan Cross and she was actually very passionate about getting me learning the fiddle and she was great because she started in music school and just she had such passion for getting other people playing. So now in Cincinnati there's several sessions and a music school that's running and it's all thanks to her. It's several sessions and a music school that's running and it's all thanks to her.
Speaker 1:It's been cool to see the scene in my native city blossom, thanks mostly to one person, although now I think it's more of a team effort, 25, 30 years later. But then I went to the Augusta Heritage Festival week and I took a week with James Kelly. I had like cassette tapes from that week. A week with James Kelly I had like cassette tapes from that week, you know, and I literally just studied those classes over and over for like a year just trying to figure out his sound and why he sounded so amazing. He's still one of my favorite fiddle players. He's got great variations.
Speaker 2:Is that the thing I'm curious about and maybe it's related was coming from the world of classical. Someone heard you. Now you sound very Irish, so when that transition happened learning the new, not just the tunes which you know it sounds like you could read off the page. It's the same for me, but getting the sound, yeah it was hard.
Speaker 1:I remember I never learned by ear, ever. I didn't know how to learn by ear. I did not have that skill. And I went to that Augusta thing and it was full of all these amateur middle-aged, probably my age now old people but they could all pick up the tune because they all had learned by ears and I was just struggling. I was like how are they just playing these tunes back? All of a sudden it was this eye-opening thing of there's, this whole skill that is kind of neglected in classical music. You know you didn't get it in Suzuki. No, you know I didn't have like a pure Suzuki teacher. Yeah, pure Suzuki students can be really great fiddle students, although they always rush and play things like you know. My hardest thing when I get it's like oh, you can learn the tune really fast. But then getting them to slow down and try to get the sound I find is always the struggle. Like they're like, you know they play it so fast but no soul.
Speaker 2:This one year I also do a kids' fiddling day camp and I remember the year Andrew Van Norstrand. So it was like up in New York, the Van Norstrand brothers and I both grew up in Syracuse and they would come and teach and Andrew had had that realization. He was like this year, all my classes with these kids, these Suzuki kids, we're just going to play everything really slow for this style. The kids were like why would anyone do that? Andrew kind of got them on board. It was amazing. I was like you're going to do what? We're just going to be playing 70 beats per minute all week.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's funny. It's very funny just to see the different, because at my camp I end up with some of my fiddle students and then some kids that have done only music at school and never have had a private lesson. And then you get Suzuki kids who can learn anything by ear in about two seconds. But then getting you know, it's like, and you get this very interesting mix of wow, there's all these different ways people learn and everyone's got something that they got to work on. You know, even if you're a Suzuki kid, it's like you got a lesson in a group class and your parents are making you practice. There's still something you got to work on, you know. But then other kids will like pick up other things fast, you know, even though they don't have the formal education. It's just always fascinating to me every year who am I going to get at camp this year and what are going to be the challenges and the deficits and the assets that they all individually bring. It's kind of fun.
Speaker 2:Running a camp is a lot of work. Where is your camp?
Speaker 1:It's in Belmont, massachusetts, so I teach one day a week at a community music school in Belmont, massachusetts, which is just next to Cambridge. They just had their 60th anniversary. The school started as like a piano festival and I'm sort of like slowly growing the folky stuff there. There's one other teacher started the fiddle camp. I think this will be my ninth year. It was 2015,. I think that I started it. So, yeah, it's called Strings Traditions think that I started it.
Speaker 2:So yeah, it's called Strings Traditions. I saw in your teaching bio that you studied creative ability. You studied Alice Kinnock's improv stuff. I started my teaching career at the Kinnock School teaching Suzuki and fiddle oh fun. And improv, yeah. Did you go there and learn from her? I?
