¶ Noah VanNorstrand
Welcome to the Fiddle Studio podcast featuring tunes and stories from the world of traditional music and fiddling . I'm Meg Wobus-Beller and today I'll be bringing you a setting of Sure Does ! by Noah VanNorstrand from his debut solo album , Share the Moon . Hello everyone , I hope you are well . Today we're talking to Noah VanNorstrand .
Noah is a fiddler , primarily also sings and plays mandolin and other instruments . He's a percussionist . We'll talk more about that . He composes music . Noah performs with his brother , Andrew , and other bands the Great Bear Trio , Buddy System , Wake Up Robin and the Faux Paws . Noah welcome , it's really great to have you here .
Thanks for having me Good morning .
Good morning . Noah and I grew up in the same area in central New York . I've talked on the podcast that I started playing for dances when I was really young . Noah , you did too . I think you started when you were younger than I was . Can you talk about what that was like when you were a kid and you were getting into traditional music ?
Yeah , well , I started playing fiddle when I was about eight-ish I think that's what we say . Most of my story is very connected to my brother , andrew . I have a younger sibling , I guess , where I just copy the older sibling in many things in life . Music is one of them . He learned fiddle when he was eight .
We say that about two years later I started playing fiddle . He got into playing for country dances . I was like , okay , I'll get into playing for country . My brother Andrew and I did this very much together , especially from my perspective . Yeah , we started playing for dances when I was eight , 10 , somewhere in there with our mother Kim .
I played with my dad , who played piano . You were playing with your mom , who also played piano , and touring around playing for dances . You all were homeschooled , right ? How did that play into your music ? You had a little bit of an unusual I guess older childhood in that you were so immersed in music with your brother and family .
At some point that took over your lives as a teenager , right ?
Yeah , that's true . We were homeschooled . My mom says that the plan was always homeschool us through elementary age , then in junior high or high school we would go to public school . That was the plan . Then , when we started diving into music a lot , right Right at the end of that elementary age , it just kind of didn't happen .
We just kept on homeschooling and kept on doing more and more . I don't want to throw anyone on the bus , but we definitely did more music than other subjects at school . It worked out well for us . It's definitely had . You know , realizing now as an adult like , oh well , maybe school would have also been good .
I feel like at some point , you know how you know a little kid and they get to be a bigger kid , all of a sudden you turn around and they're like a grown up and you're like what happened ? That happened to me a little bit with your fiddling , where I was like , oh yeah , no place to fiddle , no place to fiddle .
You know , we brought you to fiddle camp to teach . Then maybe you came back the next summer and I heard you and I was like what happened ? Oh my god , I mean this is just my own personal curiosity , but you got really good really fast .
I think what happened is to put an over easy answer is that Andrew . Andrew started playing guitar , so he was no longer playing double fiddle for the most part . Andrew learned guitar and then I was the only fiddler . There was just a lot more .
I was just fiddling a lot more Because the first when I run Great Bear , that was the band with my brother and my , our mom . When that band first started I was like exclusively percussion , hand percussion , children , remote drums , and then I would play like fiddle on one or two things that I could play that fast when I was like 10 .
And so slowly Andrew learned guitar , I learned mandolin . I played a whole lot more fiddle when Andrew was playing guitar and I that's . That's the only answer I can think of .
Okay , but I'm going to follow up because , because we were , we were at camp one year and the kids asked and they always ask this how much do you practice ? And your brother gave this sort of , he gave an explanation of his own practicing . That went on for a little while I love your brother and then he was like no one never practices .
It depends on what we're , what we're defining the word to mean I would play constantly . I would be playing my instrument constantly , pract . I wasn't like , okay , I'm going to . I'm going to do this one thing repeatedly until I can play it better .
Did you ever play scales ?
No , no , no , no , no , no , no , no scales .
And you didn't . You didn't repeat something slow it down .
No , to the extent of the reason I especially like as a growing up learning . As a kid I wouldn't have the patience to like I don't want to learn a tune , I'll learn a tune . That takes so much time . I'm just going to write a tune I was writing my own and then , and then I don't have to learn a tune .
It's like this easy little scapegoat I know a new tune now and I didn't have to learn it . So again like it wasn't like even learning repertoire , it was just writing tunes .
Well , thank you . Let's talk about writing tunes a little bit . Did you just write tunes from the start ? When did you start writing tunes ?
It was pretty much from the start . It was like right along with learning the first ten full tunes , I think the order things went in Andrew would go to a little lesson with this older lady , also in central New York . Her name was Granny Sweet . She was like right out of a comic book . She was amazing .
