About Me
I play dances, weddings, private parties, and public performances. I also present hybrid lectures/concerts on the music of the Civil War.
A "Gumbo" Fiddler
I've been playing the violin/fiddle since I was four. Trained classically, when I was a teenager I fell in love with Irish music. I was also raised listening to a lot of Cajun music, which manifests in my musical style, which is a hybrid "accent" of classical, Celtic, Cajun, and old-time southern influences (I'm from the mountains of North Carolina, where the accent of the mountains became part of my musical expression).
Gumbo is a pot with all sorts of things thrown in, usually whatever you have on-hand. In this way, I consider myself a gumbo fiddler, combining the elements I was raised with and influenced by into my own unique flavor.
So, What's the Difference Between a Violin and a Fiddle?
I get asked this question more often than anything else. There are two answers I like to give:
You don't cry when you spill beer on your fiddle
or
A violin has strings. A fiddle has "strangs."
Fundamentally, a violin and a fiddle are the same thing. You can play Paganini on your grampa's hand-made box, and you can play a hoedown on a Stradivarius.
That said, there are certain things you can do with and to an instrument to make it more of a violin or a fiddle. Choice of strings, the cut of your bridge, etc can make an instrument more like a violin than a fiddle or vice versa. But they're still fundamentally the same instrument.
