What first got you into Old Time Music?

[Ptarmigan]

Like most folks here, I suspect, I was already playing other music when I was aware I heard my first Old Time Music. Of course I really have no idea when I first heard Old Time Music proper, because when I first heard it, I probably didn't even know it was called Old Time.

Anyway, in the late 1970s I was living in Aberdeen, Scotland & in that town was a 5 String Banjo player who, living in splendid isolation, played the sweetest Old Time Banjo tunes & he used to come & play at the local Folk Clubs & sometimes even appear at a Pub Session.

Naturally I heard lots of Irish & Scottish tune flavours coming through that hypnotic clawhammer sound, but it was so very different at the same time. However, I was struggling with the hard process of trying to learn how to play Irish music on the Fiddle & that time & the last thing I needed was a distraction like retuning the fiddle for Old Time tunes & bow patterns.

The next time I came across this music was about 6 or 7 years ago, when I booked the Foghorn Stringband for the wee Folk Club I was running locally, here in North Antrim.
Well, as you can imagine those guys just blew me away & I didn't rest until I got my hands on my first Hammered Dulcimer.
They really were the big event which convinced me that I just had to learn how to play this music.

More recently, I've been getting itchy fingers to try my hand at retuning the fiddle, although I must admit I find the AEAE tuning a little too screetchy & will probably try a slacker tuning.

Anyway, that's my story in brief.

Now it's your turn!
How about giving us an idea how you got into this wonderful music?

Cheers
Dick

[dulcimike]

Cool, Ptarm. Thanks for that.

Well, how did I get to playin' Old-Time? Hmmm. I'm trying to think if there was one event that got me started. Don't know that there was. I started playing hammered dulcimer in 1999, and sometime around then went to the Fiddler's Grove Old-Time and Bluegrass Fiddler's Convention in Union Grove, NC. This is the longest continuously running Old-Time festival in the US. It may have been there or at Upper Potomac Dulcimer Festival in Shepherdstown, WV, or at the Swannanoa Gathering at Warren-Wilson College in Swannanoa, NC. Or it may have been at a hammered dulcimer session in Raleigh, NC, where I lived at the time. But somewhere, I learned an Old-Time tune on the dulcimer, and began listening to Old-Time. I fell in love with it. I loved the modal tunes.

But it was in about 1999 I started playing Old-Time. A few years ago, Sheila Kay Adams came out with a novel, "My Old True Love," and a companion CD with the songs and tunes in the book called "All The Other Fine Things". As I was listening to this CD one evening, I realized I had some of the same reaction to the music as I do to the bagpipes (yes, I walk toward the bagpipes), a deep sense of peace and rest.

Having moved to Tennessee, I have found myself much closer to many Old-Time players than I found in Piedmont North Carolina, and am looking forward to getting to know them and learning some more great tunes.

[harpogrames]

I would mainly have to give kudos to Tobias our banjoist for introducing me to the wonderfull world of oldtime.

I had been interested in irish music for some years (mostly listening!) and still are, but I really liked that rough mountain sound especially on the more modally bluesy tunes.

[banjofeet]

I came across old time accidentally as I suspect many have. I first bought a 5 string banjo in 2000 from Andy Perkins and really had no idea of what I wanted to play on it. I just wanted to play a banjo. The first stop was Bluegrass as I suppose that is more available and better known in some ways. I struggled with that for 6 months until I went to one of Rick Townends banjo evenings that he used to hold at St Julians in Sevenoaks. Then I heard frailing/clawhammer for the first time and knew it was the way the banjo was always meant to be played [apologies Mr Scruggs] Fortunatley the following year Graham Anstee was running a workshop at Broadstairs Folk Festival and the rest as they say is history.

[kristianrrb]

I started playing banjo to impress girls. Really.

I've grown up in the music and played a little bit of guitar, but was easily outplayed by anyone in my highschool.. so i took a banjo of the wall and started playing - just to have something I was best at. Didnt help with the girls though, maybe some truth in the banjo jokes?

Its a lame reason to start playing banjo, I know.. but its true. Thankfully I have always enjoyed the music, but teenage hormones was the reason I started.

/Kristian