She had like wore bonnet all the time the anime dresses . When I think back I was like , oh , it's just Granny Sweet and I think that's like what was that ? Who was she ?
Anyway , Andrew would have like weekly lessons with her and he would learn these little upstate New York tunes , central New York tunes , western New York tunes , and then I was too young to have the focus for like a lesson and he would come back and then I would learn it off of Andrew .
He wouldn't really teach me , I would just like Andrew would be practicing and then I would soak it in , sponge it off of them . So right along with learning tunes like that , I would get frustrated and like , oh , I'll just write my own tune . So there was really both happening at the very same time of learning the instrument .
There's tunes were not well , they were . They were what they were .
Well , the year that you brought your tune Griffin Road to camp , you told me , megan , my retirement plan is I'm going to teach all these kids to play my tunes . They're going to grow up and record them and pay me royalties and I have to tell you .
Did you know that Cecilia Vacanti , one of the little campers , she has an album with King Fisher and she recorded Griffin Road ?
My plans coming full circle . It's only took 15 years or whatever 10 years , so you have you're still writing tunes and you have an album coming out .
That is is everything on the album your compositions .
It sure is , yeah , a little more involved than that it's as a . It has a pandemic story , like many albums do nowadays .
¶ Music in the Pandemic and Projects
When the pandemic happened and hit and all the gigs all poofed away in that very surreal spring , you know , at that point I hadn't spent more than two or three weeks at a time at home , uninterrupted time at home , for more than two weeks in I don't know two decades , a very long time , and it was a very weird feeling and there weren't any gigs and so ,
kind of as a excuse to keep my instrument out of its case , I decided that I'm just going to write a tune every day , I'm going to wake up and I'm going to go on this porch . I had a gorgeous porch I could hang out on and I write a tune and post it , no matter how bad it was . Like that wasn't the point .
The point was just to play my instrument and the way that I most easily can play my instrument is to write a tune .
So , especially in the beginning , especially in the first two years of the pandemic , there were these big chunks of time where , like I don't know , like a month and a half worth of every single day except weekends , I would write a tune and out of that about 19 were worth recording . I'll accept .
I think two of the tunes on the CD are from that process , from that project where you want to whatever you want to call it tune a day , and it was really fun , and now that I'm busy again I miss it .
So yeah , so you've got these tunes on the album . Who are you playing with them with ? You're playing them on fiddle . Did you also do the percussion Noah plays ? When he performs , he's often sitting on a box with shoes on that tap on the floor and then he's also fiddling . So he's yeah , I can't describe this .
So can you talk about that and then maybe just tell us who you're playing with ?
Yes , I could do that . The percussion thing I'm doing when I fiddle it's from a French-Canadian tradition Playing at festivals and stuff where they aren't very familiar with French-Canadian music and they're always like do you invent this thing ? No , definitely not . This is not my thing .
This is something when I was like 10 or something , a French-Canadian fiddler , I think Richard Forest , I think was showing me it . So it's a French-Canadian tradition and , yeah , it's a simple little footstep you can do while you're sitting . And I have this like contraption box that I built so that I'm always at the right height .
I was at the right height chair , but it's just a piece of plywood and leather bottom shoes . That's all that . That is my fiddling .
Well , the other thing I would say is that I feel like , as I analyze my own fiddling more that hearing myself play fiddle when I'm not doing feet , it sounds really different , like my fiddling has evolved with my feet playing and when their shoe happened together it does sound .
It sounds like me , it sounds , I think , better , but it sounds noticeably different , and so the two my feet and the fiddle are very interlocked . I feel like that's really interesting .
Yeah , and your actual , your fiddle style . When I hear you , I mean we grew up in the same area , even though New York is not technically part of New England , the New England and like the French Canadian influence there was so strong , I bet we were learning the same kind of New England and easy French tunes .
And you , you play , the way you play sounds to me like new way . They know that . They got to get that .
Up bow stuff yeah .
Is it . Is that how you would describe your basic ?
Yeah , yes , yes , okay , how would I do you believe me ? So my fiddling , my fiddling , definitely is for contra dancing . I did , that is what I lived and breathed for 20 years . This is all I , all I ever did . Now I did , but when I did do other things , I was just still playing for a contra dance . Just no one was dancing .
So my fiddling is like a lot of music and contra dancing there isn't . I'm not playing . I'm not really playing Celtic music Like I wouldn't . I wouldn't sound Celtic next to like Liz Carroll or Martin Hayes or someone . It's Celtic it . And then I'm not really playing old time music . I wouldn't sound like a Appalachian old time fiddler next to Bruce Molsky .
