video archive

Capturing The Magic

Most every moment playing oldtime is lost to eternity, and that, perhaps, is a great part of its joy. As we sit with friends...
00:27:55

Tricia Spencer: interview + tunes

Like all performers and teaching musicians, Tricia Spencer’s life looks a lot different this year. While she’d typically be in the middle of festival...
00:18:34

Swedish oldtime fiddler Agnes Brogeby: interview + tunes

I'm from Sweden. I grew up in Stockholm, but now live in Gothenburg in the south of Sweden. I've been playing oldtime for about...
00:14:17

Clarke Buehling: interview & tunes

My first exposure to old-time music was probably when Hobart Smith came to perform at my high school outside of Chicago. Within a few...
00:31:12

“Maybe the way forward is to dig deeper into the past”: interview and tunes with Brian Slattery

I haven’t listened to or seen this interview since I did it at Clifftop, and as it was conducted in the crazy haze that...
00:29:43

Breathing new life into Missouri fiddling: John P. Williams

Introduction John P. Williams is an oldtime fiddler from Madison, Missouri who grew up deeply entrenched in the tradition of Missouri fiddling. John was a...
00:25:28

“It’s the tunes that matter and the people that play them.”

Many people have told me over the last several years that I certainly have lived an interesting and exciting life. I was orphaned at...
00:22:20

George Jackson – interview + tunes

I grew up about as far away geographically from the regions where old-time music originated as you could imagine, but American culture was all...
00:14:23

Aviva Steigmeyer: interview + tunes

I grew up in Washington state and started playing old-time music when I was 18 years old. My parents were migrant fruit pickers in...
00:26:24

Meredith McIntosh: interview + tunes

Old Time Music came to me after I had not played any music for several years.  My mother taught piano and music in the elementary...
00:14:59

David Scrivner: interview + tunes

I began playing mandolin when I was six.  My dad and his brothers had formed a bluegrass band when they were in high school...

Cameron Knowler: Melodic Guitar in Oldtime Music

Although oldtime guitar is arguably one of the most underrated and overlooked instruments in the tradition, Cameron Knowler is quick to point out that...

Laurel Premo and “The Iron Trios”: An Interview

“When I interact with American fiddle music, it’s hard to distinguish between the sounds that I’m actually hearing and the music that is happening...
00:16:21

Emily Elam – interview + tunes

Emily Elam of Mountain View, Arkansas is a three-time Arkansas State Old-Time Fiddle Champion and long-time student of Billy Matthews. Here she sits down...
00:07:48

Jimmy Triplett & Howard Rains – Tunes from Clifftop 2019

"The first is a tune call Nancy Ann. I learned it from Mose Coffman on a visit back in 1994. He knew the tune...
00:23:00

Mike Burns: interview + tunes

I grew up north of Charleston, West Virginia in the small community of Mink Shoals, located on the Elk River.  Most of my time was...

Mark C. Campbell: Growing up on oldtime in the Shenandoah Valley

Co-authored by Mark C. Campbell & Rachel Krause Mark C. Campbell is an oldtime musician based in Richmond, Virginia. Mark grew up in the Shenandoah...
00:19:35

Dakota Karper – interview + tunes

It is a natural human instinct to want to express yourself. To feel that you are heard and will not be forgotten when your...
00:40:39

Cameron DeWhitt – interview & tunes

Cameron DeWhitt is a clawhammer banjoist and Old Time musician living in Portland, Oregon. He hosts the weekly podcast Get Up in the Cool:...

Tommy Jarrell (1901-1985) – fiddler & banjo player from Surry County, North Carolina

I'm one of the many oldtime musicians out there who got truly infected with a love for clawhammer banjo and oldtime fiddle as a...
00:17:48

Hunter Walker – interview and tunes

At a tender age, Hunter was recognized as a mountain dulcimer whiz. His love and pursuit for Old-Time Music has garnered him several prestigious...

Interview with Allison de Groot

Can you tell me about your path to oldtime? "The first time I heard clawhammer banjo was Leonard Podolack playing on an album by The Duhks,...

Bruce Molsky: an interview

When I heard that Bruce Molsky was going to be playing with Molsky's Mountain Drifters at the 2019 Fire in the Mountain in rural...
00:46:38

Nathan Bontrager – Oldtime Cello & Fiddle

When I moved to New Haven, CT in the fall of 2009 I was at the end of a number of years of studying...