Speaker 1:did. Yeah, so one of the years I did my fiddle camp, there was a woman named Rachel Panich who came and taught and she did creative ability development classes and I kind of sat and watched them and I was like this is amazing. So I was like I want to go do this. So I went in August of 2019. So it was kind of unfortunate timing because, just as I was like really gearing up to teach everything, I learned everything shut down and, as you know, that method is not it's not great online. It's really about being in this room. But yeah, I went for the week and I'm always telling people I'm like it's music therapy for teachers. Like I felt like it was this magical week where you're in like the Wonka factory for music teachers or something, except no one gets sucked down the hole at the end or whatever. But I don't know, it was just she's just come up with this really thoughtful way of teaching. For me, it's always the struggle of like how do I make this more fiddly, or something you know.
Speaker 2:But I use the just while we're talking shop. I use the games in my fiddle classes all the time. The things like telephone, the ability to play back a chunk all the time. The things like telephone, the ability to play back a chunk I mean making a rhythm machine is just huge for the kids to have an internal beat. Just when I was first teaching full-time I was involved with that. So just ever since then I've always used her stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah, all the time, yeah, I'd love to go back and do a refresh of the week. I feel like just post pandemic.
Speaker 2:I'd love to like do it again, but yeah, I would love to go, even though I worked there for like a few years, so I've never done her formal training. I was just. It was like here, here's how it works. Like, get in there, do it. I would love to do the week, though.
Speaker 1:It's so fun because, like all, the teachers are really excited to do it. There was one woman that showed up the year I was there and she was. She had learned from a Russian, she was Russian and she had learned this very Russian violin method. And she was like this is therapy for me. Everything was like there can be no mistakes. Mistakes are bad, like mistakes are horrible. You know, and you are a bad person. Yeah, if you make a mistake, she's like I was traumatized by my violin training. And she was like this for me is just so therapeutic. It was so cool to see.
Speaker 2:She was like I'm just back here to just do it again, so I can heal as a violin player. Yeah, yeah, it was very sweet To play where there aren't any mistakes.
Speaker 1:It's funny, though I find that some kids really fight that. Have you had that? Where I tell them the rule I'm like you know there's no such thing as a mistake, and I always get one that's like no, there are mistakes. I'm like well, but not in this class. Like, this is how it works. There is no way to make a mistake. You know they're like no, but there is like there's things that are not good.
Speaker 2:I mean, I sympathize.
Speaker 1:It's just funny. I always have one that I'm like no, I mean, you know, you just got to go with it. They're very. A lot of kids are like, oh yeah, this will be fun. And then there's always one that's like no, there has to be a way that I do it wrong. That's so interesting, which I just you know it's interesting. Yeah, it's a very interesting thing to teach because it brings out some of these things in kids.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's so funny that music is taught and studied so much as you're learning what other people do and there aren't that many people teaching music. That's like what do you sound like? What do you like? What can you make up? That's about you.
Speaker 1:Well, this is what I say to my. One of the ways I introduced it is like you guys go to art class. Sometimes you draw a picture that someone else drew and you just have to copy that, right, and they're like, yeah, and I'm like, well, imagine if that was always art class and you never got to draw your own painting. And I'm like that's how we teach music. But imagine if part of you know you're learning tunes that other people wrote. But also, what if you were, at the same time, always trying to make your own tune or your own music? They're like, oh, okay, yeah, which?
Speaker 2:I think about Even adult students. I'll teach them questions and answers and then just use it to do phrases and at some point I'm like you realize a fiddle tune is just questions and answers. Right, it's just a question and an answer and the same question again with a different answer. This is all it is. Yeah, okay, well, let's talk about performing, because you perform with, with a different answer. This is all it is. Yeah, okay, well, let's talk about performing because you perform with a few different groups. I was particularly curious about the Bowtides, because it's a band with three fiddles. I just have a lot of questions like who was like we should have three fiddles in one band, and then how does that work? We?
