• Facebook
  • Youtube
  • Instagram
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Mail
Contributor Login
  • 0Shopping Cart
FolkWorks
  • Home
  • Events
  • Features
  • Resources
  • About Us
  • Archives
  • Contact
  • DONATE
  • Search
  • Menu Menu
Sutphin_and_Levy_and_Bragger|Sutphin_and_Levy_2

Old Time Tiki Parlour

OLD TIME ORACLE / David Bragger

Old Time Tiki Parlour

Kirk Sutphin and Bertram Levy

By David Bragger

Sutphin_and_Levy_and_BraggerAs an obsessive teacher and player of old-time music, it was about time for me to institute a location for secret (and not so secret) jam sessions, workshops and house concerts. For years, I’ve felt a strong urge to bring players, friends and students together where they can hear different perspectives and approaches to old time music through jamming, interacting and observing some of the best musicians in old time music today. The location: The Old Time Tiki Parlour in Los Angeles. Recently I’ve had the pleasure of hosting a multitude of Sausage Grinder-led jam sessions as well as workshops in fiddle and banjo by artists such as Cajun master David Greely and OT funk maestro Dan Gellert. Later this year we’ll be hosting a banjo workshop by Bob Carlin during the week of the Los Angeles Old Time Social. A concert by ragtime guitar wizard Craig Ventresco is also in the works. This year things were recently kicked off with a concert by a very unique duo, The Kirk Sutphin and Bertram Levy Duo.

As many of you may know, these guys are the real deal. North Carolina musician Kirk Sutphin started playing at the age of eight with his fiddling grandfather as his great inspiration. After his passing, Kirk began learning from Round Peak legend Tommy Jarrell. Many consider Sutphin the great living link to that older Round Peak tradition made famous by Tommy Jarrell, Fred Cockerham, Kyle Creed, The Camp Creek Boys, Charlie Lowe, etc. His fiddling and banjo playing are infectious and I’ve admired him since I started playing. He also plays in the Charlie Poole and Oscar Jenkins styles of banjo too. Something not to be missed.

Sutphin_and_Levy_2Bertram started playing banjo at the age of fourteen and later moved to the South and immersed himself in old time music. He was an original member of the great instrumental revival band The Hollow Rock String Band which brought the world the repertoire of WV fiddler Henry Reed. Together, the duo plays fiddle, banjo and concertina duets and solos. I’ve always loved hearing accordion/fiddle together from the very few recordings we have of fiddle/accordion duets like Mangrum & Shriver as well as from the home recordings of Ed Haley. Although not an accordion, the concertina is from the free reed aerophone  family of instruments like the accordion. Sutphin and Levy poured out some wonderful arrangements of fiddle/concertina duets that were hypnotic and mesmerizing, drawing from sources such as Henry Reed and Tommy Jarrell. Levy also plays an up the neck melodic banjo style that is powerful and very complimentary to Sutphin’s fiddling. Additionally, Sutphin played some duets on his Kyle Creed replica banjo made by Kevin Fore that brought the ghost of Fred Cockerham right into the parlour. Their CD can be purchased here. During their stay, I ran a camera or two before and after the concert. Here I present to you a clip of them playing Wesley’s tune. Enjoy.

David Bragger is a Los Angeles-based instructor and player of old time fiddle and banjo music. He also photographs, films, and collects the lore of traditional artists, from puppeteers in Myanmar to fiddlers of Appalachia www.myspace.com/davidbragger

Share this entry
  • Share on Facebook
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Pinterest
  • Share on LinkedIn
  • Share by Mail
https://folkworks.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Sutphin_and_Levy_2.jpg 500 500 Steve Shapiro https://folkworks.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/FolkWorks-logo-large.png Steve Shapiro2013-02-28 11:11:312020-11-18 10:23:44

Old Time Tiki Parlour

All Columns

Featured Columnists

  • Art Podell
  • Chris Wilson
  • David Bragger
  • Lindsey Terrell
  • Roland Sturm
  • Ross Altman

FolkWorks Partners

Join our E-mail Community

As a valued member of our e-mail community, you will receive updates on events, stories, performances and more in our monthly newsletter, along with the occasional special announcement to give you the latest news in folk/roots. We promise your e-mail is safe with us.  We don’t sell or share our database with any third-party vendors.

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

  • LIKE US ON FACEBOOK
  • JOIN THE FOLKWORKS FACEBOOK GROUP
  • BECOME A FOLKWORKS DONOR
  • ADVERTISE WITH US
YOU TUBE INSTAGRAM TWITTER EMAIL PRIVACY POLICY

All Material Copyright © 2001-2023 FolkWorks. All rights reserved. Website by: Integritive

Scroll to top

This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience on our website, analyze site traffic, and show event times in your timezone. By continuing to browse the site, you are agreeing to our use of cookies.

Accept

Cookie and Privacy Settings



How we use cookies

We may request cookies to be set on your device. We use cookies to let us know when you visit our websites, how you interact with us, to enrich your user experience, and to customize your relationship with our website.

Click on the different category headings to find out more. You can also change some of your preferences. Note that blocking some types of cookies may impact your experience on our websites and the services we are able to offer.

Essential Website Cookies

These cookies are strictly necessary to provide you with services available through our website and to use some of its features.

Because these cookies are strictly necessary to deliver the website, refusing them will have impact how our site functions. You always can block or delete cookies by changing your browser settings and force blocking all cookies on this website. But this will always prompt you to accept/refuse cookies when revisiting our site.

We fully respect if you want to refuse cookies but to avoid asking you again and again kindly allow us to store a cookie for that. You are free to opt out any time or opt in for other cookies to get a better experience. If you refuse cookies we will remove all set cookies in our domain.

We provide you with a list of stored cookies on your computer in our domain so you can check what we stored. Due to security reasons we are not able to show or modify cookies from other domains. You can check these in your browser security settings.

Other external services

We also use different external services like Google Webfonts, Google Maps, and external Video providers. Since these providers may collect personal data like your IP address we allow you to block them here. Please be aware that this might heavily reduce the functionality and appearance of our site. Changes will take effect once you reload the page.

Google Webfont Settings:

Google Map Settings:

Google reCaptcha Settings:

Vimeo and Youtube video embeds:

Privacy Policy

You can read about our cookies and privacy settings in detail on our Privacy Policy Page.

Privacy Policy