Travels in Old-Time Music
By Steve Goldfield
I decided to document my many experiences in music and particularly old-time music. I have been lucky and privileged to meet and play with many legends who are now gone, and I want to write about those experiences. I'll cover more of my musical history in an introduction and then focus on old-time music. These anecdotes are just a small part of my experiences, and this is a work in progress.
Introduction
There was some music in my family. My father's interest was primarily classical music and opera. Only after I took up the fiddle in 1996 did I learn that he had played the violin as a boy. My grandfather had a collection of 78s, including some by Enrico Caruso, but those were sold by his second wife upon his death. I'm not aware of any music on my mother's side of the family. My mother liked music, but she did not sing or play an instrument. My dad liked to sing, especial old revolutionary songs such as the International (in Yiddish and French), the Marseillaise, and the Red Flag.
We were all issued plastic song flutes in elementary school, and when I was 8 years old my parents bought me a clarinet, which I later played in the high school band and orchestra. I also played in Columbia's marching band. For my 13th birthday, I was given a harmony ukelele. My older brother, Mike, played guitar and even took lessons from Rev. Gary Davis. He used to hang out in Greenwich Village and Gerde's Folk City, too. We both listened to folk music and blues, and Pete Seeger was one of our favorites. I recall that we were once playing Pete's rendition of “Hold the Line,” about Paul Robeson's controversial and violent concerts in Peeksville, New York in 1948. My dad heard it and told us that his father was there, part of working-class security for the second concert. The first was broken up by fascists.
In 1962, I bought my first LP, which was from the 1960 Newport Folk Festival (I still have it). I probably bought it because Peggy Seeger and Ewan MacColl were on it, but there were four cuts of Flatt & Scruggs on it: “Cabin on the Hill,” “Jimmy Brown, the Newsboy,” “Before I Met You,” and “Salty Dog Blues.” I became determined to play the banjo. I bought Pete Seeger's book and LP, “How to Play the 5-String Banjo.” I tuned my ukelele like a banjo and tried to learn some tunes. I also have Peggy Seeger's book on clawhammer banjo, but I apparently did not pay close attention to it. My brother sometimes took me to concerts, and I remember seeing the New Lost City Ramblers at the Lambertville Music Circus on the Delaware river in 1963.
In the summer of that year, I had a $25 a week job as a lifeguard and pool maintenance guy at a summer day camp for 7 weeks. I got all the catalogs of bluegrass banjo makers (there weren't that many then) and decided that I wanted a Gibson RB-100. Mike took me to Roger Sprung's apartment in Manhattan. Roger had four models of Gibson banjos sitting on plush chairs. His price for the RB-100 was $155 for the banjo and $40 more for the case. I did not have that much, but my local music store in Plainfield, NJ sold both for $165 so I bought it there. At that time, I did not know anybody who played the banjo. I brought it to the day camp. One of the other staff there was a guy from Minnesota who played the guitar. He showed me a bit on my banjo. I remember that he returned after one weekend to tell me that a friend of his from Minnesota had visited him at home, and they played on his porch with the neighbors complaining. His friend was Bob Dylan.
So, I learned Pete Seeger's basic strum and double thumbing. I tried learning Scruggs style, too, but Pete's book suggested looking for his brother, Mike, to learn that properly. I wrote to Earl Scruggs asking whether he had an instruction book. His wife, Louise, wrote back to me that they were working on one. It eventually came out after Bill Keith moved into their house and helped Earl finish it. I have that book, but I bought it much later. I learned some Scruggs tunes, such as “Foggy Mountain Breakdown,” from other books and even some melodic tunes.
I did not play much at Columbia, but once I saw a jam on the lawn and brought my banjo to it. Pete Wernick was playing banjo; he was two years ahead of me so this was probably 1966. David Nichtern was playing guitar. I don't recall who else was there, but I remember a gorgeous fiddler who arrived after me. It was Maria D'Amato, who is better-known now as Maria Muldaur. That banjo was stolen in 1968 when I left it in an unlocked room during the Columbia strike. As a side note, about 35 years later I was at a party at Eric and Suzy Thompson's house. Maria and I started playing Gaither Carlton tunes in the kitchen, and Suzy joined us. Maria had visited him (Carlton was Doc Watson's father-in-law) in North Carolina.
I went on to Cal (UC Berkeley) for graduate school. It wasn't until 1973 that I could afford to buy another banjo, a Gibson Mastertone that I bought at Lundberg's for $750. It could be had much cheaper on music row in Manhattan, but the air fare was not cheap. I still have that banjo. I occasionally played it in a simple style backing up songs at musical events in California and later in Vancouver, B.C. I wrote a song there called "Angola is Independent." The mayor of Luanda, Angola came to town for a UN conference on habitat. We sang the song for him, and he requested us to record it on a cassette which he took home.
In 1982, I met old-time mandolin player Rodney Freeland when I was working for the San Francisco nonprofit, the Institute for Food and Development Policy. Rod did not have a car at the time and would phone me and ask if I wanted to go to San Francisco Folk Club jams at Faith Petrick's house in San Francisco. I joined the club and then learned about the monthly Fiddling and Picking Pot Lucks. I went to those, but I played my banjo in a singing circle rather than in old-time jams. In those days, I also used to attend Freedom Song Network jams in Berkeley. That fall, I also went to the California Bluegrass Association's bluegrass Festival for the first time. I did not know anybody there that first year, but the music was great. The fall festival had heavy rain its last year, and it also suffered from competition from the new Strawberry Music Festival. After that ended, I started going to the CBA's father's day festival.
KPFA DJ Robbie Osman announced on the air a jam at Live Oak Park in Berkeley after his Sunday show. I went to it. There were a small number of musicians and perhaps 75 people who wanted us to play Beatles songs. I became friendly with some of those musicians, and we continued to play together.
Getting into Old-Time Music
In 1985, I began to work as a staff member at Cal. Jim Allison, a fiddler whom I knew from the pot lucks, told me about a weekly old-time jam at Faculty Glade. I brought my Gibson Mastertone to the jam, but it was too loud. I took off my finger picks and the resonator and stuffed a rag under the head, but it was still too loud. I had met a guy at the Father's Day festival who had built an old-time banjo from a Sega kit. It really looked nice. So, I went to the Fifth String in Berkeley and asked if I could order a kit. Larry, who owned the store at that time, advised me to wait a week or two as he was getting a really nice old-time banjo soon. I did that. It was a Wildwood Troubador, made in Arcata. I played it for about an hour, but it cost $900. I returned a week later and played it for two hours. Then, I wrote a check to the Fifth String and brought it home.
