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Just Fiddling Around

6/24/2013

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“Stop fiddling with that or you’ll break it!”
“I fiddled around with it enough that I finally got it to work”

        -Kate MacLeod, quoting her father


“Stop fiddling around!” I spent most of my school years in a fog of missed deadlines. I never knew about schedule changes, when my homework was due, or sometimes even what class I was in… I still vividly remember looking up from reading a book and discovering that the kids sitting around me weren’t the ones I had been sitting next to when class started. I must have totally missed a class change! It wasn’t that I didn’t pay attention, it was just that my attention was always drawn to the wrong thing, like a really good book, where I was going hiking after school, or how to construct a robot of myself so life like no one could ever tell if it was me or my robot sitting in that school desk.
 
I was one of those kids whose pockets, if turned out, could have probably filled a small rucksack. I was terrified of being caught with nothing to do (which was pretty much my view of “appropriate” school behavior) and so had enough materials with me, on the sly, to keep my attention occupied precisely where it shouldn’t have been. I still remember the day I realized that all the desks and tables height was adjusted with Alan screws. Most kids my age didn’t even know what an Alan screw was back then, but my dad was quite the tinkerer and I knew just where I could find the tool I wanted. I spent plenty of time working on a look of decided innocence and mild disinterest when puzzled teachers had to reseat classmates whose desks were now to small or too tall, or call the custodian when a table collapsed because the screw on one leg had suddenly given way. I didn’t view myself as a troublemaker, just a very curious student of the world around me. I couldn’t understand why my teachers valued repetition and sitting still more than imagination and movement.

 My interest in music started at the age of four when I saw a performance of a violin concerto on the television at home. My parents traded and bartered to afford the cost of classical training with a family friend who played in the Utah Symphony. There is a VERY specific way to play the violin that has been carefully honed, honored, and cherished over the past 500 years. My instructor initiated me into the world of etudes, exercises, and note reading (with somewhat sporadic success) and I made reasonable if not stellar progress. I was expected to practice a lot. (Often two hours a day or more). As I advanced into more difficult music my teacher prescribed an abacus which I was to use to carefully count the number of times I played a difficult passage
  correctly (often 50 or 100 times were ordered). I found the structure stifling and the repetition mind numbing. My sight reading skills negligible, my attention span crumbling, I often turned to the instrument and simply fiddled around, following my dancing thoughts up and down the fingerboard, growling with anger, or laughing with delight. Luckily I was blessed to have one of those rare teachers who could honor imagination and passion as well as rote learning. She always told me that to play music you had to be like a tiger, you had to take a risk and leap at the prey or you stood no chance at getting what you wanted.
 
I switched to Viola when I was 11. This more introspective instrument was a better fit.  As the “poet-philosopher” of the string family its deeper tone and more dreamy nature spoke to me. Still, I found myself wasting my practice time “fiddling around,” making up tunes, trying out tones. I carried my passion for Viola into college, pursuing a double major of Music Composition and Viola Performance, but, as usual, I got involved in too many things and my graduation languished on the periphery of unfinished projects and an overbooked schedule. My composition teacher eventually forced me to make a choice. He advised me to drop one side of my double major and progress on toward graduation. Agonizing on which side of myself to favor, performance or composition, I finally went with the latter, feeling  it offered more room for my “fiddling around.”
 
From the start it should have been clear I was more of a fiddler than a violinist. Naturally curious, I spent hours exploring the sounds the instrument could make. The fiddle is a remarkable canvas for the imagination. An embodiment of paradox, it can both break and heal the soul. Perhaps that’s why so many folks have been frightened or dismissive of the fiddle, it represents something other than business as usual. It refuses to sit silent, or still. A tool of dreamers and prophets it can both create and destroy. It can set the feet of the righteous dancing down the path to hell, stich up a broken heart, or leave one grasping on the edge of epiphany. It caters to those whose attention wanders the roads less traveled and whose feet march to the rhythm of a music only they can hear. As a musical explorer, the fiddle keeps me on the sharp edge of discovery; exploring new sounds and techniques, diving into the deep waters of tradition, or gathering the strands of a new song out of the immense shimmering firmament of notes. The fiddle can stand the strain due not to its rigidity, but because of its flexibility.  For a long time fiddling was a secret side affair for me, something I did when I should have been doing something else. Now I realize that everything else was just getting in the way of fiddling.

