Bruce Molsky: a fiddling giant

           Times have changed since Fiddlin’John Sayler of Magoffin County in Kentucky played old-time music in the early 1900s.  Sayler was born in the Appalachian Mountains.  The tunes he coaxed out of his fiddle came from a time before Palm Pilots, computers and nuclear weapons. His stately, lyrical fiddling style reflected life events unique to his times.  Over one hundred years later, those same tunes, dressed up in a more contemporary setting, yet retaining that same simple flavor continue to be a part of our musical stock through the talents of Bruce Molsky. 

No matter the venue, whether standing on stage at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. or sitting on a stool an arm’s length from his audience in a Minneapolis coffee shop, Molsky provides his listeners with an authentic, passionate delivery of music both old and new, a mix of traditional and original tunes.  His fiddling skill, untiring ardor for mountain music, and unwavering commitment to traditional sound put him with the class of master musicians who makes music for its intrinsic rewards. 

Seeing Bruce Molsky on stage is an experience worth repeating.  It is so rich in sensory output that more than one show is needed to take it all in.  However, a quick, first glance at Molsky does not give one any strong indication of the powerful talent he possesses.  Molsky is a sinewy and compact man, with rather unassuming looks.  Sparse and graying hair, blue-gray eyes and an elfin grin team up with his low-key mannerisms, shyly offered handshake, and softly spoken words.  Flamboyant is not a descriptive word for this artist.  On the other hand, when he begins to fiddle a tune, all of the quiet, retiring words used to describe his mug and demeanor fly out the window.  Molsky is transformed into a fiddling giant.  His music seems inspired by the spirits of fiddling masters the likes of Albert Hash and Tex Logan.  And the sound he produces transports the listener to another time and culture.

Remember watching cartoons as a kid?  On one of those animated circus skits, there’d be a clown car, just a teeny little coupe with a jump seat in place of the trunk.  When the doors opened, out poured dozens of clowns, as impossible as that seemed, in all shapes and sizes with grins and frowns and tears and hysterical hair to match.  That’s what it’s like when Molsky pulls the bow across his fiddle strings.  It’s one of the smallest of the stringed instruments, yet out pours a thrilling variety of sounds and it invokes an abundance of responses in his listeners. 

More than clean, single notes and warm double stops, Molsky employs techniques such as glissando and Tommy Jarrell-like rapping on his fiddle.  He also uses both staccato and left-handed finger plucking to jolt his audience.  With his five-string banjo and acoustic guitar and his lush baritone voice tossed into the mélange, Molsky draws his listeners into an invigorating musical world.

Molsky considers himself a traditionalist.  His steadfastness to traditional music begins with his selection of songs.  He reaches far back into the 1920’s and often earlier pulling out the tunes of fiddlers throughout the Appalachians.  But far from being an echo of the old-time musicians, Molsky has developed his own style.  “I don’t play it in a lot of ways anything like the old-timers because I’m from a different place” he says to me while sitting out in the sunshine at Prospect Park in Minneapolis.

In fact, Molsky’s youth and young adulthood are nothing like that of the mountain folk of yore.  “I didn’t grow up on old-time music.  I grew up in New York City.  I came to the music as a teenager and fell in love with it.” That falling in-love stage mellowed to a deep reverence and respect for southern mountain music. 

Upon graduating from high school, he attended Cornell University in Ithaca, New York pursuing a degree in engineering.   Eventually, Molsky married and found work as a mechanical engineer in Atlanta, Georgia.  For years, his music was limited to nights and weekends. 

It was more than twenty years later that he quit his career and took up his avocation.  It might have been that working as much as seventy hours a week engineering left too little time for his music. Maybe a shift in priorities was the catalyst.  But something propelled Molsky to step away from his day job, with a reliable income and steady work, and take the dive into the world of professional music.  “It got to the point where I had two vocations.  Something had to give.  I have an incredibly wonderful, supportive wife.  Audrey said, ‘Bruce, you’ve got to do this.’”  Thus, Molsky picked up his fiddle as a full-time, professional musician.

