New Fiddle Club meeting just arranged.
On Sunday, April 13 at 7pm we’ll be joined by special guests, the Folkestra, an 11-piece band from northern England. Details will be forthcoming as to location &c. We will have some tunes to learn ahead of time for what promises to be a memorable jam session. Mark your calendars.
An Old Meeting Noted in a Chicago Tribune Blog
Eric Zorn writes about a tune he found on the Fiddle Club of the World blog (this one!).
Chirps Smith alert! Video images and more.
Don Stiernberg
Sunday, January 26, 7pm
Seman Violins (4447 Oakton, Skokie)
$15 at the door. Fiddle Club is not just for fiddlers. All players and music lovers are welcome.
A little lesson in swing. Another session tune on this earlier post.
Right or Wrong slow
Right or Wrong lesson
Right or Wrong improvised
Sunny Side of the Street slow
Sunny Side of the Street lesson
Sunny Side of the Street improvised
Don Stiernberg
It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing!
Sunday, January 26, 7pm
Seman Violins (4447 Oakton, Skokie)
$15 at the door. Fiddle Club is not just for fiddlers. All players and music lovers are welcome.
I am very excited that our next featured guest at the Chicago Chapter of Fiddle Club of the World is Don Stiernberg, a fabulous jazz mandolinist and all around good guy. Don also plays a mean fiddle, and I expect we will hear both fiddle and mandolin in his mini-concert in the back room of Seman Violins. Chris Walz will provide guitar accompaniment.
Don Stiernberg.
In the jam sesseion/workshop to follow, Don will help us through the first steps of swing and improvisation. Start out with this class, Sweet Georgia Brown. Two more standards will be posted later today.
Sweet Georgia Brown slow
Sweet Georgia Brown lesson
Sweet Georgia Brown improvised
Don Stiernberg with Jethro Burns & John Parrish
– Paul Tyler, convener
Don’t forget!
Lotus Dickey CD Release Celebration
Sunday, December 1, 7pm
Seman Violins (4447 Oakton, Skokie)
$15 at the door for a concert, followed by a session of tunes
 Lotus Dickey jigging, circa 1986 |
 Lotus Dickey at Sugar Hill, circa 1986 |
Complete and corrected notation for all the tunes.
Music notation is here.
ABC notation is here.
And some more tunes recorded in 1986.
Paddy on the Handcar, Second tune in a medley from the album “Pride of Glencoe”
Lotus Dickey CD Release Celebration
Sunday, December 1, 7pm
Seman Violins (4447 Oakton, Skokie)
$15 at the door for a concert, followed by a session of tunes
Music at the celebration provided by Dickey’s Disciples.
 1984 Disciples – aka Sugar Hill Serenaders in front of Lotus’s cabin on Grease Gravy Hill |
 1989 Disciples – aka & Friends at the Fermilab Barn Dance (click for full photo) |
Here are some tunes recorded in 1989 for the album that has recently been reissued on Vigortone Records. The CD will be on sale at the Fiddle Club of the World meeting (more info here).
The following recordings are from 1986. The quality is not as good as the recordings on the CD. But Lotus was playing a bit stronger at the time. The first two tunes, but not the waltz, can be heard on the CD.
Albert Dougherty D Waltz #2 (guitar; in A dorian, aka 1 sharp)
Complete and corrected notation is here.
Complete and corrected ABC notation is here.
(Click your pick.)
Dickey’s Disciples (aka the Volo Bogtrotters)
circa 2009 at Breaking Up Thanksgiving
Paul Tyler -convener
Fiddle Club of the World, Chicago Chapter
Lotus Dickey CD Release Celebration
Sunday, December 1, 7pm
Seman Violins (4447 Oakton, Skokie)
Honoring the memory of Lotus Quentin Dickey (1911-89), Dickey’s Disciples will play tunes from the new CD: Down the Pike and Other Fiddle Tunes from Orange County, Indiana. The four disciples who accompanied Lotus in recording these tunes will be present: Fred Campeau-banjo, Jim Nelson-guitar, Steve Rosen-banjo and Paul Tyler-guitar and mandolin. To make it look even more like a Volo Bogtrotters appearance, Lynn “Chirps” Smith will also join the fun. And after the concert set, we’ll make a circle and everyone can play. Some of Lotus’s favorites will be taught.
