Fiddling with Chip and Lee Anne

Aug 6, 2019 | Welcome Column

I love to play. Especially fiddle.

I don’t really love schlepping gear around to venues, subjecting my musical friends to poor working conditions, coping with poor sound systems, and going without meals because the kitchen doesn’t open until the band starts.

But I love to play.

One of the charms of attending the CBA’s Father’s Day Bluegrass Festival is meeting up with old and new friends and making music together. Impromptu jam sessions at campsites and convenient spots around the fairgrounds give me an opportunity to exercise my brain, my ears and my fingers. In other words, they provide many of the benefits of practicing, only more.

A few years ago at Grass Valley I ran into old pal Chip Curry in the morning coffee line. We’ve both pretty much stopped the super-late jamming, opting instead to have functioning brain cells (with coffee) in the beautiful, clear morning air at the festival.

“Chip, do you have your guitar here?”

“Yup! I’ll go grab it. Just a minute.”

We met up in an out-of-the way corner where the reverberation made the fiddle sound like a Stradivarius.

“Chip, I’ve got these new tunes I’m writing. Can you read chord charts? They’re really simple.”

“As long as your chords don’t include a phone number after the letters, I’m good. No G flat seven sharp nine plus eleven.”

So we spent a couple of hours trading the fiddle and guitar back and forth. It was, as is often the case at Grass Valley, a magical morning. We emerged eventually, blinking in the bright summer light and resolving to do the same the next year.

A year later, as we fiddled a duet on Soldier’s Joy, we spied Lee Anne Welch, Bay Area fiddler for Sidesaddle and the Goat Hill Girls.

“Lee Anne, go get your fiddle, and come join us!”

Now we were three fiddlers. Three fiddles, and no banjo. No guitar, no mandolin, no dobro, no accordion, no bass. I love those other instruments, and play several myself, but at that moment, we were our own tripod. We weren’t a three-legged horse. We didn’t need anybody to “complete” us.

We began playing together, choosing tunes that we all knew, or that we could all play reasonably well. We took turns choosing the tunes, avoiding the syndrome that happens when the alpha player, or the tallest person, or the loudest musician runs a jam session by sheer personal power. After an hour or two, Lee Anne had to run off to a rehearsal. But we were pumped. Our eyes sparkled, our ears buzzed, our hearts vibrated. We agreed to meet back home after the festival and play again.

I was especially eager to follow up and repeat the session. We’re three very different fiddlers with distinct backgrounds, and we each love different aspects of traditional American fiddling. Lee Anne is a strong Celtic player as well as a traditional bluegrass fiddler. She understands harmony really well and plays in tune, and these qualities combine to make her a strong ensemble player. She’s a life-long teacher, so she’s accustomed to listening carefully when she plays. Chip grew up with traditional Missouri music in his blood and in his ears. He played his grandfather’s fiddle, and led an eclectic and original acoustic group in Tucson. His father taught him traditional songs and stories, and he brings a deep respect and a delightful spontaneous enjoyment of the folksy humor in many of the songs. And he’s an exuberant player. I took violin lessons at school beginning in the second grade, and began studying harmony and theory in middle school. I learned to fiddle as a way to contribute to the bands I joined in my early twenties. My main instrument then was guitar, but there were plenty of great guitarists in the Bay Area. Fiddle got me playing jobs in addition to giving me great musical enjoyment.

So when we were all back in the Bay Area, the memories from the Grass Valley festival still reverberating in our minds, I called Chip and Lee Anne.

“How’s about just one hour in the morning? If we keep it to an hour, then we can fit it into our crazy musician lives. And if we do it first thing in the day, then we won’t have to postpone due to ‘more important’ things coming up.”

Chip: “Sounds great! How’s Tuesday?”

Me: “I just called Lee Anne, and she suggested Tuesday. See you then!”

We picked Chip’s house, conveniently located between Lee Anne’s and mine.

We began our hour-long sessions with the heady excitement of a new band. We barely spoke, as our goal was to let our fiddles do the communicating. We chose comfortable tempos so that the all-important groove could rule. We each listened intently to the other two, trying to find a place in the harmonic spectrum where we could contribute musically without occupying the same sonic space. If Chip was sawing on the bottom strings, I’d jump up to the high octaves and find a space well above Lee Anne’s melody. If Lee Anne was fiddling a twin part to Chip’s old-time fiddle tune, I’d find a bass line that defined the chords while staying well below their twins. This way, we all found ourselves constantly in new territory, looking for ways to make the ensemble richer without doubling or covering up. And we did it all on three fiddles. Chip’s living room, with hardwood floor, added warmth to the fiddles’ ringing tones.