Playing music is one of his passions in life.  Molsky reveals his intensity when he says, “I wish there were twice as many hours in a day; I'd play twice as much.  I never get tired of it.”  Because Molsky’s life events, in part, living in the age of technology, are quite different from the fiddlers who played this music decades and decades ago, Molsky’s work has its own flavor.  “My music is a result of different experiences.  I think you can have the same kind of personal feeling, but if anybody tells you that they want to make their music sound exactly like it sounded sixty or eighty or one hundred years ago…that’s a goal you can’t achieve.  I play old music and I try to pay respect to the sources, but I play it my own way.”

The sources of old-time music are varied.  Ulster Irish and Scottish immigrants carried balladry and melodies from their native land into the mountain range that stretched from Quebec to Alabama.  African rhythms already present in America, along with banjo playing, fiddle bowing and body percussion such as hamboning and hoofing were added.  Molsky takes this medley of music both into his studio and out to the public.  Gleaning the musical elements of a vast array of influences, he layers blues, jazz, and world music to create a sound distinctly Molsky.

Old-time music is considered the grandparent of both bluegrass and modern country music.  “I don’t play bluegrass,” Molsky clarifies.  “What most people call the kind of music I play is old-time music, or even early rural country music.  It includes groups like the Carter family and Fiddling John Carson, who gave us ‘Little Log Cabin in the Lane.’  It’s the music that pre-dates bluegrass.”  He continues, “Old-time music was really community music.  It was played for dances and just for pleasure.  The name of one of my bands, Big Hoedown, is the name of a tune and it’s just a dance.  It’s what people did.”

While bluegrass and country stem from old-time, they have not replaced old-time music, as evidenced by the musicians who yet play old-time and the fans that devote their energy and money listening to that piece of musical history.  Many of the annual festivals devoted to old-time and bluegrass such as Merlefest in Wilkesboro, North Carolina and Festival of American Fiddle Tunes, Port Townsend, Washington include camping facilities for the festival attendees who often travel cross country and cross borders to hear and participate in the musical fests. 

One of the many aspects of old-time music that appeals to Molsky is the caliber of people who listen to it.  “That’s the nice thing about playing this kind of music--the genuinely friendly crowd,” he says.  Molsky’s compliment is returned by his fans many times over.  Old-time music advocate, Gordon Banks, from Amity, Oregon, comments about Molsky in a fan ‘zine, “… this young fiddler has become one of the most proficient fiddlers of his time. He has incredible ability to analyze and pick up various bowing styles. His fiddling can usually be picked out of a crowd of jammers at any festival.”

Molsky is also a teacher.  He presents fiddle and banjo workshops throughout the U.S.  His style is a very relaxed approach akin to language immersion method.  He focuses on ear training as he sits facing his students.  Using no sheet music, Molsky fiddles a few bars of a tune for his students.  Then, as the class echoes back the same passage, he plays along with them calling out the bowing which gives the song its old-time style.  This method covers a good portion of the workshop.  “Part of the thing for me, being this northern guy playing this southern music to all sorts of audiences is I want them to feel like they are allowed to participate in it, either as a listener or as a player.  That’s why I teach.  That’s why I put it out there.” 

Molsky’s absolute love for old-time drives him to share the music with the rest of the world.  “I play this old, what I think is a really beautiful old-fashioned style of music, that people need to know about.  It’s contributed to every facet of modern music, but people are just starting to recognize it.”   

           For Molsky, the act of sharing an obscure genre of music is based on beauty.  “Why does anybody try to spread the word about anything they think is beautiful?  It’s just because it’s beautiful.  There’s no secret message in there.  I do think it’s a beautiful part of our culture.  It’s just something that’s my particular gift in the world, maybe, and it’s what I do well and it makes people happy.  It makes me happy.”