In Remembrance of Jon Bekoff (1959-2015)

This personal remembrance of Jon Bekoff was written by his friend Ms. Moonshine on the occasion of his death five years ago today and...
00:15:20

Ben McManus – clawhammer guitar

Ben McManus is a multi-instrumentalist folk musician from Wales, currently living and working as an archivist in Aberystwyth. Now primarily focusing on oldtime music,...

Gap Civil String Band “Cut the Pigeon Wing” – CD review and interview

Gap Civil is an old time band based in Sparta, North Carolina, that plays hard-driving fiddle tunes, but also knows how to slow it...
00:23:33

Pär Persson Mattsson

Hi, I'm Pär. I'm a fiddler raised in Svärdsjö, a small idyllic village in Dalecarlia, Sweden. Folk music has been a part of my...
00:46:33

Hilarie Burhans

Hi! I’m Hilarie Burhans.  After a childhood spent all over the world, my family moved to Athens, in the Appalachian part of Ohio, when I...
00:09:46

Dorion de Gobeo – interview and tune

My name is Dorion de Gobeo. I am Canadian, born in Manitoba and raised in the mountains of British Columbia. At the age of...
00:06:57

David Bragger & Susan Platz – tunes and interview

In 2017 David Bragger and Susan Platz released the first oldtime album featuring dual fiddle on all tracks: King's Lament. Bragger is well known...

John Salyer (1882 -1952) – fiddler from Magoffin County, Eastern Kentucky

I once heard a fiddler call John Morgan Salyer “the foremost genius, the Mozart of Old Time”. I can’t really argue with that. Salyer...
00:31:57

Seth Shumate – Oldtime Harmonica

"I'm a harmonica player with a focus on pre-war styles of harmonica from old-time, country blues, early blues, and jug band music. I come from...

Trish Kilby Fore – Interview and CD review

Trish Kilby Fore grew up surrounded by music in her hometown of Lansing in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. Her new CD...
00:21:18

Rhona Dalling

Rhona Dalling is a fiddle player and songwriter from Newcastle Upon Tyne. She was early introduced to the folk scene by her musician father:...
00:30:18

Graham Dezarn

I grew up from the Northern Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, where I still live.  My parents spent a lot of time at the Bluemont...
00:17:45

Caitlin Hearn

Caitlin Hearn is a fiddle player who currently lives in Regensburg, Germany, where she is an English teacher. She got her musical feet wet...
00:27:29

Tom Turino & Shannon Arnold

Tom Turino was a professor of ethnomusicology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from 1987 to 2014. He has been playing old-time banjo...
00:16:05

Dave Hoke

"In a public setting such as the inter-web, reflecting on my past makes me uncomfortable. Away from my home, I am disinclined to give...

Kevin Fore of Surry County, NC and Galax, VA (Carroll County)

If you want to hear a living master of the different styles of clawhammer banjo that emerged from the Round Peak community, listen to...
00:21:25

Ryland Burhans

Ry grew up in Athens, Ohio. While raised around heaps of old-time, he spent most of his teenage years attempting to escape the music...
00:17:36

John Crutchfield

So in Old-Time pretty much everyone has a day job. Mine is being a writer— plays, mostly, although I write poems and stories as...
00:22:45

Rachel Eddy + Roger Netherton

Here's a video I've been dying to get out there. Rachel and Roger very graciously took time at this year's Clifftop to talk about...
00:25:26

Matt Turino

Matt Turino is a great oldtime fiddle player who grew up in Urbana, Illinois. The son of a revivalist oldtime banjo player and ethnomusicologist,...
00:13:43

Jane Rothfield

My journey as a musician has been a long one, since I started playing violin when I was about 6 years old! My parents...
00:13:23

Christopher Suen

I met Chris through the kind of serendipity + hospitality that has characterized most all of my experience in the oldtime community. Chris was...
00:22:12

Iowa fiddler Alan Murphy

Alan Murphy is one of the greats of Midwest fiddling and one who deserves to be known well beyond the region. Born in Sibley, Iowa...
00:16:33

Dante Portella and Megan O’Neill

Megan O'Neill Megan grew up playing classical violin, from 4th grade through high school, and, after putting her violin down for over a decade, she...
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