Speaker 1:should have three fiddles in one band. And then, how does that work? Yeah, so the whole band was sort of one of these synchronicity. So basically all three of us played in Gaelic Storm. That's how we know each other. So I played until 07 and then Jessie Burns replaced me because I was having my son, who's now 16. Andesse toured with them for five or six years and then she left because she had her baby, first of two girls. And then there was another fiddle player in between and then katie grennan was playing them with gailey storm when the pandemic hit. So the pandemic happened.
Speaker 1:I can't even remember what made me reach out, but I was reaching out to one of the two and we were like, oh, we should do one of these. Remember, everyone was sending those videos around acapella collaborations. So I was like, oh, we should do something where the three Gaelic Stormfiddle players do a tune together. We should each write a tune and then we can all play them on this thing and send it out. And then Jessie got invited to do an online performance for the Spanish Peaks Celtic Festival in Colorado, near where she lives, a festival that she's been involved with for many, many years. And she reached back out to us and said, hey, instead of these little videos, should we put together a whole concert set, like 25 minutes or something. And we were like sure, that sounds fun. So we put together four or five tracks with guitarist Jeff Lindblad from Chicago, and Jesse is actually married to Eric Tureen, who's a well-known bluegrass bass player Great bass player actually. There were a couple other people John Williams is now married to Katie Grannon. We had a few guest musicians, so we put together like five tracks.
Speaker 1:And then Katie's affiliated with the Pittsburgh. She's from Pittsburgh, pennsylvania, originally. So that festival was like, hey, we really liked that, would you do one for us? So we ended up doing one for them, kind of recycling some of the sets from the Spanish Peaks, and we did two or three new tracks for the Pittsburgh and then we got invited to come play in Pittsburgh in person the next year and so we all flew in and met up I never even met Jeff Lindblad or Eric in person, you know and we kind of spent two or three nights at Katie's parents' house just rehearsing and putting together a whole, whole set of tunes like mad and, and we had such a good time that we're like I, I think we have a band. You know who would have thought Cause I?
Speaker 1:You know, I actually had a group that I was working really hard on at the start of the pandemic, with a cello player and a fiddle player here named julie metcalf, and because of the pandemic, the cello player, liz davis um, she's an irish cello player and writes really nice tunes anyway. So she ended up moving back to utah in this band that I was really excited about fell apart and I was very sad about that. And then this other thing happened. So, yeah, so we have this three fiddle band and Katie does Irish dancing so she throws that in like a couple times in the show.
Speaker 1:Jessie is really great at harmonies and comes up with amazing harmony lines. We just feel like we have a nice balance of fiddle styles and skills, just kind of like fiddle camp. I guess. Everyone comes with their strengths and their, their assets. Yeah, we do some harmonies and then we'll play like triple melody and then trade off you know being the fiddle star, whatever of that track, so like on our jig track that we're to play like I'm playing my tune and then jesse plays her tunes and katie's playing her tune and we switch between backing each other up and harmonizing while someone else plays the melody. And then eric is fantastic at coming up with really great chord progressions from the bass end of things and the bay is really I feel like almost now that we've been doing the band for a while, I feel like the bass is like it's so essential when you have three fiddles to have a bass on the other end just to kind of balance out all the shrieking, you know.
Speaker 1:It didn't sound shrieky Fiddles are very like high pitched so it's like nice to have someone going on the other end. You know Love bass. Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's the best part of all time. It's the best part of old time. It's considered so essential to have a bass at a jam. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because you get like 10 or 12 fiddles just playing away. It really does help, especially the old time music you know from the East, those long notes. Yeah, it's good to have someone on the low end.
Speaker 2:It's funny when my grown-up students play together they're playing kind of gels a little bit, because even though they might play different styles and sound different, now they learned from me and they gel together their time and everything. So I'm wondering, like, since you all played for the same band and played maybe some of the same repertoire and played with similar people, how do you get your styles to like mash up while you're playing? Or is it not important? People can be throwing in ornaments and bowings in different places and it all works.