After several years of joining together weekly for our inspirational fiddle session, we’ve become closer friends and closer musically. We don’t gig as a band. We don’t want the obligation of entertaining people to get in the way of our music. We don’t need to “stay current.” Our session isn’t the training grounds for contests, nor a rehearsal for something else. It’s purely music, for ourselves and each other, and we always look forward to the next session. If one of us can’t make it, my wife Marty Kendall usually fills in, and we keep the weekly momentum going.

Perhaps others might find this model helpful when exploring their own instruments. Taking our fiddles outside the traditional roles prescribed for them in bluegrass or old-time ensembles has proved exciting and instructive for us. And we’ve built a strong camaraderie so that none of us is reluctant to try something outside of the familiar. If we blow it, we just have a laugh and find another part.

I hope this short description of our treasured fiddle sessions plants a seed for others to listen and respond in fresh ways.

Copyright © 2019 by Joe Weed

Joe Weed records acoustic music at his Highland Studios near Los Gatos, California. He has released seven albums of his own, produced many projects for independent artists and labels, and does scores for film, TV and museums. One of Joe’s productions with British guitar virtuoso Martin Simpson was heard in “The Mayo Clinic,” a film by Ken Burns, which premiered nationally on PBS in late 2018. Also in 2018, Joe released “Two Steps West of the Mississippi,” a collection of his original instrumental music based on American fiddle roots. Reach JoFiddling with Chip and Lee Anne

September, 2019

I love to play. Especially fiddle.

I don’t really love schlepping gear around to venues, subjecting my musical friends to poor working conditions, coping with poor sound systems, and going without meals because the kitchen doesn’t open until the band starts.

But I love to play.

One of the charms of attending the CBA’s Father’s Day Bluegrass Festival is meeting up with old and new friends and making music together. Impromptu jam sessions at campsites and convenient spots around the fairgrounds give me an opportunity to exercise my brain, my ears and my fingers. In other words, they provide many of the benefits of practicing, only more.

A few years ago at Grass Valley I ran into old pal Chip Curry in the morning coffee line. We’ve both pretty much stopped the super-late jamming, opting instead to have functioning brain cells (with coffee) in the beautiful, clear morning air at the festival.

“Chip, do you have your guitar here?”

“Yup! I’ll go grab it. Just a minute.”

We met up in an out-of-the way corner where the reverberation made the fiddle sound like a Stradivarius.

“Chip, I’ve got these new tunes I’m writing. Can you read chord charts? They’re really simple.”

“As long as your chords don’t include a phone number after the letters, I’m good. No G flat seven sharp nine plus eleven.”

So we spent a couple of hours trading the fiddle and guitar back and forth. It was, as is often the case at Grass Valley, a magical morning. We emerged eventually, blinking in the bright summer light and resolving to do the same the next year.

A year later, as we fiddled a duet on Soldier’s Joy, we spied Lee Anne Welch, Bay Area fiddler for Sidesaddle and the Goat Hill Girls.

“Lee Anne, go get your fiddle, and come join us!”

Now we were three fiddlers. Three fiddles, and no banjo. No guitar, no mandolin, no dobro, no accordion, no bass. I love those other instruments, and play several myself, but at that moment, we were our own tripod. We weren’t a three-legged horse. We didn’t need anybody to “complete” us.

We began playing together, choosing tunes that we all knew, or that we could all play reasonably well. We took turns choosing the tunes, avoiding the syndrome that happens when the alpha player, or the tallest person, or the loudest musician runs a jam session by sheer personal power. After an hour or two, Lee Anne had to run off to a rehearsal. But we were pumped. Our eyes sparkled, our ears buzzed, our hearts vibrated. We agreed to meet back home after the festival and play again.

I was especially eager to follow up and repeat the session. We’re three very different fiddlers with distinct backgrounds, and we each love different aspects of traditional American fiddling. Lee Anne is a strong Celtic player as well as a traditional bluegrass fiddler. She understands harmony really well and plays in tune, and these qualities combine to make her a strong ensemble player. She’s a life-long teacher, so she’s accustomed to listening carefully when she plays. Chip grew up with traditional Missouri music in his blood and in his ears. He played his grandfather’s fiddle, and led an eclectic and original acoustic group in Tucson. His father taught him traditional songs and stories, and he brings a deep respect and a delightful spontaneous enjoyment of the folksy humor in many of the songs. And he’s an exuberant player. I took violin lessons at school beginning in the second grade, and began studying harmony and theory in middle school. I learned to fiddle as a way to contribute to the bands I joined in my early twenties. My main instrument then was guitar, but there were plenty of great guitarists in the Bay Area. Fiddle got me playing jobs in addition to giving me great musical enjoyment.