Lotus Dickey was incredible man, a brilliant song writer and powerfully good fiddler. I was very privileged to spend a great deal of time with him from 1981, when I booked him for the Indiana Fiddlers Gathering in Battle Ground, up until his death in 1989. During that time, we made an concerted effort to identify and document all the tunes he had learned during his boyhood (the 1920s) from the old fiddlers who were his neighbors in Orange County, Indiana. The last time I saw Lotus, was a visit he made to Chicago in April of 1989. We set up an overnight recording session in the concert hall at the Old Town School of Folk Music and recorded about fifteen tunes with accompaniment by Dickey’s Disciples. The next morning, Lotus and I sat in front the microphones in engineer Flawn Williams living room and record another eight or so tunes, mostly waltzes.
Those were magic moments. The public first heard them on a 2-cassette album issued by Marimac Records in 1992. Now thanks to Vigortone Records, these session have been re-mastered and re-issued on CD. The CDs can be purchased at this Fiddle Club of the World meeting.
Lotus Dickey in front of his cabin on Grease Gravy Road near Paoli, Indiana.
To hear some tunes from Lotus Dickey & Dickey’s Disciples, go here and here.
-Paul Tyler, convener
Fiddle Club of the World tune session
at the Leadway Bar & Grill (5233 N. Damen)
Sunday, November 17 at 7pm
Judy Higgins will be your capable and fearless leader.
Here are the tunes we’ve been playing over the last year.
(click for running play lists)
Stuart Rosenberg
Sunday, Oct. 13, 7pm
Seman Violins (4447 Oakton, Skokie)
$15 at the door for a concert, followed by a session of tunes
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From his days with the Laketown Buskers in the ’80s, through his years behind the mic of Radio Gumbo in the ’90s, to his current weekly appearances leading the Bagels and Bluegrass jam at Kaufman’s deli, Stuart Rosenberg has been a fixture on the Chicago folk scene. Stuart’s talents range from blues and swing to bluegrass and Klezmer. You can hear a sample at his MySpace page. Make sure you work on the two tunes posted below, and come to Fiddle Club next weekend when Stuart will hold forth with great stories and inspired tunes. As always, we’ll form the chairs into a circle and play some tunes together.
Fiselekh Fiselekh, a Klezmer (aka Jewish) dance tune
Golden Slippers Stuart learned this distinctive version of an American standard from working with Gatemouth Brown.
It’s a Nordic palooza of fun tunes. Vidar Skrede, this month’s featured guest at Fiddle Club of the World sent recordings of three tunes that we can play at the session after his concert this Sunday (9/29) at Seman Violins (4447 Oakton in Skokie).
Here they are, straight and simple, with the slow versions offered up by themselves:
Kari Trestakk (fiddle version of Reinlender-see previous post)
For the first batch of tunes from Vidar, click here!
Music notation for most of the tunes is here.
ABC notation is here.
(Click your pick.)
Vidar Skrede
Sunday, Sept. 29, 7pm
Seman Violins (4447 Oakton, Skokie)
$15 at the door for a concert, followed by a session of tunes
 (click for another image) |
 Vidar Skrede |
I know this one will be great. I met Vidar Skrede during my visit to Helsinki last fall. He’s a powerhouse of a musician from Haugesand, Norway, now living in Finland. His background is the traditional music from Rogaland (South West of Norway), but he also has a masters degree in Nordic folk music from the Royal Academy of Music in Stockholm. He is best known from his work with such bands as the Dynamo Band, Geitungen and The Secret Carpet Club. This summer he has toured the Midwest in The Blue and the Blonde, a duo with Jutta Rahmel (from Kardemimmit, a quartet featured at the Chicago World Music Fest).
Vidar is a master of both the hardingfele and the flatfele. The first is the eight-string hardanger fiddle that features four (sometimes five) sympathetic that run under the fingerboard. The second is the flat or regular fiddle. His mastery extends to the guitar and mandolin.
But let the tunes speak for themselves. (More can be found on Vidar’s MySpace.)
Bullaremarschen
Halling frå Lysekil
Reinlender (on guitar; see below for a live version in another key)
Here are a couple of tunes from an incredible session at the Musta Kissa (Black Cat) bar in Helsinki last October. The session was organized by accordionist Tejia Niku, who was a Fiddle Club guest in 2010 with the Polka Chicks. Antti Järvelä (Arto’s cousin) was there with a mandolin. (Antti, any time you want to visit Fiddle Club, just let me know.) Gail Tyler played some banjo uke. I was doing my best to keep up on fiddle as Vidar led the way on guitar.
Johan på Loftet aka John in the Hayloft
Griffenfeld (perhaps named after Peder Griffenfeld)
Reinlender (guitar; in A dorian, aka 1 sharp)
For more great tunes from Vidar, click here!
Music notation for most of the tunes is here.
ABC notation is here.
(Click your pick.)
Fiddlers, guitarists, folk music lovers &c. Don’t miss this one.
Paul Tyler -convener
Fiddle Club of the World, Chicago Chapter