Speaker 1:There definitely is. I mean we feel this connection there definitely is. I mean we feel this connection. Jessie had to learn all my parts that I had recorded on two albums and she played them, and then Katie had to learn Jessie and my parts. So there is this sort of like we've all played each other's parts that we came up with, except I've played the least of theirs, I guess, because I was first.
Speaker 1:But our big thing is that we feel, you know, gaelic Storm is like a very high energy band that puts on a big show, and we all feel like we really learned a lot about that, like putting on a good show, having good energy, keeping people moving on stage. And this band is sort of conceived as like a festival band where we are also thinking about putting on lots of energy, and we all learned a lot from Gaelic Storm as far as that goes Really getting on stage and putting on a show for people and keeping the energy up. Musically, it's more towards the fiddle music that we love. Yeah, so Jeff Lindblad is singing a few songs as well.
Speaker 2:What was it like to singing a few songs as well? What was it like? So, for people who aren't familiar with Gaelic Storm but they maybe know what Riverdance is can you just describe Gaelic Storm Well?
Speaker 1:their thing is that they became famous because they were the steerage band in the Titanic movie, which is funny. Actually, my daughter right now is playing in her school orchestra the Titanic band scene music. I was like, oh, life has come full circle, you know. Yeah, she said to her friend in orchestra, like my mom was in that band. And then the orchestra conductor was like really, they were like a bar band in LA. And then this happened and they immediately just jumped on the opportunity. Yeah, so they're great on stage and they give people a good time. Yeah, lots of fiddling, very fast and furious fiddling.
Speaker 2:Yeah, lots of fiddling. It's funny that two of you stopped touring because you had kids. I had my daughter when I was 24 and that was it for me also. I switched to teaching full time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was, you know, toured until I was six months pregnant. People would come up. We would always give autographs and people would say like, oh, are you coming back out after you have the baby? I'm like, no, like we're touring in this brick and brack like RV that I never know if it's going to make it to the next venue. No, they're like, oh, but Natalie McBaster? I'm like, yeah, her whole family comes on tour with her. It's very different. Yeah, yeah, if you have a family operation, you can bring the kids on the road, but no crazy tour life. You can bring the kids on the road, but no Crazy tour life. I was like, no, I don't know, that wasn't for me to bring a baby on the road. I liked being at home with my little baby.
Speaker 2:Yeah, taking it easy, and I'm still making my peace with all that. Yes, yeah, I also moved for my husband's job, which you did too. You lived in Israel.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we lived in Israel for three years when my kids were very small. Did you play Irish music out there? I did a little bit. I had a seven-month-old and a three-year-old. When we moved we lived in Jerusalem and there wasn't really a scene in Jerusalem. There is an Irish music scene in Tel Aviv, yeah, but it's like a 45 minute drive and you know the pub session is starting at nine o'clock. You have a baby and I have a baby that's up at 5 am, like it just.
Speaker 1:And my husband was like, when we landed, within months the Arab Spring has started. So he was in Egypt and Jordan, wow, and I was by myself with two babies. So I just wasn't. I did meet people and go out a few times, but I definitely it was not. When I got back from Israel I had to kind of brush my fiddle off a bit. I felt like, you know, I did kind of get back into playing some Bach over there. I was like, oh, you know, this is a moment where classical music is kind of a good thing to know how to do, because playing little Bach sonatas and things by yourself is more fun than, after a while, playing Irish music by yourself gets kind of depressing.
Speaker 2:You still. When you came back to it it felt okay in your hands.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I just sort of had to start training again. You know, it's like a sport or something. You just got to do the time get your fingers back in shape and get your rolls sounding crisp again.