So when we were all back in the Bay Area, the memories from the Grass Valley festival still reverberating in our minds, I called Chip and Lee Anne.

“How’s about just one hour in the morning? If we keep it to an hour, then we can fit it into our crazy musician lives. And if we do it first thing in the day, then we won’t have to postpone due to ‘more important’ things coming up.”

Chip: “Sounds great! How’s Tuesday?”

Me: “I just called Lee Anne, and she suggested Tuesday. See you then!”

We picked Chip’s house, conveniently located between Lee Anne’s and mine.

We began our hour-long sessions with the heady excitement of a new band. We barely spoke, as our goal was to let our fiddles do the communicating. We chose comfortable tempos so that the all-important groove could rule. We each listened intently to the other two, trying to find a place in the harmonic spectrum where we could contribute musically without occupying the same sonic space. If Chip was sawing on the bottom strings, I’d jump up to the high octaves and find a space well above Lee Anne’s melody. If Lee Anne was fiddling a twin part to Chip’s old-time fiddle tune, I’d find a bass line that defined the chords while staying well below their twins. This way, we all found ourselves constantly in new territory, looking for ways to make the ensemble richer without doubling or covering up. And we did it all on three fiddles. Chip’s living room, with hardwood floor, added warmth to the fiddles’ ringing tones.

After several years of joining together weekly for our inspirational fiddle session, we’ve become closer friends and closer musically. We don’t gig as a band. We don’t want the obligation of entertaining people to get in the way of our music. We don’t need to “stay current.” Our session isn’t the training grounds for contests, nor a rehearsal for something else. It’s purely music, for ourselves and each other, and we always look forward to the next session. If one of us can’t make it, my wife Marty Kendall usually fills in, and we keep the weekly momentum going.

Perhaps others might find this model helpful when exploring their own instruments. Taking our fiddles outside the traditional roles prescribed for them in bluegrass or old-time ensembles has proved exciting and instructive for us. And we’ve built a strong camaraderie so that none of us is reluctant to try something outside of the familiar. If we blow it, we just have a laugh and find another part.

I hope this short description of our treasured fiddle sessions plants a seed for others to listen and respond in fresh ways.

Copyright © 2019 by Joe Weed

Joe Weed records acoustic music at his Highland Studios near Los Gatos, California. He has released seven albums of his own, produced many projects for independent artists and labels, and does scores for film, TV and museums. One of Joe’s productions with British guitar virtuoso Martin Simpson was heard in “The Mayo Clinic,” a film by Ken Burns, which premiered nationally on PBS in late 2018. Also in 2018, Joe released “Two Steps West of the Mississippi,” a collection of his original instrumental music based on American fiddle roots. Reach JoFiddling with Chip and Lee Anne

September, 2019

I love to play. Especially fiddle.

I don’t really love schlepping gear around to venues, subjecting my musical friends to poor working conditions, coping with poor sound systems, and going without meals because the kitchen doesn’t open until the band starts.

But I love to play.

One of the charms of attending the CBA’s Father’s Day Bluegrass Festival is meeting up with old and new friends and making music together. Impromptu jam sessions at campsites and convenient spots around the fairgrounds give me an opportunity to exercise my brain, my ears and my fingers. In other words, they provide many of the benefits of practicing, only more.

A few years ago at Grass Valley I ran into old pal Chip Curry in the morning coffee line. We’ve both pretty much stopped the super-late jamming, opting instead to have functioning brain cells (with coffee) in the beautiful, clear morning air at the festival.

“Chip, do you have your guitar here?”

“Yup! I’ll go grab it. Just a minute.”

We met up in an out-of-the way corner where the reverberation made the fiddle sound like a Stradivarius.

“Chip, I’ve got these new tunes I’m writing. Can you read chord charts? They’re really simple.”

“As long as your chords don’t include a phone number after the letters, I’m good. No G flat seven sharp nine plus eleven.”

So we spent a couple of hours trading the fiddle and guitar back and forth. It was, as is often the case at Grass Valley, a magical morning. We emerged eventually, blinking in the bright summer light and resolving to do the same the next year.