I learned lots of tunes at the Faculty Glade jam which usually included Math professor and fiddler Moe Hirsch, Anthropology professor and mandolin player Bob Black, fiddler Lani Herrmann, and one or two others. Jim sometimes came, as did Rodney. There was no guitar player, and I still recall Moe and Bob encouraging me to strum more chords. I quickly abandoned my three-finger style and developed my own two-finger picking style. I learned to play lots of tunes and, more importantly, how to quickly learn a tune I did not know by ear. We sometimes played for events at the university, especially for the Math department. Once we played for a pot luck picnic at Cowell Hospital (later torn down and replaced by a business school). The picnic was for employees returning after the summer break. About a week later, the hospital phoned me and said we all had to come in and get gamma globulin shots because one of their employees had come down with hepatitis. Fortunately, none of us got sick.
I started meeting more old-time players at the Fiddling and Picking Pot Luck. Some of those I recall were Mike Gix, Craig Fixler, David Brown, and Rick Trautner. Once in a while Tony Marcus would play with us, too, and through him I met another David Brown from Colorado. Mike and I used to drive to jams and festivals together frequently. One of the jams was at the home of Darwyn and Phil Patz in San Jose, and I went with them to the Solstice Festival in southern California in 1995 and 1996. That first year, I met Bruce Molsky and Rafe Stefanini there, among others.
Every July, Lani Herrmann would return from the Festival of American Fiddle Tunes in Port Townsend, Washington and bring back some new tunes she had learned. In May 1992, I decided to go, too. I announced that I was driving up at a jam in Berkeley and asked if anyone else wanted to ride with me. Fiddler Susan Sullivan said that she wanted to go. We had never met before, but we went together. Her husband drove up after the festival and they toured around the area. I drove home down the coast on my own. Of the performers in 1992, I remember Joe and Odell Thompson, Clyde Davenport, John Herrmann and Dirk Powell, and Mel Durham and Tom Sauber. At Fiddle Tunes, participants formed bands and learned to play some of the performers' tunes. Then they played in a participant concert and a few of those bands played on stage at large concerts.
I was in Mel and Tom's band. I had met Tom at the CBA festival in 1988 when he was playing fiddle with Eddie Lowe, who had moved from North Carolina to southern California. Eddie was the nephew of legendary Round Peek banjo player Charlie Lowe. I remember that Eddie was playing a fretless banjo. He had removed the fretted fingerboard and replaced it with a piece of aluminum siding from his neighbor's house. Mel and I became good friends, and I had many opportunities to jam with him.
At Fiddle Tunes, I talked a lot with Joe Thompson (Odell was very hard of hearing). Joe said he and Odell would love to come and play in California. I found a few places who would book them, but we needed to raise funds for their airfare. They would probably be accompanied by someone, perhaps Wayne Martin (son of fiddler Marcus Martin), who had brought them to Fiddle Tunes. I had a friend who was on the Oakland City Council at the time, but she said that all the arts funding had been slashed because of budget problems. I wanted to bring them out for Black History Month. The next year, Odell was tragically killed while crossing a road at the Merle Watson Festival so it was never to happen.
In 1992, Susan, Mike, and I used to get together at my cottage in Oakland or at Susan's apartment in San Francisco to play tunes. Later, Mark Kartman and Bobbi Nikles joined us.
In 1993, we flew up to Fiddle Tunes instead of driving. That year, I met Will Keys, a two-finger banjo player from East Tennessee. I was in his band, and we became good friends, too.
In 1994, I remember that we were playing Charlie Acuff's tune “Josie Girl” at our little gatherings. We had probably learned it from a cassette of Charlie and John Hartford. Later that year, Charlie came to Fiddle Tunes, and I was in his band. I know this sounds like a pattern, but we became good friends, too. I think I met Helen White that year, too. She was a friend of Bobbi's and had a Seattle connection, but she lived in Mouth of Wilson, Virginia.
I started playing fiddle in 1996 on a student fiddle that Mark Kartman loaned me. After a year, I was ready for a better fiddle. I looked around and then Bobbi showed me a fiddle she was selling for Helen. Helen's boyfriend, Wayne Henderson, had won a National Heritage Award as a guitar maker. When he made his first fiddle, she decided to sell the one she had been playing. I bought it from her with a bow. She later told me that she didn't like the fiddle Wayne made, but he made her a second one that she did like. One of the ironies is that when I bought the fiddle (a German factory fiddle sold in Virginia in the 19th century by Sears, Roebuck), it had an expensive classical bridge and Dominant strings on it. Before I bought it, I put steel strings on it. After the purchase, Reed Krack cut the bridge down to be flatter. Helen later told me that when she sent it off to sell, it had a flat bridge and steel strings.
Helen went on to found an organization called JAM (Junior Appalachian Musicians) which found instruments for young people and taught them to play. When she died not long ago, she left many of her belongings to JAM to auction. She had told me that she had an inexpensive bow that sounded really good with the fiddle I bought from her. There were a bunch of bows in the auction, and I tried to guess which one she might have meant. I won one labeled as the German bow. I'm hoping it's the right one. (UPS delivered it today.)
I came by my second fiddle another way. I met Dan Engle at Camp Harmony, the San Francisco Folk Music Club's New Year's Camp, then in Boulder Creek. The two of us had jammed quite a bit, and I had heard his fiddles. One of them, cross tuned since it was built in 1955, was made by Ed Duncan, a fiddler from Arkansas who lived in Lakeport on Clear Lake. A friend of mine had bought one of Ed's handmade fiddles for $300. Ed just charged the cost of his materials. Dan and I drove up to visit Ed; I brought $400 in cash. But Ed was recovering from an illness and had only two fiddles. He was playing one with the top glued on with regular glue. He had promised the other one to his daughter, who sat and watched the whole time as Dan tried to talk Ed into selling it to me. It didn't work, and I drove the 4 hours back home without a fiddle.
I bought my house in Oakland at the beginning of December 1998. The lender had reneged on $2,500 I was supposed to get on purchasing the house. I had a lawyer write to them to protest, but the lawyer was not very optimistic. Meanwhile, Dan Engle phoned me and said he was selling his cross-tuned fiddle which he had got by trading with Ed Duncan. It was the first fiddle Ed had made, with very good quality wood, and many people felt it was the finest one he had made. I told Dan that I did not have the money, having just bought a house, but might soon. Sure enough, I returned home one day and found a check for the $2,500 in a fedex under my door. How that happened is another story. So, I phoned Dan, and he brought the fiddle to my house. I played it, liked it, and mailed him a check. I paid more than $300, but it was still a good deal. The label inside the fiddle says “Ed Duncan 1955.”
An Aside, Old-Time Music and the Internet
In the very early 1990s, I recall some friends of mine returning from the IBMA (International Bluegrass Music Association) and telling me about a new internet list called bgrass-l, run by Frank Godbey out of the University of Kentucky. The list was for both bluegrass and old-time music. I think I was member number 12. That list grew, and I remember meeting people such as Brad Leftwich, Chirps Smith, and others there. Meanwhile, someone started an internet news group on clawhammer banjo. I joined that, but someone asked, “What if we want to talk to the fiddlers?” I said that if nobody else volunteered in 3 days, I'd start an old-time newsgroup. Nobody did. So, I did. It still exists, though it is mostly inactive.