Speaker 2:Still trying to get them to sound crisp the first time, yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, I tell my students because they're always resistant. I'm like you know, do the roll scale and like play these rolls. You know you can do a first finger roll and then second finger roll and third finger roll and like play it really slow, you know, and then speed it up but like you got to hear every note, even as lickety split fast. If you don't hear every note of the roll, it just sounds like doo-doo roll and I have to do this myself. My rolls will get sloppy sometimes and I have to do this myself. My rolls will get sloppy sometimes and I need to sit down and just practice my rolls for a while, slowly and clearly, practicing and enunciating, and then you speed it back up again.
Speaker 2:Do you really roll on your third finger? Yeah, If people don't know what a roll is, you know you're going up to the note above and then back and then down. So if you roll on your third finger, you have to use your pinky.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would say people roll on their third finger, not me. They don't roll on their fourth finger, though.
Speaker 2:I've had students who yeah, who got it. I showed them and then they heard a recording. They're like, oh, I'm going to have to work on this. They come back with a better roll than me. If you work on it, it can be done.
Speaker 1:It's funny. I played roles with kind of a flicking motion for years and then there's a fiddle player here in Boston named Tina Leck, who's a great fiddle player and she mostly learned from this guy in Providence named Jimmy Devine, who he just passed away like two years ago. But he also taught Sarah Blair, who I learned from. So I finally got to know him at Coltus. He came and taught at the Coltus School here in Boston, so he was a great guy and he taught a lot of people. But Tina had taken lessons from Brendan Mulvihill and she was talking about the way he taught roles, which was instead of this flicky emotion, which is the way I'd always played him. He was like no, he's, like it's da-da-da-da-da, da-, da, da, da, da. Like he had this very staccato-esque, like you put the finger down and you play it in this sort of little swingy bum, ba-dum, ba-dum and that is what speeded up.
Speaker 2:You practice that and then you speed it up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I started playing my roles like that and I'm like, well, I think sometimes I still like the flickier thing, but this is also depending on the tune that you know, and I only learned that from her like eight years ago or something. So, yeah, oh Mysteries of rolls.
Speaker 2:I have trouble fitting them in on reels. I can get them in on jigs, uh-huh Work in progress.
Speaker 1:The Providence reel is a good one for rolls and Musical Priest, yeah, good roll reels, just throwing off ones I teach.
Speaker 2:You teach you said one day a week there, but you also teach online, right?
Speaker 1:I have a few students I teach online. Not a ton. I teach twice a week at my house too, so I have a home studio and I do twice a week there and then once a week at the community music school. Okay, that's a lot, yeah, so I have like 25 youth students, yeah, so I, I, so I have cut back on on the adults too. Especially with the bowtie thing popping up, it gave me a little room to maybe teach a little less online. But I have taught online, but it's definitely not.
Speaker 1:There's some people that go really hardcore for the online teaching thing and you know I appreciate it and I love it for the options that it gives you. I just did Fiddle Hell Online, which is the April beginning of April online version of Fiddle Hell. That started when the pandemic hit. It's always an in-person gathering in November in Westford Mass. Yeah, but now they've been doing the online one and they decided to keep. Once the November one went back to in-person, they kept the online one in April, which is great. So I've been doing that one every year since the pandemic Online that's fun.
Speaker 2:I find online teaching hard. I bet I could get better at it, but I feel like being in the same room and playing with my student. I really rely on that so much, especially as a Suzuki teacher, and so when I teach online, it feels more like I'm answering questions which people have questions, so it's great to be able to be a resource and brainstorm with them. Okay, try this. What'd you think? Okay, well, you could try this, but it's not for me. It's not the same as like having a musical relationship where you're playing together yeah, On a weekly basis.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, I do feel that it made me a much better teacher because I had to think so hard about how I was teaching when everything went online in 2020. And actually, Christian Howes you know Christian Howes, yeah, yeah, I like signed up for his online course at that point and he's been teaching online for years, so he was great. He was sort of like dudes, like this is my bread and butter, Like I'm here to tell you how to teach online, and he was sort of a lifesaver for me. I learned stuff from his online course and just his play alongs that he does. So he has this great way of just I'm going to show it and get you to play it, and he doesn't necessarily even have to hear it, you know to just get you doing these experiences and trying these things. So that was super helpful for me as a teacher, because I had never really been interested in online teaching for exactly the reason that you're saying.
