The Communications Department at Wayne State University (where I was trying graduate school),  loaned me a portable open reel recorder, a Uher like the one Studs Terkel used, for my first attempt at oral history. I was not up to the technical task. I couldn't change the tape speed from 1 7/8 ips to anything faster. I had no headphones, and did not realize that I was picking up the noise of the recorder's motor. Still, I got some priceless interviews, especially from my visits with Herman Fox and my grandmother, Clara Franke.

Soon after I had moved from Detroit to Bloomington, a Michigan friend and great musician, Paul Gifford came to visit. For the first time, I had a cassette recorder at my disposal and recorded about twenty tunes on fiddle and hammered dulcimer. These recordings made a great impact on me. Some have been in my active repertoire for over thirty years. More importantly, the fact that they were rare and distinctive pieces that Paul had collected from obscure traditional fiddlers in Michigan encouraged me toward a similar undertaking  now that I was back home in Indiana.

When Pat Mahafee and I left Detroit in 1978, another good musician friend, Al Smitley, threw a going-away party at a barn in Saline, Michigan. The party, with square dancing and music sessions, was such a success that Al threw us another going-away party each of the next three years.

Under Dean Vaughan Jaeneke, the School of Performing Arts had a long history of involvement with local folk artists.  Fieldwork was begun in the mid-1970s in consultation with the new American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress and with support from the Folk Arts program at the National Endowment for the Arts.  Contracted fieldworkers included professional folklorists, primarly Jens Lund, a graduate student at Indiana University, and amateurs, such as members of the local string band, the Indian Creek Delta Boys.  Fieldwork led to collections and exhbitions at the Tarble Arts Center on caumpus, and to  presentations and performances at the School's annual Celebration.

In 1983, EIU received another NEA grant, this time to focus on folk arts in urban areas in East Central Illinois.  The cities of Decatur and Danville were the focus. Jens Lund had just completed his doctorate and had taken a job out west, so he arranged for two other graduate students from the Folklore Institute to replace him as fieldworkers. I was assigned to concentrate on music.  John Holliday of Charleston was also given support to look for fiddlers and other musicians in the rural districts surrounding Decatur and Danville.  In 1991, I again contracted with EIU to do a followup survey of a larger area of Eastern and Southen Illinois,.