I should mention that one of the people I met on-line was Henry Koretzky, a musician from Pennsylvania who still reviews for Bluegrass Unlimited. BU was looking for another old-time reviewer, and Henry recommended me. BU sent me two CDs, Marvin Gaster's Rounder CD and a CD from the Piney Creek Weasels, a California band I knew well. I mailed the reviews in from Mt. Airy (see below) in June 1994. Years later, Pete Kuykendall, who founded and ran BU, told me that when I started, he had no idea whether I could write.
Alice Gerrard later asked me to write an account of how the newsgroup happened for the Old-Time Herald, and I did so. I won't go into much detail here. I think it was published in 1995. The point, however, was that by starting that group, it became a focus of discussion of old-time music, and I, as its founder, became known to a lot of people around the country. As a result, I was invited to a conference on Old-Time Music and Radio to be held in Mt. Airy, North Carolina in 1994, prior to the annual festival there in June. John Lilly, who then worked at the Augusta Heritage Center in West Virginia, was the director.
I flew to Charlotte, North Carolina and rented a car. First, I drove to Columbia, South Carolina to visit my aunt and cousins. Then on the day before Memorial Day, I drove up to Union Grove, North Carolina for the Fiddler's Grove festival. I pitched my tent next to a camper that I learned later belonged to Henry the Fiddler. In California, if there is a holiday just after a festival, people generally drive home on the Monday holiday. But cars were streaming out as I arrived. Still, I got into a jam in a barn there.
An older gentleman from Indiana came up to me after that jam and invited me to play with him and another fiddler camped next to him after dinner. The other fiddler was Ralph Blizard, who had won the fiddler of the festival prize. The three of us played together for about an hour. I had met Ralph very briefly at the Freight & Salvage in Berkeley a few months before. He thought I was someone he knew and walked up to me and started talking to me. He quickly realized that I was not the person he had thought. The other fiddler and I were playing “Johnny, Johnny Don't Get Drunk” when Ralph joined us. We had stopped, but he told us to keep playing so he could “catch it.” I recall that Ralph played “Huckleberry Hornpipe” (a Byron Berline tune) and “Limerock.” I stretched my banjo abilities to play along. A few years later I asked Ralph if he still played those tunes, and he told me he didn't remember that he had played them. After the first hour, Henry and a group of others joined us for a few more hours of jamming.
The next day, I drove up to Mt. Airy and set up my tent in the fairgrounds. I helped set up for the conference which started the next day. At the conference, I met people such as Alice Gerrard, Mike Seeger, Wayne Erbson, Paul Brown, Bob Carlin, Frank Hoppe, a DJ from southern California, John Lupkin and George Mercer, also DJs, Doug Van Gundy, then a DJ in West Virginia, Ray Alden, and many others. After the conference, the action shifted to the fairgrounds. Although there were a couple of people I knew from California there, there were about 35 members of bgrass-l. I wore my bgrass-l t-shirt in hopes of meeting some of them, and it worked. I remember when Paul Mitchell drove up, he saw my t-shirt and asked, “Who are you?” I told him, and we became friends.
I met Gail Gillespie that first day, and she spent the day with me before her husband, Dwight Rogers, arrived the next day. Mac Benford drove in. Gail grabbed her fiddle and said, “Let's go bother Mac.” Mac was playing a borrowed Kevin Enoch banjo, and we traded banjos for a while. Later, Gail was playing guitar in a jam with Brad Leftwich and Bruce Molsky, who each took turns on fiddle and banjo. The next day I spent hanging out with Ralph Blizard. People would come up and play with him. Finally, he said, “Steve, get out your banjo and play with me.” So, I did. I remember Hank Bradley walking up then. I remember another time when I was playing with Ralph, and A. C. Overton, a well-known two-finger banjo player joined us.
I met and played with a lot of people that year. I remember having a jam with Chirps Smith in John Hatton's booth there. I'm pretty sure that I met Tina Liza Jones and Betty Vorn Brock and Billy Cornette that year. At the time, I wrote an article about this trip for the CBA's Bluegrass Breakdown called “Knocking at the Gates of Old-Time Heaven.” That article was reprinted by the Northern California Bluegrass Society; they gave me an Alton Delmore award for it. I was invited to go on KKUP in Cupertino to talk about it and play tunes.
During the radio conference, we were given a tour of radio station WPAQ by founder and then manager, Ralph Epperson. I recall hanging around for a while after the tour and meeting banjo player Bob Flesher in a side room. He showed me some things on the banjo (at that time, he had won first place in old-time banjo at the festival in Galax six years in a row) and then asked me to show him how I play. I played something in two-finger style and mentioned that some people felt only clawhammer should be played in old-time jams. He disagreed and encouraged me to play in my own style. He pounded his chest and said he wanted to hear the music I had inside and not one hundred players trying to copy a popular style. Years later, he moved back to California and asked me to write brief liner notes for one of his CDs.
The Old-Time Music and Radio conference was held again in 1996, 1998, and 2001, and I went to all those conferences and the Mt. Airy festival those years. I became the custodian of the Email list for the group. At one point, Chirps Smith, John Lupkin, and I were tasked with developing a database of old-time CDs. We tried to keep up with the increasing number of such CDs, but eventually we were overwhelmed.
I met Nancy Sluys (I think it was in 1994), a great banjo player and fiddler, who was then living near Pilot Mountain with her husband Bill and her horses. At some point, Nancy started inviting me to their party which was always held on Sunday after the Mt. Airy festival. I met two fiddlers there who became good friends in different years. The first was Jack Burgess from Alabama, though he now lives in North Carolina. We started playing tunes and really locked into each other, which is difficult to describe but very wonderful. Three more fiddlers joined us; I think all women. Between tunes, I asked who they were. I remember that one was the mother of Freighthoppers fiddler David Bass, whom I knew.
The other fiddler I met at the Sluys' party was Mark Campbell. Mark plays a lot of Ed Haley tunes, and we had fun with those. Later, we played in Mt. Airy and at Clifftop with Jimmy Costa, one of the best of the Uncle Dave Macon style banjo players. Mark also won first prize in the fiddle contest at Clifftop.
One year at Clifftop, I was walking by Nancy Sluys' camp and Nancy called out to me to play with her. I didn't have a banjo with me so she loaned me one of hers, and we had a nice jam. That happens a lot at Clifftop. Once I was walking with my banjo. A few people I did not know were jamming. The banjo player was leaving, so they asked me to sit in. I still don't know who they were. Another time, it was very dark, but my fellow Bluegrass Unlimited reviewer Bob Buckingham spotted me. He was playing guitar in a jam. I had no idea who was fiddling, only that he was very, very good, So, I asked. It was Jerry Coryell of the Wolfe Brothers band. I had three of their CDs, recommended by Amy Hauslohner.
