This weekend, some friends and I headed south for Trad Fest at the Old Town School of Folk Music in Chicago. Trad Fest is an annual event with old time string band music from all over the country. We were too late for the potluck on Friday night so we decided to stuff our faces with world-renowned Chicago pizza! We did arrive just in time to square dance off a little bit of our food-induced lethargy to the Portland-based Foghorn String Band. Once the dancing was over, old time jams began all over the school, and I had the wonderful opportunity to play fiddle tunes with “Chirps” Smith, one of the Midwest’s finest fiddlers.

The next day, I took a Ballads singing workshop with Rhiannon Giddens from the Carolina Chocolate Drops. This was the most powerful workshop I have ever taken. Although Rhiannon is a classically trained musician (she has performed in several operas), her greatest strength as a singer is not necessarily her singing technique (which is excellent), but instead the rhythm and emotion that she brings into her songs. This was apparent in her body and in her voice. She brought in the syncopated rhythm of the chain gang while she sang; she poured her heart out as she sang about a woman whose man had gone missing or about the death of Poor Lazarus. The insight that she shared with us about how to sing was as powerful as sitting next to her as she sang, which sent chills up my spine.

Saturday evening there was a concert with Garry Harrison and the New Mules, the Chocolate Drops, and Foghorn String Band. Each band performed a different flavor of old time music, and it was great to have the variety of great fiddle tunes and great singing numbers.