It's hard to name a fiddle tune

Photo by Michael Kanemoto. From our Liberty Hall Holiday Hoedown, December 2006.

Thanks, LVJ, for the inspiration for a new post from me.

LVJ mentioned a couple of new fiddle tunes of mine that were played at Liberty Hall:

Christmas Eve -- which is NOT mine, though I wish it were. It comes from Jim Bowles, a fiddler of whom I know little. Well, I just did a little search for him and found out more... he was from Kentucky. Even cooler is that "Christmas Eve" is mentioned in this article... the link is in the blog title here, for those who are interested. Now, why that tune is called Christmas Eve, I can't imagine exactly. But it is a great tune and I'm trying to learn it a little better for next year.

[So far I have 3 seasonal fiddle tunes which only get played for our holiday shows. For a while all I had was "Breaking Up Christmas" -- you can find great versions of that by Benton Flippen and Tommy Jarrell. Then last year I got turned on to "Christmas Time Will Soon Be Over", which was recorded by Fiddlin' John Carson way back in the day... he was one of the first stars of the Grand Ole Opry. That tune/song (it does have a few lyrics -- "country haiku", as Ike calls it) also appeared in the film "Cold Mountain", and Jack White sang it. I notice when I do a search for it that some sites credit it as BY Jack White... interesting, and just a note on how traditional tunes sometimes do end up getting copywritten by someone much later. Is this a good or bad thing? I am not here to judge that right now, just a side topic for later consideration.]

The other tune was Douglas County. A funny thing about that tune. It's not a new one; we've been playing it for a while, maybe almost a year. I originally gave it a temporary title: "Bob Holt Meets the Crooked Jades". That's a mouthful, at least! Plus the confusion of folks thinking I was talking about Bob Hope made it not such a good title. Not to mention there are a precious few who know of the Crooked Jades (if you are not one of them, look them up - we think they are awesome). So shortly before we set out to record, Phil suggested (strongly suggested, you might say) that I come up with a REAL title for the tune. Good idea.

[If you want to hear this tune, you can find it on our listen page -- on the left column, with the title "BHMTCJ"]

So... it's really hard to name a fiddle tune, sometimes. My first tune ever, January Waltz, was a gift from the heavens and was easy to name as it came to me in January, several years ago, and is a waltz. The first dance tune I came up with was inspired by Art Stamper's playing, but I was bound and determined to give it a GOAT-y name. Thus, Goat Creek.

However, there's a more specific reason for giving it a watery name.

Many years ago, while attending the workshops at Augusta Heritage Center (man, I love that place... hope to go there and teach some day), I was bowled over by a lecture/demonstration given by Alan Jabbour. Now, this fellow was the founding director of the American Folklife Center at the Smithsonian. He also is a dedicated fiddler and before he was all official, he spent a lot of time in West Virginia hanging out with the old fiddlers and such. Doing what I wish I had time/money/ambition to do my own self. Anyway. One of the things that Jabbour spoke of was river/creek fiddle tunes. He said that those tunes tend to start out high, jump around some, and that the B part was almost always low, or lower, than the A part. Case in point with a very common tune: Cripple Creek. See what I mean? So that was one of many things that got me all excited during Jabbour's talk/play session. My students get to hear about other things from time to time when I'm really geeking out.

GOAT CREEK was written without a title in mind. It starts high, jumps around a lot, and then goes low for the B part. Once I realized that, I had my title!

Other tunes I have had trouble naming, too. The tune now called "Old Dirty Boot" didn't have a name for quite some time. We even performed it nameless... we'd usually play it at the beginning of a show so I wouldn't feel compelled to talk on and on about it without a name, etc. You know how I can be. We had to name it eventually when it was included in the music we chose to have available for that Merlfest live download deal earlier in 2006. I sat and thought about it for a while and for whatever reason, that's what popped out. Well, kind of. I had "Old Dirty Boots" in mind, and Ike suggested making it just one boot. Good idea! I love that title now.

"Rock in the Woods" is potentially mistaken for Rockin' the Woods, so can be problematic. I told the story of that tune for a while on stage. We were at the Hiawatha Festival in the U.P., Michigan, summer of 2005. I was alone at our campsite for a while. It was a beautiful wooded camping grounds, with very tall evergreens and plenty of shrubs and plants and places for little things to live. As I sat messing around with this melody, a chipmunk appeared about six feet from me. It was munching away on something, moving around, and totally unconcerned. Some of you know how fond I am of almost all animals, especially the really cute ones... one of my very girly qualities. Well, I kept on playing and that chipmunk kept on hanging out. It was a very cool few minutes for me. All of a sudden, the little guy took off, going 100 miles an hour and right by my left foot... I could almost feel him. (maybe I played a sour note...) I was sad to see him go, but you know what? He came back! After a while. By then I had the tune finished and I tried really hard to name it after my little friend. But the character of the tune is not chipmunk-y or cute. It's a rocking tune. And it was written in the woods. I started out calling it Rocking the Woods, which has a cool double meaning when you think about our wooden instruments. However, I ended up with the Rock because I like tune titles that bring about imagery, or questions, or those that are a statement in themselves (Hawk's got a chicken and flew into the woods, anyone?).

So... back to BHMTCJ. This tune was directly inspired by the playing of Bob Holt, from Ava, Douglas County, Missouri. Then we added a funky chord partway through that gets played twice, on one full A part. That's the Crooked Jades influence. But the main thing for me is the melody, which is, to me, very Bob Holt-y. There is precedent for naming fiddle tunes after counties... Robinson County, an Ozark tune, being one good example. So, I thought maybe I'd name it after Holt's native county. We just recorded the tune for our upcoming album. I gave it that title for the recording. Then, when I announced it on stage at Liberty Hall, everyone cheered and Phil mentioned to me that we were IN Douglas County. Oh, yeah.

I love Lawrence and the people of Douglas County. But I don't want to have a fiddle tune with a name that references a specific geological spot be confused with a spot of the same name but different place, especially one so close to our home. Yeah, there's probably a Douglas County in most states, anyway.

So... guess what. This tune starts high, jumps around a lot, and then goes low for the B part!

I'm currently doing some research on rivers and creeks in the area around where Bob Holt lived. I even wrote an email to one of his friends, Jim Nelson, a St. Louis guitar player (who happens to be one of my favorite all-time old time guitar players). I asked Jim if he knew of any waterways that Holt was fond of. Sadly, there is nothing conclusive to report from that query. However, I am sure Bob Holt got around to many of the waterways in his county. I'm going to choose one of them and then that tune will have its final, hopefully long-loved, name.