Amy was the editor of the newspaper in Galax at the time. I think she also had a radio show and played the banjo. I met her on the internet, and she invited me to visit when I was in town. I had dinner at her house, and she took me to Barr's Fiddle Shop afterward. When my old friend, Rick Abrams (of the Piney Creek Weasels), who had been a regular at the Galax festival, died. I helped, Amy prepare a tribute to him in her newspaper.
In 1996, the Mt. Airy festival got more than 20 inches of rain over the weekend and turned into a mud pit. Just before it started, someone introduced me to Mark Johnson of Clawgrass fame and asked me to show Mark some old-time jams. We walked around, but a few jams had just ended. Finally, we found Tara Nevins jamming and listened until the rain started. We had our banjos with us and went into the animal stalls. It rained about 8 inches in 15 minutes. We saw a guy pressed against a building to try to get under the fairly short eaves. Later that night, it was raining so hard that the contest stopped for 30 minutes. It was very windy, and the big plastic tarp we were under kept rising off its poles. Someone would catch it on the way down. WPAQ broadcasts the contest live so during that break they interviewed people nearby, including me.
Later, I went to the jam closest to my tent. I didn't know anyone there. I sat down next to another banjo player. We were both suggesting tunes to the fiddlers, and both of us were suggesting Charlie Acuff tunes. The other banjo player, whose name is Dave Cannon, asked, “Do you know Charlie Acuff?” I said yes, do you. He said yes, too. He handed me a flyer for a new festival in Tennessee called Breaking Up Winter.
I went to Breaking Up Winter in early March at Cedars of Lebanon State Park for 13 years in a row starting in 1997. I remember that Dave, his wife, Trish, and I slept on the floor of Charlie and Dorothy Acuff's cabin the first night. Dave was the director of the small festival. Later, they found me a room in a cabin with Jim and Joyce Cauthen from Alabama, who became good friends. Starting with the second year, Charlie and Dorothy, Dave and Trish, and I had a larger cabin. I slept on a bed in the loft except for one year when Alan Jabbour slept there, but I got to stay in another cabin then. I got to play with Charlie in the daytime, and when others came to play with him in the evening, I would visit other cabins to play. I met Albert Smith from Georgia that way. One year, fiddler Les Raber came to Breaking Up Winter with his brother backing him up on tuba.
Les was from the upper Midwest and played many very crooked tunes. I remember taking a red eye to a Folk Alliance conference in Cleveland. When I got to the hotel, Les Raber was playing with Chirps Smith and Paul Tyler in the lobby. They urged me to get out my banjo, and I chased Les' tunes on the 2 hours of sleep I had had the night before.
There are lots of highlights from Breaking Up Winter. One year Bruce Greene came. I had met him at Clifftop and he must have recognized me because he invited me to play some tunes with him on a warm and sunny March day. He played tune after tune that I didn't know, mostly very crooked ones that I had to chase. Finally, I asked him to play “Jeff Sturgeon,” to give my brain a rest. He said that he had to play for a dance that night and did not have a banjo player. So, he invited me. It was just one dance, one tune. I asked him what he was going to play. He said, “Durang's Hornpipe.” I had played two versions of that tune so I figured it would be fine. When he started playing, I realized it was yet another version. I watched Edwin Wilson, the guitar player, and managed to get through it. Don Pedi, whom I had also met in Mt. Airy, also played with us.
In other years, James Bryan, John Harrod, Paul Smith, Clyde Davenport, and many more folks came. Charlie Acuff came every year. I recall the next to the last year that he came. Charlie recognized me but could not remember my name and had trouble playing some of his tunes. However, the following year, his memory and playing were better. He died not long after that. His wife, Dorothy, had died a few years previously.
It might have been the first year at Breaking Up Winter that I went to a jam in the lodge. Bill Burchfield was leading it on fiddle. I sat in the back with my banjo. At some point, he put down his fiddle and picked up a banjo and sat down just to my right. Bill was left-handed and he was fretting by putting his hand behind the neck with his fingers curling downward over the top. I later learned that he played the guitar the same way. I had never seen that before and was staring at him. He looked at me and grinned, and I became friends with him and his wife Janice, who plays washtub bass.
In 1998, the friends of the Brandywine festival in Pennsylvania sponsored Wade and Julia Mainer to come to the conference and perform. George Mercer asked me to drive them to radio station WPAQ for an interview. Wade insisted that the interviewer also talk to George and I. I saw Wade and Julia again later that year at Augusta.
In 2000, the conference was going to be held but was cancelled because a grant from the state did not go through. I had already bought my plane ticket so I decided to visit some friends at home in Tennessee. I flew to Charlotte again and rented a car. I visited my relatives, who had moved to Greenville, South Carolina, and then I drove to Tennessee. First, I drove to Charlie and Dorothy's house in Alcoa, just south of Knoxville. I asked Charlie if there was a nearby motel where I could stay. He said, “You're not staying in a motel. You're staying in our guest room.” So, I did. Charlie and I played a lot. He took me to see his horses. And one day, we went to his brother Gayle's house. Gayle was a great guitar player, and the three of us jammed in front of his many relatives. Charlie insisted that I play a tune on my fiddle so I played his “Josie Girl” (not very well).
One interesting point is that when Charlie traveled, he only took one fiddle and played in standard tuning. He had five fiddles, all made by his dad. Gayle had five more. At home, Charlie had a cross A fiddle, a DDAD fiddle, and at least two more. I asked Charlie what he played in DDAD. He got that fiddle out from under his bed and played me a version of “Buonaparte's Retreat” unlike any I had ever heard. I don't think he ever recorded it, and unfortunately, neither did I.
Charlie wanted me to stay to see him play a gig at the Museum of Appalachia, but I had arranged to visit Will Keys at his home in Grey, Tennessee in far eastern Tennessee. Will would have invited me to stay at his house, but his son was there and there was no spare bed. So, I did stay in a motel after Will took me out to dinner. We met up later in Union Grove, where Will had found us a motel room. Later, we shared a motel room in Mt. Airy, but it was so hot and humid that Will (and also J. P. Fraley) went home after one day. Incidentally, Will had a CD on County Records. When it was released, he phoned me to ask for my address to send it to me. I said that County would send me a copy to play on my radio show. Will insisted so I gave him my address. The CD arrived with a note that said: “As a member of the vanishing species of two-finger banjo players, you are entitled to one copy of my new CD, which I am about to inflict on the unsuspecting world.”
Diane Jones had introduced me to J.P. Fraley in Mt. Airy. He tended to hang around with Betty and Billy (mentioned previously) as did I, so I got to know him. His backup band was fiddler Barb Kuhns and guitarist Doug Smith, who also backed up Will Keys. So, I got to know all of them. One year I spent Fiddler's Grove with all of them as well as Richard Blaustein.