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About the author: Peter Danzig is the 2013 Utah State Fiddle Champion as well as an award winning songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and one half of Otter Creek (www.OtterCreekDuo.com). When he’s not fiddling around he’s probably asleep.
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Shiver Into Spark Track List

7/29/2012

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We’re excited! The recording is finished. We’re still tweaking a couple of the mixes, working on liner notes and final art and photography selections but Otter Creek’s second album, Shiver into Spark, is now complete enough for us to sit back and listen to it while we finish up final production. The album features some great new songs, a lot of new instrumental techniques we’ve been working on over the past couple of years, and Mary’s recording debut on the Viola.

Here’s our current choice for track order and just a little bit about the songs on the album.

1.       Shiver into Spark

This song helped Peter place as a finalist in two song competitions. As title track it helps set the tone for the whole album, it’s about the spark that lies hidden in cold ashes.

2.       Farewell to Ireland

This is a traditional tune from Scotland. We were first introduced to it by Kate MacLeod when Peter was accompanying her for a short set. We fell in love with it and decided to do our own arrangement. True to form, we couldn’t stay quite in one genre as a little bit of very American funk crept into our version.

3.       Hard Times

Peter first learned this tune from his father, a folksinger, who in turn had learned it from the singing of Rosalie Sorrels. Peter’s father used to perform a Utah specific version of the tune which referenced the Mormon pioneer’s sufferings while crossing the plains but we decided for this project to use Stephen Foster’s original lyrics as they speak eloquently to the economic hardship so many in our world currently face.

4.       Nine Hundred Miles

We first learned this tune from the singing of Odetta. It speaks of the pain of someone far from home, and perhaps far from the person they want to be. It also features the unique instrumental pairing of Viola and Long Neck Banjo. I guess you could call it our “low lonesome sound.”

5.       Ashokan Farewell

One of our favorite fiddle tunes ever worked into both a mellow fiddle solo and sparkling mandolin instrumental.

6.       Meadow Green

This is our arrangement of a little known folk song about one of the greatest tragedies in Utah history.

7.       Devil’s Boots

An original tune about overcoming anxiety (yes… Peter was QUITE shy once upon a time). This song took first place in the Suzanne Millsaps Performing Songwriter Showcase in 2011.

8.       Getting Past the Barking

Another original song about finding love in the most unlikely places.

9.       Fisher’s Hornpipe

Peter’s version of this traditional tune on solo mandolin.

10.   Hi Diddle Di

Some of the people we admire most are living one day at a time. This song is for them.

11.   Take the Climb

We wrote this song in memory of Tyler Clementi, who tragically took his own life after an instance of cyber bullying.

12.   Morning Has Broken

OK… Here we can brag, our own beautiful daughters “The Three Muses” sang this one. We’re pretty sure you’ll love it. We released a preview of this track on Youtube, come have a listen!

13.   Old Joe Clark

Mary plays this traditional tune on solo fiddle as only she can.

14.   Sister San Rafael

The first time we heard Utah Slim sing this song about one of our favorite places in the world we knew we wanted to do a cover of it. Slim’s song went on to win the 2011 NewSongs Showcase at the Walnut Valley festival in Winfield, Kansas where he invited us to perform it with him.

15.   The Times They Are A Changin

Our version of a Dylan tune we really, really love.

The album should be printed and ready to ship by the end of August. We’re taking orders now and offering free shipping for anyone who orders in the next month! We’ll be having a couple of events to celebrate the album’s release and are hoping to have a CD release concert down in the beauty of the San Rafael swell in late September. We’ll post details as they develop. In the meantime you can listen to the two tracks we’ve posted on Youtube or drop in to hear us in concert!


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