Speaker 1:But all of a sudden, it was like we have to do it. You know everyone's like freaking out and, yeah, I was like so this lesson has to be good. There's all this pressure, you know, to make your lesson like enjoyable in the middle of all the craziness. So I do feel like it was like a trial by fire. It made me a much better teacher. But when I finally got back in person again, first of all half my students needed the next size violin and I hadn't been able to see that online. I don't know if that happened to you. It was like you couldn't really see that. It didn't fit them anymore through the screen. So like, oh my gosh, like everyone needs the next size fiddle, Like I hadn't even realized and then some bad habits had snuck in that you kind of couldn't see.
Speaker 1:But also it was just such a relief to like the first. I just remember that feeling like when I actually got to play a tune with one of my students again it was like oh.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I had a full youth studio before the pandemic but I actually shut it down. But when I play with my students, like my older students now, I still love it. I miss it sometimes, but also it was my full-time job for 20 years, so I have a lot more time to do other musical things and other things in life now. Yeah, like this podcast. Well, we should talk about your tune. Our tune today is from your oh, it's the Bowtides album. The name of the album is Sailing On. Can people find the album on Bandcamp? They can find it on Bandcamp.
Speaker 1:Yep, yep, and of course that's our favorite way, but it's also on Spotify and Apple Music. Yeah, but we love it when you go onto Bandcamp and buy the album, of course.
Speaker 2:Perfectly put. So you want to tell us about the tune. It's a jig, right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's called the York Street Stepper. It was actually a tune that I'd written long ago. I was home for a couple months living with my parents after I did my master's degree in limerick, saving up to move to New York City, which I did for a year until I met my husband who lives in Boston, and I met this guy who did swing dancing and we would kind of hang out and do swing dancing and York Street was the name of establishment, but it was at least on. York Street was the name of establishment, but it was at least on York Street where there was like this big swing dancing event. Okay, it was fun, just this random person who I haven't even seen since.
Speaker 2:It was fun to go swing dancing for a couple months. I'm intrigued that each of the three fiddlers in the Bowtides wrote a different tune on this one track, so I'm going to try to include the whole track. So it'll start with your tune, the York Street Stepper, and that's the one I'll share a transcription of. But what are the other two tunes?
Speaker 1:after that the second one is written by Jesse Burns and that's called the Sanctuary Jig Okay, Just a sweet title. It's also a very sweet tune that the second one is written by Jesse Burns and that's called the Sanctuary Jig Okay, Just a sweet title. It's also a very sweet tune. And then Katie Grennan wrote I think it's called Agnes's Stitches Okay, Awesome. After it was a dance. I think it was like a grandmother in the Irish dance scene that made amazing dance dresses. So she was like a very valuable person in the dance scene making like these gorgeous dresses for the girls.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. And if people want to find your music or find out more about where they could hear you or learn from you, where should they go online?
Speaker 1:I do have have a website elleryclinenet and the bowtides are thebowtidescom, thebowtidescom, and it's tides not not like fred astaire, it's like t-i-d-e-s. I should probably say that we were just kind of like brainstorming names and kind of came up with this oceanic yeah, but we, but we like it. So, yeah, so thebowtidescom and we're going to be in Madison, wisconsin Irish Fest and Milwaukee. We're very excited to be at the Milwaukee Irish Fest this summer 2024. Nice In Madison, madison Wisconsin, is the first one in May. Okay, so we'll be in Wisconsin twice this summer, two out of three. The Milwaukee Irish Fest is in August. It's like the big one of the big Irish fests.
Speaker 2:Nice, so people should check out elleryklinenet and thebowtidescom. Thank you so much for doing this. Coming on the podcast no-transcript. 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.