One year at Breaking Up Winter, I took my banjo over to the next cabin to visit Will and J.P. Buddy Ingram, a park ranger and friend, was playing my banjo. He asked me to play a tune. So, I started playing J.P.'s version of “Miller's Reel” in G. J.P. heard me through the door and came out of his bedroom with his fiddle. We proceeded to play his old tunes for 4 hours with Will, Doug, and Sheila Nichols, another Kentucky fiddler.
I'm skipping back in forth in time a little, but it is difficult not to follow threads. I think it was in 1994 that Marvin Gaster came to Fiddle Tunes with Rich and Beth Hartness. I had just reviewed Marvin's CD, and I joined his band. He and I both play an index-lead two-finger style, but Marvin doesn't drop his thumb. I do that a lot, but I tried not to that week. Marvin commented that I played like an old banjo player in his area who was long gone.
I think it was 1995 when Bob Townsend came to Fiddle Tunes backed up by Charles and Tim Higgins, all from Tennessee close to Chattanooga. We jammed a lot there and also became good friends. I used to visit Bob's cabin at Breaking Up Winter, and we also jammed at Clifftop and once in Nashville at the Folk Alliance. I recall that the four of us were playing together the first night when a Quebec fiddler named Edouard Richard from the Gaspé peninsula joined us. We didn't speak French, and he didn't speak English. First, he played along with Bob's tunes, but eventually we also played some of his very crooked tunes. He even knew the name of one of Bob's tunes of which Bob did not know the title. Someone translated it for us.
The 20th anniversary of Fiddle Tunes was in 1996, and it ran for two weeks. I went to both weeks and got about as tired as I have ever been in my life. I think the two bands I was in were Benton Flippen's and Melvin Wine's. Alan Jabbour gave three workshops on Henry Reed's fiddle tunes, and I recorded the third one over the second. (Fortunately, Lani Herrmann gave me a copy.) There was a finger-picking banjo workshop with Benton, Paul Brown, Mike Seeger, and Tom Sauber. I was holding my tape recorder in my hand. Suddenly, I heard laughter and my recorder was broken on the floor. I had fallen asleep.
I had met Bruce Molsky at the Solstice Festival in southern California in 1995. In 1996 at Fiddle Tunes, he played a new guitar piece he had written entitled “Brothers and Sisters.” He described going to a record store in New York and buying an LP called “Africa in Revolutionary Music.” Some of the music on that LP inspired him to write the piece. I went up to him afterward and told him that that LP had been issued by an organization I had belonged to called Liberation Support Movement, an interesting connection between my political and musical lives. When Bruce recorded it, he thanked me in the liner notes, and the second time he recorded it he mentioned LSM. Incidentally, the first time Bruce performed in the Bay Area, at the Freight & Salvage, he told me in advance that he was coming. I arranged three radio interviews for him with KKUP, KPFA, and KSAN. Sully, then the Saturday night DJ on KSAN, was playing one of Bruce's tunes when I phoned in to offer the interview. She said that her brother-in-law, Jack Tuttle, had told her to listen to Bruce.
I think it was in 1994 that the melodic three-finger old-time player Carroll Best came. Not many finger pickers came to that festival, and I remember being the only one in his workshop. At one point, Charlie Acuff came in and they played together. I thought I had recorded them, but my microphone was not working. Carroll was not an outspoken guy, but if you showed interest in him, he had a lot to say. He and Will Keys also came to the SF Bay Area on a Masters of the 5-String Banjo tour, and I got to talk to him some more. Carroll played a melodic three-finger style in the 1940s but was never recorded back then. However, Bobby Thompson acknowledged that Carroll's playing influenced him. Carroll told me that he had played in front of Bill Keith and Bill Monroe in the 1960s. However, I asked Keith about that. He said that if he had seen someone playing like that back then, he would have remembered it. Carroll died tragically in 1995, the year after I met him.
One of the ways I got to know the older players was to eat breakfast with them. Many get up early as I do, and there aren't so many people around as at lunch or dinner. I used to eat breakfast with J.P. at Clifftop. He would tell me great stories. One of my favorites was about a good friend of his, a guitarist who died in a tragic accident. J.P. worked as a mining engineer and was sent to many locations to build or fix things. Often, he'd learn tunes. For example, he was sent to Finland and Brazil. In Finland, he learned a tune from the airport muzak. He told me that he didn't learn any music when he went to Egypt. Anyway, he went to a mine. He saw someone walking in the yard, pointed to a building, and asked if that was the mine superintendent's office. The other guy said, “Do you mean Old Mr. Satisfied?” J.P. didn't know what to make of that, but he knocked on the door and went in. A man behind a desk stood up, put out his hand, and said, “I'm Necessary.” J.P. replied, “I'm necessary, too, but I'm here to fix your water pump.” The superintendent's name was Bill Necessary. Mr. Necessary played guitar, and he and J.P. became good friends. J.P. also told me that when he was about 10 years old, his father would take him to Ashland to buy supplies. His dad took him to a place where Ed Haley was playing tunes and told him to sit there and listen until he got back.
Incidentally, J.P. also asked me to organize a California tour. I suggested that he come with Will Keys, who was a good friend of his (and mine), and he liked that idea. I talked to Peter McCracken, who was then running the Festival of American Fiddle Tunes, and to Elaine Weissman, who ran the Solstice Festival for the California Traditional Music Society in southern California. Both were interested but not ready to commit. Unfortunately, J.P. declined rapidly after that and it was no longer possible.
I didn't only meet older players. In one of my first trips to Mt. Airy, I met 11-year-old Jake Krack, then living in Indiana. I used to play with Jake every time I went East and marveled at the new things he was learning. I met lots of people playing with Jake, such as his mentor, Lester McCumbers. John Cohen happened to be walking by while we were playing and took a photo. I think it's in his posthumous book, though I don't appear in it. I first met Joe Newberry when he sat down to play with Jake and I to warm up for the banjo competition at Clifftop. Joe won first place. I always tell him that Jake and I earned a piece of that, and Joe always agrees. I remember once playing with Jake when Dave Bing joined us on guitar. Jake eventually won first prize at Clifftop, too. I also remember when a phenomenal 8-year-old fiddler named Isaac Akers played with us. His feet didn't even reach the ground from the chair he sat on.
In 1998, I went to the Augusta Heritage Center to study beginning fiddle with Tom Sauber. I met Bill and Libby Hicks there, as well as Chris Coole and Scott Prouty. At the end of the week, I was jamming with Jake in the park. Melvin Wine came along, played fiddle sticks on Jake's fiddle, and then played some tunes with us.
