Instrument horror stories (Jaybird)

We're going to be talking about instrument horror stories . A lot of these are from the Facebook Fiddlers Association . Oh my gosh . I posted and they delivered . Reading through the comments , my children came in to see what my husband and I were yelling about , because there were so many comments that made us just shout oh no .

So this episode might need a little trigger warning . If the ideas of fiddlers and bows , crunching and cracking is going to send you into a tailspin , maybe skip to the next episode . Anyway , I think there's some pretty funny stories . I'll tell you mine first .

When I was little , my dad and I would argue and this never happened but if I fell down the stairs , should I protect myself or should I protect the instrument ? You know , fall on me or fall on the violin . And we would joke about it . And I would say well , I should fall on the violin because I can always get a new violin .

And he said no , protect the violin because you'll heal and the violin won't . Luckily , my fiddlers were all safe up until I was an adult . But as a teenager I did run down the stairs in our house and there was a doorway there and my bow just stuck between the door and the door jam and tips snapped right off . And that was a nice bow I was .

I was already playing professionally at that point . Oh my , my parents were not impressed by this . They said I had to buy my own bow . So we went down to Tom Hosmer . Tom Hosmer , great fiddler and has a violin shop in the Syracuse area , has for many years , because he sold me all my fiddles from when I was three and he's still there . He was so nice .

I looked at bows and I picked out the one that I wanted . I didn't have enough money to buy it , but I had a summer job at that point . So I said can you give me a loaner bow and then I'll save my money for my summer job and I'll come back and buy this bow ? And he said oh , meg , just take the bow and bring the money back when you have it .

That was great . So I did get to practice that summer with a decent bow and worked all summer and then gave all the money to Tom for the bow . But I was more careful with my instruments . After that lesson learned , I did have my instruments stolen out of my car . That was very sad when that happened .

Hopefully that violin and bow ended up with someone who could use them because they were nice . That was my college violin . My violin now the Rimmer Owen violin had a tiny crack for a long time . That was not causing any harm at all . I was just nursing it along , keeping it humid in the winter , and I bumped my violin at a gig I was sitting .

It just slipped through my fingers and kind of crashed against the stage and the crack spread all the way up the front of the violin . It was horrifying . People had to play the rest of the gig and then I took it to Michael Weller in Alexandria . He fixed it up . But oh my goodness . So let's talk about some of these stories from Facebook .

There were a lot of car stories . I was surprised at the number of car stories . So I knew , when I was a teenager , a bass player who had a van and they had , like , not shut the door all the way the bass had fallen out of the back of their van into the road and gotten hit by a car .

There were at least two guys on Facebook who had run over guitars with their cars . How does this happen ? Someone else described getting a headache . They had their fiddle in their car without a case . They put it on the seat behind them and then later they had this headache and they just leaned their seat back to take a nap and crushed the fiddle .

Wow , that must have been a moment and already had a headache . Wow . A couple of people talked about fiddles in hot cars , so the glue melting or the especially the neck falling off . So maybe that's the glue that goes first , because there were a lot of different humidity neck falling off stories .

You always think about keeping your fiddle humid enough during like dry winter months , but apparently if it gets too humid the neck can fall off . So somebody talked about it happening at a hurricane or in a hot car or an outdoor like summer jam session . Yeah , this girl lost her fiddle at the airport . That's kind of everyone's nightmare .

I've left my fiddle at restaurants and bars . Always got it back , you know . I mean they say Yo-yo Ma left St rad in a cab , got it back . Most people are pretty good natured trying to help you get your instrument back . I did love the stories from mishaps from the middle of gigs .

I felt a little bad for the girls that she almost threw up all over her fiddle , but a lot of bow flying incidents . So someone described that they had some weakness in their hand and that their bow would fly out . But a lot of other people said that they had just , you know , accidentally thrown their bow . You know playing vigorously . I guess it happens .

I've never thrown my bow while playing . There's other things that can go wrong . Yeah , I saw about a bridge breaking in half and the whole string quartet kind of erupted and the people jerked because it made a really loud sound and then there was like stands falling over and music flying . That sounds like quite an experience .

I'll give you my two favorite stories here . This guy said that he had his fiddle on stage along with his guitar , his Martin D 28 . I don't know what that means , but I assume that it means something if you put that in there . He says a girl who had been drinking . She fell onto the stage hitting the fiddle stand , sending it over into the dance floor .

So the fiddle went flying . It landed upside down , cracked open the top and while the fiddle was in the air , the stand fell down onto the guitar and punched a hole in the upper . Bout in the rosewood . Yeah , a moment of silence for this guy . What a terrible gig . Oh yeah yeah . There were several sitting and stepping on fiddle stories .

You gotta keep the case closed , folks . These were all open case stories . Okay , here's my last one . I'm just going to read it to you . "My newly restored vintage fiddle was resting loosely in a soft case when a gust of wind swept the case and fiddle overboard .

This was on a sunset cruise on a wind-powered sailing ship with a historic band entertaining the passengers . After 20 minutes and running over the fiddle several times , we picked it up . The glue had dissolved , leaving it in pieces . Mmm , yeah , this was inspiring me never to take my fiddle on a boat for any reason . Oh , no gig is worth that much .

Ah well , take a deep breath . After those , I think we're all resolved to take good care of our instruments . Now Our tune for today is J-Bird . This is a tune from the Baltimore Old Time Jam . Hey , I am a sponsor of the Baltimore Old Time Jam . You can go online and find out more about it . It's at baltimoreoldtimefest . com .

The old time scene around here is supported by Ken Kolodner and his son , Brad Kolodner , and they do a lot of events and they're all great . There's a square dance , a jam , there's a festival in April and I wanted to get the word out for my business Fiddle Studio , where I have my courses and my books and I interact with students through that site .

I was looking for local places to advertise that weren't just giving more money to Google , because who needs to do that ? Yeah , so I'm sponsoring the Old Time Jam and if you're coming through Baltimore you should definitely check it out .

A big thank you to Brad and Ken for doing that jam , because I get so many tunes for the pod from them , including this one , Jaybord , also called March to the Fife or kind of Pennsylvania Fifers . Yeah , there's a few different fifing names for it , considered kind of a revival tune .

Also has been played a lot since the 1960s , early 70s by some of the Fiddlers and Banjo players in that time frame . So , like Art Rosenbaum , John Burke , Joel Schimberg , it was collected from Southwestern Pennsylvania . Yeah , we're looking, m ountain country played on the fiddle and the fife , and that would have been same time , mid-20th century .

It was played both as a march and as a reel . We kind of do it as a march at the jam . Some of it sounds like Skip to my Lou . We play the high part first and then we play the low part second . If you want to hear it that way , there is a recording on Slippery Hill of John Summers playing it in 1970 , basically the same way .

We do it at the Baltimore Old Time Jam . The Fiddle tune archive had the high part second , so somebody must play it that way . This is Jaybird . Yeah , nice D tune . Here we go you . Thank you for listening . You can find the music for today's tune at fiddlestudio . com , along with my books , courses and membership for learning to fiddle .

I'll be back next week with another tune for you . Have a wonderful day .