Truman Price: Fiddle

Early on, Truman's father assigned him to learn to play fiddle like his great-uncle, a one-room school teacher in the mountains of Georgia. This began an extended process of trial and error including a few years of childhood violin training, a few years residence in Appalachia, etc. On his father's 90th birthday, he played Ol' Dan Tucker and was rewarded with, "That's pretty good" (after years of "Nope"). In between, he had studied traditional fiddle styles, played hundreds of tunes and songs, forgot lots of them, made up some, and tried them for audiences of all sizes. He has been most influenced by J. P. Fraley, Woody Guthrie, Western Virginia fiddle conventions, Highwoods String Band, the Rounders, dreams of Grapelli ... and "Pa" Ingalls as described in Laura Wilders' books. Tru's pursuit of frontier fiddle techniques has enabled him to fiddle and sing, or even call dances, at the same time, and he loves getting people involved.(read more...)