As an aside, Margo Blevin (now Denton) was the director of Augusta back then. She used to run a session of videos of old-time music and dance at the annual Folk Alliance conference. In 1995, it was in Portland, Oregon. She was recovering from an illness and asked me to fill in. I did so. After that, she and I did it together for a number of years. I remember going to dinner and listening to Skip Gorman playing in the restaurant in Portland. The next year, I showed some of John Cohen's films, and Hazel Dickens and Pete Kuykendall were in the audience. A few years later, in Vancouver, we screened an early version of an AppalShop film about Hazel. There were lots of comments for the director, including Hazel's complaint about how bad her hair looked.
Another product of the old-time music newsgroup was that a fiddler from Colorado, Anita Shuneman, posted a question about a John Salyer fiddle tune. I noticed that her Email was from the University of Denver. My parents had moved to Denver in 1971, but I did not know any musicians there. I Emailed her and asked if there were any jams, and she said that she and her then husband, Doug Rippey, hosted a jam on Wednesday evenings. So, on the next visit to my parents, I brought my banjo, and went to that jam. Doug was originally from Fresno and asked me if I had ever been to Sweet's Mill, a legendary music camp in the mountains near Fresno. I said that I had heard of it but had never been invited. He offered to get me on the list and did. The first time I went, in 1995, I camped with Anita and Doug. I kept going year after year and made many new friends.
As an aside from that period, Brad Leftwich contacted me and asked me if I could write a short introduction about old-time music for a series of Mel Bay Books for banjo, fiddle, guitar, and mandolin. The books had transcriptions of the tunes on a Rounder compilation of old-time music. Brad had agreed to write it but was on tour and asked if I could do it. The banjo book was ready to go to print, so Mel Bay needed the introduction right away. I agreed. I had maintained a FAQ for the old-time group which had a description of old-time music. I rewrote that and sent it to Bill Bay, Mel's son. He was very happy with it and sent me a check right away. When Dix Bruce was doing the guitar and mandolin books, he asked to see my introduction so that we didn't overlap too much. Later, I asked for author's copies of all four books. It turned out that they forgot to print it in the guitar and mandolin books.
That first year at the Mill, I met a woman named Vicki who had a huge manuscript of a book she had written about California old-time musician Kenny Hall. I told her that Mel Bay was very easy to work with. She contacted them and they were very interested. They published the book. It eventually went out-of-print, but I think she got the rights back and printed more.
I was lucky to have lots of chances to play with Kenny there. I remember once I was playing my fretless banjo with him. He tuned to it, which was very unusual. Then he asked me what was my favorite tune. Since I was in G tuning, I said “Hob Dye,” which was a tune he played. We played it, and he noticed one wrong note that I was playing. So, I corrected it. Once, I was jamming with people who played with Kenny. They were going to back him up on stage and suggested that I come, too, because there was no banjo player. When Kenny performed, he would change keys on every tune and only say the key just before he started. After about four tunes, Kenny said, “That banjo's out of tune.” I did not say a word but wished I had brought a second banjo.
Years later, my friend Bob Palasek phoned me and asked if I wanted to go to Fresno to the Basque restaurant where there was a weekly jam. Kenny often attended that jam. We weren't sure he would come because his health was not good. Bob and I had dinner and then went to the room where the jam was held. About halfway through, Kenny was wheeled in in a wheelchair and put right next to me. That was the last time I saw or played with Kenny, who died a few months later just before his 90th birthday.
Another friend I met at the Mill is Blaine Sprouse. Blaine came because an old friend of his, Mississippi Chris Sharp (also a friend of mine), was invited. I remember one morning I woke up at about 6 am to amazing fiddling coming from the kitchen. It was Blaine. I got my banjo, and we played for 2 hours to entertain the kitchen staff, who plied us with food and drink.
More Writing
Aside from more than 25 years and counting of reviews for Bluegrass Unlimited, I wrote one article which is worth mentioning. San Francisco Billionaire Warren Hellman had started his free Strictly Bluegrass Festival in Golden Gate Park, and I wrote an article about the first one for BU. I interviewed Warren for an hour over the phone. I asked Ken Irwin for Hazel's phone number since she was one of the main reasons Warren started the festival, now called Hardly Strictly Bluegrass. Ken said, “Don't call her before 3 pm.” I asked if that was 3 pm her time, which is 3 hours ahead of my time. He said, no, 3 pm your time. So, I did. I had met her but only knew her slightly. She asked if this would be one of those interviews where I would only use ten seconds of what she said. I said, no, I would use most of what she said, and I did. The article was published. The festival was one day the first year and two days the second. On Sunday morning of the second year, I saw Warren standing in front of the stage. I went up and introduced myself since we had not previously met in person. Warren said, “I really liked your article. Oops, my attorney told me never to say that to a journalist.” Then he said, “We were selling t-shirts and blankets yesterday. I think I'm going to give them away today. Do you think I should return the money from yesterday?” I pointed out that there would be no way to tell when people got them, and he agreed. When we finished talking, I walked over to the booth and was near the front of the line when the announcement was made that they'd be free.
I also published reviews in Fiddler magazine as well as several articles. The editor, Mary Larsen, is a friend of mine whom I met soon after she started publishing. She had released a video of old-time fiddlers, one of whom was Charlie Acuff. Charlie sent her a newspaper clipping about a national fiddler's hall of fame which was admitting Charlie Bowman, from Grey, Tennessee, who had played with the Hillbillies. Mary asked me to write an article about Bowman. I did quite a bit of research, and I phoned Ralph Blizard and Will Keys, who both lived nearby. Ralph did not remember Bowman's fiddling, but he remembered playing guitar when Bowman visited Ralph's father, also a fiddler. Will remembered seeing Bowman play at an ice cream social at a nearby school. The local newspaper in Tennessee asked for permission to reprint my article, and we happily agreed.
Next, Mary asked me to do a piece on Alan Jabbour, then the director of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. I had met Alan in Mt. Airy in 1996 at a time when the Librarian of Congress was trying to take over the center and slash its budget. Earlier that year, at the Folk Alliance, I met Judy McCulloh, the chair of the center's board, at a dinner. Judy told me what was happening and suggested that I speak to Archie Green, who had lobbied hard to have the center created in 1976. I did so, and Archie spent 30 minutes explaining to me what was going on and why Alan, as an employee of the Library, couldn't talk about it. At the radio conference in Mt. Airy, Alan was asked to speak about it, which he did. Then I raised my hand and reported what Archie had told me. Afterward, Alan came over and thanked me. In fact, we organized an Email campaign and got the House of Representatives to reverse its vote. I wrote to George Miller, my representative in the House, a liberal Democrat, and got a form letter back saying that the federal budget needed to be cut. Alan later told me that he met Miller at a DC party, and the Congressman admitted that he had made a mistake.
Alan has a daughter who was living in Berkeley. I actually met her before I met him. We were standing in line next to each other in front of the Freight & Salvage. She told me her dad was an old-time fiddler. I asked his name, and she said I never would have heard of him. Of course, I had. Anyway, Alan often visited her, but he was not coming at the time of my article, so we did it over the phone. After Alan's death, Mary made the article available on-line.
