Hardly a prodigy, my first few years playing the violin were a struggle. I wasn’t that good, I got teased at school for playing the violin, and I was ready to quit on a pretty regular basis. In those first few years, my parents often reminded me that I had agreed to stick with it – and so I kept at it.

Around that time, after playing for a year or two, I got an enormous surprise. One day my father started dragging out instruments that were tucked under my parents’ bed – a couple of fiddles, a mandolin, and a banjo. Until that day, I hadn’t known that my dad had grown up playing old-time fiddle music. It was a shock to realize that I wasn’t the only musician in the house. He hadn’t played in years, but he had read about a fiddle organization forming in the area (which soon became the Washington State Oldtime Fiddle Association). They were set to have a jam session and dance at a local grange hall.

Well, he attended that jam session, and dozens more. My mom, having never played an instrument in her life, jumped right in and took up the tenor guitar. With fiddling now a family activity, I started attending some of those jam sessions and dances as well – learning some fiddle standards like Red Wing, Flop Eared Mule, Over the Waves, Faded Love, and over the next several years, hundreds more. Despite all this, I still flirted with quitting. I was getting ready to enter Junior High School and the peer pressure to quit was stronger than my desire to keep playing.

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