Connecting Fiddle Cultures

Hi, I’m Mitch Reed and welcome to my vlog. My vlog today is on connections with the Acadian people up in Northern Maine. I’m living up here in Maine now and playing Cajun music but also studying New England fiddling and Acadian fiddling. And I learned my first Acadian tune. So thank you, Pam Weeks. Shout out to Pam Weeks for teaching me this tune. She’s a great fiddler from Brunswick, Maine. And what was interesting about learning it is there’s a little part in it that reminded me of a Dennis McGee tune down in Louisiana. So I thought it would be fun maybe to play this Acadian tune. It’s called “Crooked Stove Pipe”. Then I’ll play a Dennis tune. There’s a lick in there that reminds me of this Dennis tune and I’ll just kind of show you the connections. So just fun little things that I’m discovering up here. Having a great time in Maine. I’m living right outside of Portland and Old Orchard Beach. So a really interesting place. I’m living right on the Atlantic Ocean. And just amazing, just blown away by living up here, and the weather, and the people, and everything. It’s been great. There’s a great fiddle scene, too. So yeah, so “Crooked Stove Pipe”; I’ll play it. So it goes like this. [01:32]

Alright. “Crooked Stove Pipe”, an Acadian fiddle tune from Northern Maine. So when I learned that tune, it reminded me of a waltz that Dennis McGee played. It’s a really awesome tune called “The Waltz that Finished in the Corner of the House”. And there’s a little section in there where you do the same little slide with the fourth finger on the E string. So I’m gonna play that for you just to show you. This is Dennis’s tune, “The Waltz that Finished in the Corner of the House”. [03:30]

Alright. Dennis McGee, “The Waltz that Finished in the Corner of the House”. So just I wanted to share that with you, just two tunes that kind of found a little connection there with just licks and the way the fingers are moving on the fingerboard. I don’t know if that’s something that made its way down to Louisiana, but just something I thought I would share with you that I thought was interesting.

So yeah, I’m loving life up here in Maine and I just found out that the cryptozoology museum is in Portland, so I’m going to continue to do some Big Foot research and also found out there are some Big Foot groups up here in Northern Maine and even around Portland. So excited about that. But I definitely do miss Louisiana. I just went down there for a week and hung out with some good friends, Cory Ledet and my daughter Renee Reed, and had a fiddle class and had a great time. So I definitely do miss all the Cajuns down there, but loving it up here in Maine. And yeah, it’s just so much fun to take a musical journey, or a fiddle journey, to another culture that there is a connection with the Cajuns and the Creoles and it’s just really been fun and interesting.

So stay inspired and keep on fiddling and hope to see you soon. Thanks so much for joining me today.