Charlie sent Mary a second clipping later about a CD promoting the new Cumberland Trail State Park. Mary asked me to write 1,500 words about it. I knew Bob Fulcher, the ranger for the park and the producer of the CD, and I also knew that he was going to be at Fiddle Tunes. So, I arranged to interview him there. My raw transcript was 5,000 words, and I had an idea what to cut. However, I sent Mary the raw transcript, and she wanted to publish all of it. This was basically Bob's life history plus lots of other information, and he sent me some photos of great value to him, such as one of him playing on the Grand Ole Opry with fiddler Bob Douglas then 100 years old. I carefully scanned them and sent them back with insurance.
Mary asked me to write a few obituaries for the magazine about the older fiddlers I had met, and I did so. At one point, she told me if I came up with any other interesting subjects to let her know. I knew that Frank George was about to come to the Berkeley Old-Time Music Convention in the fall and suggested that. I knew Kim Johnson, his banjo player, and got Frank's phone number in West Virginia. He agreed to be interviewed, and I recorded it in Eric and Suzy Thompson's back yard. I had done a bit of research about Frank beforehand, and people who knew him well suggested that I ask him about two of the people he learned from and played with: Jim Farthing and John Hilt. I also managed to locate some photos of Frank and Hilt from 1967. Frank returned the following year, and Mary sent a box of copies of that issue to give away.
Radio: Shady Grove
When I returned from the Mt. Airy conference I became determined to play old-time music on the radio. There were only a few slots to do that on Bay Area radio stations. One of them at Santa Clara University was looking for an occasional substitute. I went down there once to learn the ropes and play tunes, but it did not pan out.
I recall that I was talking to Sarah Bates at the Father's Day Bluegrass Festival in Grass Valley. I must have expressed my frustration in not finding a radio slot. She said that she and Lorraine Dechter had a two-hour Sunday afternoon radio show on KCHO in Chico and KFPR in Redding. They played folk and bluegrass, and she suggested that I do an hour a month of old-time music. Before starting, I visited Sarah in Paradise, and we drove up to Redding for an evening event celebrating the opening of a new building there which housed the PBS television station and KFPR. Apparently, it was unusual for a PBS station to share a building with an NPR station. The president of NPR, the vice president of PBS, and lots of KCHO personnel were there. I met the KCHO music director (KCHO and KFPR share a signal and also have about a dozen transmitters which cover central California north of Sacramento, a potential audience of about 2 million people). I discussed my upcoming show with the music director; they played classical music most of the time. Sarah's and Lorraine's show was the exception. I think I told him that I would probably play about 5 cuts and then back announce. He said, no, people here aren't very familiar with old-time music. So, I should play no more than two in a row and announce both before and after. That became my format.
I recall that one of my early shows traced the way in which European-American and African-American music merged in the 19th century. I started recording the shows on cassette. Paul Brown gave me good advice on purchasing a microphone, mixer, and sound card for my Mac plus software to merge my voice with music. I would mail the cassettes up to Lorraine, who was the station manager for KFPR. They had one cassette player, and it broke. So, I changed to CD. That required me to get a CD burner, which I did. I still have most of those shows.
Then someone at KCHO suggested that instead of an hour once a month, I should produce a show every week of 15 to 20 minutes. Listeners get used to hearing a show weekly. So, I did that. I used to produce four shows over a weekend, burn them to CD, and mail them to Lorraine. The show was called “Shady Grove,” and it always started with Clarence Ashley's version of that song, which was only 1 minute and 28 seconds long. I would fade him down to 25 percent volume after 20 seconds and introduce the show.
Incidentally, I think I ended my first show with Bruce Molsky's version of “I Truly Understand.” I got an Email after that from the late Jimmy Borsdorf who lived in Chico. I recall that he said that any show that played that song by Bruce had his support. The show ran from 1997 to 2001.
In 1996, Charlie and Dorothy Acuff came back to Port Townsend for Fiddle Tunes. Unfortunately, Dorothy tripped and broke a leg there. A few months later, I wrote Charlie a letter asking how Dorothy was doing (she had recovered) and mentioned that I was about to start a new radio show. A few days later, I got a message from Charlie on my message machine. “Steve, this is Charlie. I made you a tape and am sending it to you.” A few days later it arrived in the mail. Charlie played for years with a band called the Lantana Drifters and later gave me a few cassettes of them. This tape, which I still have, starts like this: “This is Charlie Acuff, and I made this tape for my friend, Steve Goldfield. He can play it on his radio show, listen to it in his car, or do anything he wants with it.” Then there is an audible click. Then Charlie introduces the first number. Another click. And then the music starts. I played it on the air just like that.
I recall that Sarah told me about a great singer from Kentucky named Carla Gover who had a new CD on Appalshop. I wanted to play her on my show, but I could not find her CD, not even in Down Home Music in El Cerrito. So, I wrote to Appalshop, and they sent me a copy. Later, I wrote to ask for another CD. After a month, I got a nice letter from a guy who said that his dad listened to my show. He sent me three CDs. At the Folk Alliance, other DJs were amazed. They said they had never heard of anybody getting air play copies from JuneAppal (Appalshop's record label).
California Bluegrass Association
I mentioned that I started attending CBA festivals in 1982, first on Labor Day weekend and then on Father's Day weekend. I befriended many people there, such as CBA co-founder Carl Pagter, Rick Cornish, and Mark Hogan. When I first started to attend, there was a lot of old-time music both on the stage and in the camps at the festival, but it gradually declined. The CBA's charter is to promote bluegrass and old-time music, along with gospel and traditional music. When the CBA started its summer music camp preceding the festival, there were old-time teachers and old-time began to increase at the festival. The CBA decided to have an old-time gathering at the festival, which included a square dance.
Mark, who was and still is on the board of directors, and Rick, who was chairman of the board, recruited me to be the Old-Time Music Coordinator for the CBA and to run for the board. I was not elected that first time, but when Bill Evans had to drop off the board, the board appointed me to fill his seat. I ran about six times after that and was elected each time. My main jobs were to organize the old-time gathering and to re-start an old-time campout. I got cards printed to publicize the gathering. We later expanded the square dances to two. The CBA tried to hire at least two old-time headliner bands each year, and I was often able to suggest one or both of those that were hired.
Meanwhile, I was looking for a suitable spot to hold a campout. The origin of the campout had been a decade earlier. First, four CBA members organized a festival in Yreka in 2005 and 2006 called the Golden Old-Time Festival. This was not a CBA activity. I was hired to judge the string band contest that first year along with two other judges. However, only one band entered. The second year, only two of us were hired as judges, and nine bands entered the contest. In addition, I was asked to MC on Saturday, which I agreed to do. Unfortunately, the organizers lost a lot of money and the festival did not continue.
