Review of Fiddle Hell Groton MA, Nov 2-4, 2007

Fiddle Hell was held at the historic Stagecoach Inn in the pretty town of Groton. I attended only the Saturday session but some folks stayed at the Inn and made a weekend of it. On Saturday we arrived at about 9AM and found a few early risers (including some old friends from Falmouth Fiddlers, Quiet Corner Fiddlers, The RI Old Fiddler's Club, and Roaring Jelly) already warming up their fiddles in one of the jam rooms. Pretty much from then until we left at 8pm it was constant jams and workshops.

Fiddle Hell is a fiddle convention held in our area about once a year. There have been fiddle hells in Britain and in other parts of the US and in Groton it has been organized twice by excellent fiddler, fiddle teacher and all around good guy Dave Reiner of the Reiner Family Band. There were probably about 50 or 60 fiddlers attending. There were a few guitar players and a couple of lonely bluegrass banjo folks who really looked, and were, out of place. (I think a clawhammer banjo player would have found a corner to fit in.)

In theory Fiddle Hell is for all fiddlers of any level, but I think it is mostly aimed at intermediate fiddlers - I would be interested to hear what other folks thought about it - I had a great time and was just about fiddled out after 12 hours of pretty nearly non-stop fiddling. There were a series of workshops and many people attended workshops all day, but I spent most of the day just jamming. The workshop I did attend was led by Dave Reiner - he did a good job of teaching some bowing patterns and worked on how to get more fiddling expression into our fiddling.

After that workshop the next session was a slow-speed practice session - Fiddle Hell has a tune list used for the general jam on Saturday evening so the workshop was to practice those tunes. That was the only slo-jamming that I heard all day, and by the way, there was no written music in evidence anywhere all day, except one small sheet of written tunes for homework that was handed out in the Swedish fiddling workshop. Everyone played totally from memory or learned the tunes ont he spot by ear while they were being played. While the slo-practice session was starting I wandered out into the Inn's back bar and soon met some friends. We started playing some familiar tunes and by the time we broke up we had been playing a couple hours and had missed lunch. Oops! That session was moderate speed with many well known tunes that anyone who has attended QCF, Falmouth Fiddlers or the old timey sessions around Boston would probably recognize. It was not a slo-jam but it was not virtuoso fiddling, either. We didn't go around the circle choosing tunes, but I think that anyone who wanted to start a tune could have done so. All day in all parts of the Fiddle Hell the atmosphere was courteous and supportive, not competitive - I didnt see much in the way of big egos and it was not a "break" oriented culture. People were playing together.

After most people finished lunch there was a Scottish/Celtic session in the front bar which was supposed to last about 1 and 1/2 hours but continued most of the afternoon. There was a very good young piano player there whose name I didnt get. He did a great job. There were about 20 fiddlers at the start of the session. Many of them were obviously familiar with the Scottish/CapeBreton repertoire and they continuously sequenced from one tune to another almost non stop for the first two hours. Many of the tunes were not fancy, note-y reels, nor were they all played at break-neck speed. There was a lot of switching between reels, marches, waltzes, strathspeys, etc. not to mention a jig series of about 20 jigs in a row. I'll append a couple audio files to this review so you can hear what they sounded like. While this was going on in the front of the Inn, there were other session happening in the other areas. I missed all of those.

Late in the afternoon as the Scottish session wound up, the remaining folks began playing French Canadian and Old Timey reels. This session definitely wound up playing fast, really fast, like, way too fast!. The remaining eight or ten fiddlers hanging over from the Scottish session were playing a lot of complicated reels and hornpipes at a fast dance speed or faster. It was almost like, we play these so often at 60 beats or 80 beats, let's open her up and see what these babies can do.... 120, 130, 140..... pedal to the metal!!! They were laughing about it.

After about an hour of that in the front room the bar had to open for its regular patrons, so the session split up. Some folks went to do Western Swing fiddling and others went and had a quieter session of old time tunes like Ebenezer, Magpie, etc in another area. There was a bit of obscure tune trading and more folks wandered in and things got eclectic. A very good guitar player came in to our corner and sang some Planxty songs and we all played weepy accompaniment for a while. Then there were more miscellaneous traded tunes until the time came for the general evening jam and the "Fiddle Hell" part where every fiddler plays a solo. By that time we were worn down and ready to leave.... The whole day was a lot of fun, it was great to see and play with old friends and hear how much everyone has improved in their playing, to hear what the latest tunes are that everyone is enjoying. In all, a very good day.

The website for Fiddle Hell is at http://www.reinerfamilyband.com/fiddlehellmassac.html -- it has a link to a photo album that has a lot of photos and some videos of the action...

Matt McConeghy 11/4/2007