Hi Folks, Welcome to my blog, “the Continuing Tradition.” I have always felt that traditional music and dance isn’t just “old stuff”, that is to say it’s not “stuck in time.” Don’t get me wrong. I love 100+ year old fiddle tunes, songs, dances and love how they have been preserved through the years, (yes, even without the use of YouTube videos)… BUT a lot of what we think of as modern now will become part of “the tradition” going forward! In this blog I’ll try to share some thoughts and stories about all this.

Who am I? Well, I am a native New Englander, born in Massachusetts, high school in NH, spent time during and after college in Pennsylvania, and for the last 40 years or so, call Maine home. As far as music and dance go, I call myself a contra and barn dance caller and choreographer, working on singing squares, and play guitar and/or stand-up bass and sing in three bands, Scrod Pudding, a ‘contradance band’; T-Acadie, a folk trio; and JimmyJo and the Jumbol’Ayuhs, a Cajun dance band. I have also been involved with Maine Fiddle Camp for over 15 years both as a teacher and “behind the scenes.” So where did all this “folky” stuff start?

My first introduction to traditional or “folk” music was from my scoutmaster, Dick Rhoades, (troop 154, Durham, NH). He played tenor guitar and guitar around the campfire and I learned a lot of songs that way. It made me nag my mom into going out and buying me a guitar. I guess I was 10 or 11? Don’t remember much about that first one but it wasn’t very good, so when it became clear that I was going to stick with this she went out and bought me an Epiphone, let’s say “parlor sized” steel string guitar. It was brown and played pretty well. At this time I was also playing tuba in the marching band at school. Played that all thru school and college and just recently started again, playing in the Great Horned Owls at Fiddle Camp with a 100 year old Conn Bb Sousaphone. I digress (well not really).

My dad was basketball coach at UNH, so my brothers and I were “fac brats” with access to college events especially ones in the gymnasium where we hung out a lot. I remember several folk music concerts in the gym, Kingston Trio, Chad Mitchell Trio and Pete Seeger were touring college campus back then and come to mind. At the same time I was really interested in electronics and at around age ten, I enlisted my mother again to go out to her friends and get old AM radios that didn’t work out of their attics and bring them home for me to “fix.” Fixing meant swapping tubes around from one radio to another until one worked!! Then I rigged up a speaker under my pillow and proceeded to listen to radio ‘rock’ stations (yeah they were all “oldies” stations back then, hah hah…) all night long.  I loved the doo wop vocal groups with their harmonies and started learning the “bass part” to all the old songs. Get a Job, Mother-in-Law, etc.  Anyway, armed with a guitar that I could play 1,4 and 5 chords on and a bunch of “bass lines” I fumbled around until I showed up at Swarthmore College in fall of 1964 at age 17. Things were about to change.

In the spring of 1965 was my first Swarthmore Folk Festival. I didn’t know it at the time but a Swarthmore alum named Ralph Rinzler had been the guiding force behind the festival since the 1950s. Ralph was a member of the Greenbriar Boys for a while but more importantly went on to establish the Smithsonian Institution’s folklife program and became a celebrated folklorist in his own right who helped bring Bill Monroe, Doc Watson, Hazel Dickens, Dewey Balfa and many more to the “national audience.”  Read about Ralph HERE. Names I remember from the Folk Fests: Doc Watson, Bill Monroe, Doc and Earl, Patrick Sky, Junior Wells, New Lost City Ramblers, Phil Ochs, Dave Van Ronk, Gordon Bok, Charles River Valley Boys with Joe Val, Eric Andersen, Joni Mitchell, John Fahey, J.B. Hutto, Richie Havens, Greenbriar Boys with Frank Wakefield, Little Walter, Charlie Musselwhite, Son House, Skip James… that ought to be enough… I remember Bill Monroe and Doc Watson performing on stage together! I really didn’t know what I was witnessing at the time but it certainly started me on the path I am still on.

After college I started attending Bluegrass festivals in the mid-south as much as I could and as many Bluegrass and Old-time music concerts and festivals locally (I was still in eastern PA) as I could. There was a weekly Bluegrass shindig in Englishtown, NJ at the Englishtown Music Hall (formerly a Knights of Pythias hall) with the house band Late Night Garage. They had a kitchen behind the stage and you could eat dinner there too until the place burned down. However, before that, one night after the concert they had a square dance. I tried it, felt a little self-conscious, but, “interesting,” I thought. At one local concert I was seated next to a young woman (her name was Laine Neubauer) who invited me to a square dance in Philly at the “International House” at the University of Pennsylvania. The dance happened every Wednesday night and had live old-time music and occasionally bands and callers from away. I remember dancing to Sandy Bradley calling to the Arm and Hammer String Band (featuring Pete Sutherland and Joel Eckhaus). This dance was mostly squares with a contra or two thrown in and, curiously enough, a Hambo at the break. Afterwards folks met at Cavanaugh’s Pub. They had an old time jam session in one corner, an Irish jam in the other and shady looking IRA guys walking around collecting money for “the cause.” There I would have a beer or two with Annie Patterson, author of the Rise Up Singing books. Anyway, I was hooked. Eventually a small contra dance formed in Philly. I think it was on Thursday nights and was the forerunner of the long running Summit Church contra dance which is now, of course, the Glenside dance. This first dance was small, had the same band and caller (sure.. caller was Laine Neubauer) every week and they pretty much played and called the same tunes and dances EVERY week! We didn’t care. Hull’s Victory and other “chestnuts,” but “modern” dances too. Over the next several years I danced in PA and NJ but also became a bit of a “dance gypsy,” attending NEFFA and Dawn Dances in Brattleboro when I could.  In 1984 it was “back to New England,” specifically Maine. Things were about to change again..

I will leave most of the “Maine Story” for future postings. I will say that the trad musical influences here in Maine are different than in Pennsylvania. For one thing, Maine is the only state in the lower 48 with a boundary to only one other state (NH). The rest is Canada and the trad music influence here is very Canadian.  Maine is where I got introduced to Cape Breton fiddle tunes, Canadian maritime fiddle tunes (Downeast fiddling), Quebecois dance music, French Acadian music and by extension Cajun and Creole music from Louisiana. Yep, things got really “French” all of a sudden!

So there’s my small slice of this “continuing tradition.” I have learned and am learning a lot along the way and have a lot to talk about in the coming months (and many stories to tell!) Here are some Maine trad music and dance links: Maine Fiddle Camp; DEFFA (sponsors the Downeast Country Dance Festival); Fiddle-icious; 317 Main; Here are links to a couple of my bands: T-Acadie; JimmyJo and the Jumbol’Ayuhs; There’s some audio and video on them. Here’s my own totally outdated website. It hasn’t been updated for several years BUT my dance compositions are on there! Finally, Pam Weeks and I host an online mini-concert and intermediate level jam session every Tuesday night at 6:45pm ET. That streams live on Facebook and you can access that via Pam’s Facebook page. Here’s the link. Tuesday, March first is Mardi Gras and we will be joined by our bandmate Jim and Mitch Reed for a special Cajun Mardi Gras concert. Here’s that LINK.

Thanks for reading!! See y’all next month! – bill