On The Road 2013 - American Fiddle Tunes Port Townsend

• just back from a week at american fiddle tunes in port townsend - about 400 people in all - camped at fort warden SP at the beach campground with sam & diana from vancouver - many lovely late-night campfire jams with them - we performed the decemberists down by the water at the friday student concert
  
  
• i went to fiddle tunes to further my recent interest in cajun music, in particular cajun fiddling - i've been working on it for a half year or so out of craig duncans cajun fiddle book - at the camp nobody had heard of the book and when i showed it to joel savoy at my one-on-one session he was quite dismissive of the book, called it "nashville cajun"
  
  
• what i learned about cajun fiddling was rather indirect, more the feel for it - most classes at american fiddle tunes consist of learning a particular tune phrase by phrase - not something that really interests me - the performances were inspiring though - the hilight of the week however was the band lab, scheduled for an hour and a half each day, more below - paul anastasio's workshop on improvisation was excellent as well - i took his fiddle class at sorrento swing camp a few years back - he's still the best music instructor i've ever had - but enough about me, here's more about me
  
  
• i went to a few band labs the first day which were disappointing either because there was too many participants or the instructor or music did'nt excite me - i stumbled late into matt kinman and his sidekick moses nelligan's class - we had a small group, only a half dozen or so - many of the band labs were huge, 70 or so in the klezmer group - matt was a last minute replacement for the gravely ill curly miller (who?) so he was maybe not as well known by the predominantly old-time fiddle crowd, which might explain the small class - matt is the subject of a rather interesting documentary The Back Porch of America - i only learned of this project after googling him on my return to vancouver
  
  
• here's some video below of 'matt & mo' playing for our class - our class performed hanged man's reel and don't take a bath til sunday at the saturday morning band-lab concert - we were surprisingly good given all the infighting in rehearsal - nothing like matt & mo's versions below of course - the appalachian accents are real - we had them for an hour and a half each day - it was a rare treat to spend time with these two - matt's idea of a joke "ya don't eat 'cause yur hungry, ya eat to keep from gittin' hungry" - we also rehearsed wednesday night waltz for the camp finale, a band-lab dance saturday night, but i'd had enough and left for vancouver after the morning concert
  
  matt kinman & moses nelligan videos
  don't take a bath til sunday
  hanged man's reel
  wednesday night waltz
  
  
• another hilight was milton vanicor's cajun throwdown held every day at 9am in the huge old ex-officers quarters at fort warden - milton is 95 and was there with his daughter & grandson, who also played - milton is a bit of a legend in the cajun music world, he played with iry lejeune in the 50's - the video below is from the cajun throwdown on tuesday morning "j'ai fait une grosse erreur" - a tune written by iry lejeune
  
  milton vanicor cajun throwdown video
  j'ai fait une grosse erreur
  
  
• all in all just a great experience