A few years later, Mark Hogan (one of the four above) started a Golden Old-Time CBA old-time campout in Boonville, along with the Berkeley Old-Time Music Convention and the Sonoma Folk Society. The first year was very successful, but the second year barely broke even. So, it stopped. While I was looking for a site, Darby Brandli, then CBA president, was approached by Mike Carroll, who was a ranger at the US Army Corps of Engineers Lake Sonoma. I drove up to see their group camping facilities, and we scheduled the first Golden Old-Time Campout there in August. We held the campout there for three years, but attendance was dropping because the site was hot and dry with little shade. At that point, Mike told me that his boss would let us camp on a broad, grassy field with lots of shade trees. Only the cub scouts had been allowed to camp there previously. And, if we played for a few hours at the Visitor Center across the road on Friday and Saturday, we would not have to pay rent. Mike said his boss really liked our being there.
We camped at that site for three years. Meanwhile, Mike was relocated. I had recruited someone to replace me as CBA's Old-Time Music Coordinator, and he was told that the site was not available. He found another site east of Marysville. He then resigned and the job came back to me. We held the campout in that location. The following year, I found a new replacement and we were able to return to Lake Sonoma in 2019. Of course, the campout had to be canceled in 2020.
House Concerts
I mentioned that I met West Virginia fiddler and banjo player Doug Van Gundy at the 1994 conference in Mt. Airy. Doug Emailed me in 1995 to tell me that Dwight Diller was coming to San Francisco to play a free concert at City Lights Bookstore, whose manager had been one of Dwight's banjo students. Doug asked if I could organize a banjo workshop for Dwight. I said I could and also asked about a house concert. Doug said sure. This was to be Dwight's first trip west of Chicago. I found seven or eight banjo players, including me, and Dwight did his workshop in my living room.
I had Emailed Suzy Thompson to ask if she knew anyone with a house large enough for a house concert. She said we could have it at her house. John Gallagher, a fiddler from West Virginia, was living near Mendocino at the time, and he and Dwight played the two concerts. Dwight also had a slideshow on the Hammons family.
The word was out that I did house concerts (there weren't as many then as there are now). Tom Sauber called me, and we agreed that I would organize house concerts for Tom on banjo with Mel Durham on fiddle. The previous summer I had been in a 3 am discussion with Irene Herrmann and Jody Stecher about house concerts. I phoned Irene who said she no longer held house concerts but would host this one in Bonny Doone, near Santa Cruz. I have some friends with a huge living room in Piedmont, which is surrounded by Oakland. The second house concert was at their house. I remember that the phone rang at Irene's house and someone said it was for me. Blanton Owen, of the Fuzzy Mountain String Band, was calling from Nevada,. He had been state folklorist there and had become a private folklorist, hired by constructions firms to deal with historical remains they dug up. Blanton wanted to know if there would be seats for him and his girlfriend if they flew in the next day in Blanton's plane. I assured him that there would be.
Blanton and his partner arrived in time for dinner and got seats in the front row. I recall Tom pointing to Blanton and saying, “There's the best banjo player in the world.” After the concert, there was a party at Eric and Suzy Thompson's house. When I arrived Tom was playing fiddle to Blanton's Kyle Creed banjo. I just sat and listened until more people arrived and began to play.
Somewhere around the same time I heard that Carla Gover and her then husband, Mitch Barrett, were coming to do some school shows in Mendocino organized by my friend Judy Stavely. I got them an opener at the Freight & Salvage, and I held a house concert in my apartment living room. I only had room for about 20 people, and the room was filled up. In fact, Jody Stecher and Kate Brislin were supposed to come and forgot. If they had attended, I would have had to sit in the hallway. Carla wanted to do some clogging and I got a sheet of plywood for her to dance on. However, she was pregnant with her daughter Zoe (they later formed a band called Zoe Speaks which Zoe is now in) and felt too queasy to dance.
I met fiddlers Irwin Shenker and Randi Leach, both from Washington, at Clifftop, and we had a jam. The next year at Fiddle tunes, Randi and I found vacant rooms and played through the keys of A, G, D, and C for four nights. On the fifth night, we learned that my buddy Jack Burgess was in town to visit his son, and we jammed with him and others.
Randy's ex-husband, Ray Leach, meanwhile had started a campout in Centralia, Washington. Friends of mine had gone and had a great time, so in 2011, I went for the first time, and I have gone every year since. Covid-19 has prevented it from happening in 2020.
I've been to a couple of festivals in Colorado, too, because my parents lived there. I went to the first Rockygrass in Lyons. I didn't camp there. Instead, I stayed at my parents' house in Denver. All the jamming was in the campground, and you had to have a camping wristband to get in. Matt Gordon, who was performing at the festival, and I snuck in and got into a huge old-time jam. Three bluegrass banjo players heard us playing and stood right behind me so that I could not hear the fiddlers. Without saying a word, we kept calling very crooked tunes, and they left.
I had met Matt at the Strawberry festival in California. I had not found any old-time players there, but Matt wandered into our camp and he and I played tunes for a few hours. My bluegrass friends, who did not know any of the tunes, just listened. Later, one of them told me there was an old-time jam going on at the Fiddle Puppets (the group Matt danced with) cabin. I went over there and found a jam with Tim O'Brien and Scott Nygaard on fiddle. We played two tunes, and someone shouted that they had to go on stage.
I only went to Strawberry a few times. Another time, I found my friend, Dave Rainwater, a great fiddler, there, and we played a lot. Someone had given him a ticket and a cabin. He introduced me to Cactus Bob and Prairie Flower, who also became friends.
The other Colorado festival I've attended is run by CROMA, the Central Rockies Old-Time Music Association. I think I went to their second festival. I visited my mom in Denver, went to the festival (my car broke down on the way), and then visited her some more. In 2018, I decided to do that again and bought a ticket. My mom died that year, only a month before the festival. Since I had a ticket, I went.
I once met someone from Colorado at Fiddle Tunes and asked him about jams. He told me about two. One was in Denver and sort of exclusive, and I never went to that one. But there was another on Wednesday night in Boulder, and so I found the house and knocked on the door. Someone came down and said I must be new since the door was unlocked. I didn't know anyone there, but we started to play tunes. At some point, fiddler Dave Brown, whom I did know, came in. I went to that jam many times and got to know the host, Jeff Haemer, well. Also, that first time, I was sitting next to Scott Mathis, who also became a friend. He now lives in Albuquerque.
I have also been to the annual string band festival in Goleta, near Santa Barbara, several times. In 1996, Peter Feldmann, who had founded the festival and ran it for many years, hired me to be a banjo judge. We only knew each other on the internet. Later, I went twice with friends. We camped and jammed. Both times, we entered the string band contest as the Diaspora Swamp Boys. We won first in the intermediate contest. The next time we entered the advanced contest and placed second. I went back again in 2019 in my RV and camped at nearby Lake Cachuma where a lot of jamming went on. I think the festival is canceled for 2020, but we are still going to camp and jam there.
