Anyone attend this year?
Fiddle Hell is a 4 day fiddle centric event held in central Mass each year. Just about every style has classes and workshops, with an emphasis on contradance, old tyme, Scottish, Cape Breton, French-Canadian but bluegrass, swing, cajun, klezmer and others are represented along with classes on technique, bowing, improv, etc. And jam sessions geared for those style and lots of open and impromptu jams popping up all over the place. If you are tied to the dots or to tab, this is maybe not the event for you, ear learning (and yes, there are workshops for this too) is the best way to absorb Fiddle Hell. The instructors are all top players in their styles.
I've been to 6 of them over the years and always come away from it with an ear full of new tunes, but more importantly many new ideas, new riffs and tricks to incorporate and really, for me, refreshing the love and excitement that fiddle brings.
This year I was taking a break, sitting in a small alcove playing some original tunes, when Molly Mason sat down and started playing guitar to back me up (flawlessly). All of a sudden Jay Unger joined us and we jammed on some of my tunes and some of the old Fiddle Fever tunes, for like 40 minutes or so. Folks looking in realized who was jamming and of course the group grew larger and more diverse, but we spent about 2 hours with these 2 legends. Jay broke out some of his Civil War tunes and a few old standards got thrown out there. Just saying the opportunity to play with some really fine fiddlers in a really intimate setting abound. I'd highly recommend checking Fiddle Hell out next year if you can, its well worth it.
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