A couple of years ago, I decided to send out some fiddling videos to members of the Aurora Fiddle Society here in Yellowknife. It’s supposed to be once a month, but sometimes months get missed… Anyway, here’s the first one:
November 2012
For this first instalment of Ryan’s YouTube Pick of the Month, here’s my favourite contemporary old time fiddle and banjo duo, Sheesham and Lotus, from Wolfe Island (Kingston) Ontario. The fiddling’s only in the first half. Enjoy!
A few years ago I read a book by Ben Reitman called Boxcar Bertha: An autobiography (New York 1988: Amok Press). It told the story of “Boxcar” Bertha Thompson, a so-called “sister of the road” who was a hobo back in the day. We don’t usually imagine there being many women hobos, but this book gives a colourful look at what it might have been like. She declares at the end that she “…had wanted to know how it felt to be a hobo, a radical, a prostitute, a thief, a reformer, a social worker and a revolutionist. Now I knew. I shuddered. Yes, it was all worthwhile to me. There were no tragedies in my life” (p.280).
There are some great passages about Bertha and her life on the road that inspired my song of the same title.
She asks: “Why am I afraid of my child? Why do I want more than one man? I am truly married to the box cars. There’s something constantly itching in my soul that only the road and the box cars can satisfy. Jobs, lovers, a child—don’t seem to be able to curb my wanderlust” (275).
Her friend says of her: “As for you, in spite of your agnostic parents, you inherited a deep religious nature. You’re a religious mystic, a Christian anarchist riding in a box car to find God. Whenever you go out tramping, on freights or hitch-hiking, you’re running away from something, and looking for something at the same time” (276).
It’s about Roseville, California. I got an email from on a mailing list one time that talked about how hard it is to catch a freight train out of there, and it reminded me of a section of Jack London’s excellent book, The Road. Here’s the email, and an excerpt from the book (the whole thing is available here, although the chapters aren’t in the right order).
The email:
fucking roseville .
how many people have had their plans scrapped and said the same thing?
Spent fourteen hours at the oasis, got caught by connely (err?) and put into the mythical database. He knows about the place and parks where you cant see, even if you try and go further down, up the little hill to the next hole in the fence, he parks easily out of sight not some 300 yards from there and watches you.
BEWARE, there must be a new spot i dont know about. Met a guy that had just got slashed in the arm by an ftra guy (so he claimed) in Ogden, met a kid who rode with him from utah….its strange, I always meet people hopping on days that I can’t catch out.
Just in case anyone doesn’t know, if you wind up in roseville , over by the amtrak station is a church not even a block away from the station, (you’ll see it) and they offer soup and coffee and oatmeal and razors in the morning if you’re there around 8 thirty. I wish you all better luck than i had, not sure where else to go in roseville now so I’m open to suggestions. thanks!
riley rhodes
From The Road:
At 10.20 P.M. the Central Pacific overland pulled out of the depot at Sacramento for the East — that particular item of time-table is indelibly engraved on my memory. There were about a dozen in our gang, and we strung out in the darkness ahead of the train ready to take her out. All the local road-kids that we knew came down to see us off — also, to “ditch” us if they could. That was their idea of a joke, and there were only about forty of them to carry it out. Their ring-leader was a crackerjack road-kid named Bob. Sacramento was his home town, but he’d hit The Road pretty well everywhere over the whole country. He took French Kid and me aside and gave us advice something like this: “We’re goin’ to try an’ ditch your bunch, see? Youse two are weak. The rest of the push can take care of itself. So, as soon as youse two nail a blind, deck her. An’ stay on the decks till youse pass- Roseville junction, at which burg the constables are horstile, sloughin’ in everybody on sight.”
The engine whistled and the overland pulled out. There were three blinds on her — room for all of us. The dozen of us who were trying to make her out would have preferred to slip aboard quietly; but our forty friends crowded on with the most amazing and shameless publicity and advertisement. Following Bob’s advice, I immediately “decked her,” that is, climbed up on top of the roof of one of the mail-cars. There I lay down, my heart jumping a few extra beats, and listened to the fun. The whole train crew was forward, and the ditching went on fast and furious. After the train had run half a mile, it stopped, and the crew came forward again and ditched the survivors. I, alone, had made the train out.
Back at the depot, about him two or three of the push that had witnessed the accident, lay French Kid with both legs off. French Kid had slipped or stumbled -that was all, and the wheels had done the rest. Such was my initiation to The Road…
…In the meantime, I lay on the roof of the mail-car, trying to remember whether Roseville Junction, against which burg Bob had warned me, was the first stop or the second stop. To make sure, I delayed descending to the platform of the blind until after the second stop. And then I didn’t descend. I was new to the game, and I felt safer where I was. But I never told the push that I held down the decks the whole night, clear across the Sierras, through snow-sheds and tunnels, and down to Truckee on the other side, where I arrived at seven in the morning. Such a thing was disgraceful, and I’d have been a common laughing-stock. This is the first time I have confessed the truth about that first ride over the hill. As for the push, it decided that I was all right, and when I came back over the hill to Sacramento, I was a full-fledged road-kid.