A year later, as we fiddled a duet on Soldier’s Joy, we spied Lee Anne Welch, Bay Area fiddler for Sidesaddle and the Goat Hill Girls.

“Lee Anne, go get your fiddle, and come join us!”

Now we were three fiddlers. Three fiddles, and no banjo. No guitar, no mandolin, no dobro, no accordion, no bass. I love those other instruments, and play several myself, but at that moment, we were our own tripod. We weren’t a three-legged horse. We didn’t need anybody to “complete” us.

We began playing together, choosing tunes that we all knew, or that we could all play reasonably well. We took turns choosing the tunes, avoiding the syndrome that happens when the alpha player, or the tallest person, or the loudest musician runs a jam session by sheer personal power. After an hour or two, Lee Anne had to run off to a rehearsal. But we were pumped. Our eyes sparkled, our ears buzzed, our hearts vibrated. We agreed to meet back home after the festival and play again.

I was especially eager to follow up and repeat the session. We’re three very different fiddlers with distinct backgrounds, and we each love different aspects of traditional American fiddling. Lee Anne is a strong Celtic player as well as a traditional bluegrass fiddler. She understands harmony really well and plays in tune, and these qualities combine to make her a strong ensemble player. She’s a life-long teacher, so she’s accustomed to listening carefully when she plays. Chip grew up with traditional Missouri music in his blood and in his ears. He played his grandfather’s fiddle, and led an eclectic and original acoustic group in Tucson. His father taught him traditional songs and stories, and he brings a deep respect and a delightful spontaneous enjoyment of the folksy humor in many of the songs. And he’s an exuberant player. I took violin lessons at school beginning in the second grade, and began studying harmony and theory in middle school. I learned to fiddle as a way to contribute to the bands I joined in my early twenties. My main instrument then was guitar, but there were plenty of great guitarists in the Bay Area. Fiddle got me playing jobs in addition to giving me great musical enjoyment.

So when we were all back in the Bay Area, the memories from the Grass Valley festival still reverberating in our minds, I called Chip and Lee Anne.

“How’s about just one hour in the morning? If we keep it to an hour, then we can fit it into our crazy musician lives. And if we do it first thing in the day, then we won’t have to postpone due to ‘more important’ things coming up.”

Chip: “Sounds great! How’s Tuesday?”

Me: “I just called Lee Anne, and she suggested Tuesday. See you then!”

We picked Chip’s house, conveniently located between Lee Anne’s and mine.

We began our hour-long sessions with the heady excitement of a new band. We barely spoke, as our goal was to let our fiddles do the communicating. We chose comfortable tempos so that the all-important groove could rule. We each listened intently to the other two, trying to find a place in the harmonic spectrum where we could contribute musically without occupying the same sonic space. If Chip was sawing on the bottom strings, I’d jump up to the high octaves and find a space well above Lee Anne’s melody. If Lee Anne was fiddling a twin part to Chip’s old-time fiddle tune, I’d find a bass line that defined the chords while staying well below their twins. This way, we all found ourselves constantly in new territory, looking for ways to make the ensemble richer without doubling or covering up. And we did it all on three fiddles. Chip’s living room, with hardwood floor, added warmth to the fiddles’ ringing tones.

After several years of joining together weekly for our inspirational fiddle session, we’ve become closer friends and closer musically. We don’t gig as a band. We don’t want the obligation of entertaining people to get in the way of our music. We don’t need to “stay current.” Our session isn’t the training grounds for contests, nor a rehearsal for something else. It’s purely music, for ourselves and each other, and we always look forward to the next session. If one of us can’t make it, my wife Marty Kendall usually fills in, and we keep the weekly momentum going.

Perhaps others might find this model helpful when exploring their own instruments. Taking our fiddles outside the traditional roles prescribed for them in bluegrass or old-time ensembles has proved exciting and instructive for us. And we’ve built a strong camaraderie so that none of us is reluctant to try something outside of the familiar. If we blow it, we just have a laugh and find another part.

I hope this short description of our treasured fiddle sessions plants a seed for others to listen and respond in fresh ways.

Copyright © 2019 by Joe Weed

Joe Weed records acoustic music at his Highland Studios near Los Gatos, California. He has released seven albums of his own, produced many projects for independent artists and labels, and does scores for film, TV and museums. One of Joe’s productions with British guitar virtuoso Martin Simpson was heard in “The Mayo Clinic,” a film by Ken Burns, which premiered nationally on PBS in late 2018. Also in 2018, Joe released “Two Steps West of the Mississippi,” a collection of his original instrumental music based on American fiddle roots.

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