Same thing with French Canadian , the same thing with New England , like it's . I'm playing all of these different things and they're borrowing little bits of all of the traditions but it's really like mashed together to hopefully make a good contra dance experience .
Like that's what I did for so long was just like what are the bits of all these traditions that make the best , make the best contra dance ? I'm doing less contra dances nowadays and trying to find what that means for my fiddling . How do I market myself ? Like there's , like a bluegrass festival doesn't know what a contra dance even is .
So what do you ? What are you doing instead of dances ?
Our main project that I'm part of right now is a band called the Faux Paws . You mentioned Faux Paws . Paws like little puppy Paws , it's a pun . It's with my brother and then our friend basically other brother at this point Chris Miller , who plays saxophone and banjo .
That band is very much trying to we're trying to not like we don't want to like disrespect or shake or shake off the contra dance community at all , but it is so easy to get pigeonholed into one thing and we're trying to like we can do concerts too . So we're trying you have to be very on purpose , basically . So we're trying to really focus .
We're playing concerts , we're trying to get festivals and and that's where our energy is all going into is to convince the organ , because our festival organizers will be like oh , you guys , you guys were a great pair of trade , you want to play a little contra dance at our festival .
We're like no , actually , maybe not Give us a different kind of chance , please . So anyway , that's where we are right now .
I heard you guys . That was such a fun house concert .
Yeah , both of them were .
Yeah , and even though your basic style , I would agree , is Contradance , you learn some tricks somewhere , noah . When you take a solo , you do not sound like a Contradance .
Maybe it's from playing solos next to a saxophone for the past 10 years . The weird things happen .
You need to hear some of these weird things . Are you soloing on the album ?
Yeah , a little bit . The album is my solo album . I guess by the time this comes out it'll be out . It's kind of going a little bit back towards what Andrew and I were doing in high school . It is more tune-based . You had mentioned to ask who else is on the CD , and so it's part of how it sounds .
The original plan for my CD was like you know what , I'm going to play all the instruments myself and then it'll be like my solo CD where I play all the instruments , and that would have been fine and fun in its own way , I guess . But then I was like my brother is one of the best guitar players in the country . Why would I play guitar ?
I can fake it , I can get by , but my brother is Andrew . So that idea chained into actually getting musicians that were good at the instruments that they play . So Andrew plays guitar and our friend Rachel Bell plays accordion and Dana Billings was the engineer for the CD and he also played the drums in percussion .
Well , he played the drums , I played the percussion , but he played the drums for the couple tracks that have drums . And then we had a bass player . A friend , Jordan Morton , was their bass player and those people just hold up in an electric Wilberland in Ithaca and made it , and a couple years ago now it feels like .
Where can folks go to check out that CD and also the faux pas ? I know you guys have a great EP , a couple of them .
Yeah , yeah . And greatbearmusic . com is a place you can go and that has all of the things that Andrew and I are involved in together . So it has all the great beer albums from the past and then faux pas albums , and then this , my new solo album , is also there , along with buddy system albums . Make a problem thing .
Anything that Andrew and I do together goes there .
Okay , and people can . Can they order CDs ? They could get the digital downloads .
You do both those things . Yep , they can order . Order the physical CD through , I think , at the grapebearermusiccom takes you to our bandcamp page . So it's all the things that bandcamp offers .
And musicians sell through bandcamp , because we we don't actually get income from streaming . So , or I don't know , three cents , I wouldn't count it as income . We're not paying taxes on that Three cents .
We have to put a good stream for three cents .
So pay your . If you want to pay a fairer price for music , check out yeah , check out bandcamp . Our tune for today is off of Noah's new CD , and this tune is called Sure Does .
With an exclamation point .
Sure Does ! Noah , can you tell us about this tune a little ?
Again , it's a cute little kind of New England-y , french-canadian type again , not really but type tune , and it's named after I got . I got a great friend group , great friend group , a bunch of contra dancers that all went to the same Great Bear weekends for three years and so they really became like little contra family and there's a .
There's a really dumb joke . That punchline is Sure Does , and I figured those friends needed a tune on the CD . So this tune is called Sure Does .
¶ Podcast Interview and Music Recommendations
Hey , Noah . Thank you so much for coming on the podcast today . It's been a real treat . We're very excited . Make sure to check out Noah's album and go to GreatbearMusic .
Yes , greatbearmusic . com . Yeah , okay .
We're going to hear this tune now . Okay , okay , okay , 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 .