December 16 2006
Dear Stompin’ Tom,
I’m not really sure where to begin.
I’m twenty-seven, a rambler (still…), and an amateur guitarist. I grew up in Peterborough, Ontario, but the last three years or so I’ve been spending lots of time in Yellowknife NWT as well. I’ve been attending university in Peterborough for almost eight years (on and off), and paying my way by working as a window cleaner, mostly up in Yellowknife. I’ve been listening to your music seriously for a few years now, and seem to be more and more impressed every time I hear a song for the first time. I guess I’m mostly just writing to say thanks – for your great contribution to the Canadian music scene and to Canadian culture in general.
I’m not sure if that’s something you hear all the time still, or not very often anymore, but I just thought I’d take the time to say it. I know for sure that I speak on behalf of plenty of others too.
I always knew of the song Tillsonburg, because I was born there. In high school I got a slightly broader introduction to your music while driving in a van to Cochrane, ON, to catch the train to Moosonee. It was a “best of” tape. In university I jumped at a chance to see you live – it was probably 2002, and down in St Catharines. I guess my brother saw you play around that time too, up in Bobcaygeon – he’s got a picture of you and him talking after the show.
As time goes by I keep collecting more and more of your records, any time I can find them. I recently found the five-disc set of sixty old time favourites. Also, this past weekend in fact, I got to hear the “live at the Horseshoe” album for the first time.
I’ve been playing guitar for a couple years now, and a good proportion of the songs I’ve learned are yours. Sitting around the campfire in the Woodyard up in Yellowknife, requests for “A Real Canadian Girl” or “Bud the Spud” are common. My friend Tony gets me to play the guitar so he can sing the “Gumboot Cloggeroo.” Tony is also the “Snowking” – he builds a big castle out of snow on Great Slave Lake every winter. You can see us on his website – http://www.snowking.ca – I’m on there too, as “Joe Snow.”
Up in Yellowknife there are lots of people from Quebec. Sitting around a fire with them is fun, because they all know so many traditional songs from their province. You can get six or eight Quebecois singing, and banging on a drum for rhythm, and it can go on for hours. But for the rest of us, it’s pretty much your music that’s the folklore. It tells stories, it’s catchy, and at least among my friends it’s some of the most commonly-known music.
Yellowknife is also one place where we get to hear your music on the radio. The aboriginal station pretty well specializes in country music, and they play a song of yours just about every day.
Here are another couple quick anecdotes: A friend of mine here in Peterborough is taking teacher’s college, and she used your music as the basis of a whole unit for a social studies/geography/history class. They were grade five or so, and they loved it. She had them singing “Name the Capitals,” and she taught them how to stomp.
The last couple months I was touring around down east. I caught a freight from Montreal down to Halifax, then hitchhiked around, up to Cape Breton, and back through New Brunswick, with a short stop in PEI. It was my first time on the Island, and I liked it fine, especially the rural areas. Hitching out of Charlottetown I was walking along, and came to a construction site. There were just a few people there, since the job was mostly done. One of them saw my guitar, though, and he says, “Hey, sing us a song!” Almost without hesitating I started into “the Ketchup Song,” and I was sure surprised when the guy started singing right along with me! Right there on the side of Highway 2! Turns out he grew up in Tignish, and saw you play a few times down there when he was younger. I never did make it up to that end of the island, mostly because it was starting to get too cold for hitchhiking. I caught a bus from Summerside to Miramichi, across the new bridge, and continued north from there.
I enjoyed reading your autobiographies, and they were an encouragement to something I already believed in, more or less: supporting Canadian music. I really don’t care for the idea of making a Nashville-style “industry” out of the scene, but I do believe in supporting the artists as individuals as much as possible. Some of my favourites these days are guys like Old Man Luedecke, or Petunia, or Sheesham and Lotus, or bands like the Silver Hearts or the D-Rangers. I’ve seen Corb Lund play a couple times, and he was the one who really opened my eyes up to the fact that there is still such a thing as good country music, as long as you steer clear of the mainstream country stations.
Well, that’s pretty well it. I just wanted to say, at least once in my life, thanks to you for all you’ve contributed – to the country, to its music, and especially to its people.
Sincerely
His Response:
From Sprout Wings and Fly – documentary about old-time fiddler Tommy Jarrell (1983):
[Pulls a rattlesnake tail out of his fiddle] “…Well, the old folks used to put them in there to keep the spiderwebs out. When you hung them up on the wall before you had them fiddle cases, spiders would web in there and they would den in there and that snake rattle would keep them cut out, you know. Some folks claimed it made the fiddle sound better you put the rattle in there and the snake was a charm in the fiddle. See the fiddle’s called the devil’s instrument anyhow. So I been told. But I never did believe that.
Ever since I was 13 years old I been trying. Well I learned a few tunes from other fellas, you know, but I started out with them.”
That’s the inspiration for the song Snake’s in the Fiddle.
Ryan McCord 