Fiddlin’: an interview with the makers
Fiddlin' (2019) is the first full-length documentary about one of the greatest oldtime festivals around: The Old Fiddler's Convention in Galax, Virginia. Directed and produced by two sisters local to the area,...
What is oldtime anyway? Heresy and Orthodoxy
The joke goes something like this: Two Old-Time oldtimers are taking their sweet old time on a morning constitutional through the sunny glades of Clifftop. They pass a tent with a...
Vernon Spencer & the Spencer Family of Big Springs, KS
Vernon Douglas Spencer was born September 22, 1921, on the family farm in Big Springs, Kansas. He was the baby of 11 children born to his parents Harley and Cora and around...
The Functional Art of Old-Time Back-Up Guitar
One thing I love about playing old-time music is that a good tune or a good session is a collaborative effort. Each individual plays a part in creating the overall sound....
Banjo Billy’s “500 Fiddle Tunes: Old-Time Archive”
When I was nine years old, my fiddle teacher sent me to a workshop from the “Famous Fiddlin’ Banjo Billy Mathews.” Having played less than a year and being deathly shy,...
Can Old-Time Community Save the World?
The staff door popped open as I careened in to work two minutes late with bean skins still stuck in my unbrushed teeth from the drive-through burrito I’d gulped down in...
Myth and Reason in Oldtime
I have played old-time fiddle for a very long time. In 1970 when I was twenty years old I moved from an industrial city in northern New Jersey to an eighty-acre...
Decolonizing the Music (Room)
Brandi Pace is an African-American music educator, now teaching elementary music in Fort Worth, Texas for almost a decade. She is also an accomplished instrumentalist and singer focusing on jazz, oldtime, and...
What fiddlers like in oldtime backup guitar – in their own words
You might get the impression that oldtime backup guitar doesn't get a lot of attention. But once you start asking questions, you find there are plenty of opinions. Several thousand people read...
Bad Festival Neighbors
When you roll up to an old time festival, you know you aren’t checking into the Presidential Suite at the Ritz. It’s going to be crowded and noisy and dirty, and some of...
