Two of America’s most influential fiddlers team up to present some fine and feral fiddling. This recording is meant to be played good & LOUD. Just don’t hurt yourself. GET IT HERE: https://darolanger1.bandcamp.com/album/darol-bruce-lockdown-breakdown
You can also go to the Concerts Page for more information.
JULY 29, 2025
So stoked to be sharing these incredible recordings with the world.
The first single release this week is the volcanic duet with Brittany Haas, on my rock n’ roll ditty “I Coulda Told U”.
Available as an LP, CD, or digital download from the Bandcamp link in bio and story, and that first single, I Coulda Told U featuring BRITTANY HAAS is streaming everywhere.
I’ll also be carrying physical copies of the original Diary Of A Fiddler on my Bandcamp site, or you you can get it as a stream, a CD, or a download on the Compass Records website!
https://darolanger1.bandcamp.com/album/diary-of-a-fiddler-2-the-empty-nest
DIARY #2 DUET PERSONNEL:
Brittany Haas (Punch Bros, Hawktail, Crooked Still)
Avery Merritt (Sierra Hull)
Alex Hargreaves (Billy Strings)
Bronwyn Keith-Hynes (Molly Tuttle Band)
Kathleen Parks (Twisted Pine)
Casey Driessen (Bela Fleck, Sparrow Quartet, Himself)
John Mailander & Ella Jordan (Bruce Hornsby, Mile 12)
Tristan Clarridge (Crooked Still)
Enion Pelta (Taarka, Elephant Revival)
Mike Barnett (Ricky Skaggs, Himself)
Trent Freeman (The Fretless, John Reichsman)
Jenna Moynihan (The Dance Cars, Herself)
Patrick M’Gonigle (Lonely Heartstring Band)
Nathaniel Smith (Watchouse, Mumford&Sons)
Well, it's feeling like summer and the music camps and festivals have swung into gear. I'm back & forth across the country for various events and I'm hoping to have some peaceful moments at home throughout, working on production, music, & art for 2 imminent releases:
Darol’s List of Music and Fiddle Camps for 2025
These are the places I’ll be this year, teaching and learning from other enthusiastic musicians.
Do yourself a favor and sign up for one of these soul-feeders. You might even get a little better on fiddle!
May 29 – June 1, 2025
Dave Keenan’s Columbia Gorge Bluegrass Camp, Oregon
One of the most beautiful camps: a perch on the Great Basalt Plateau overlooking the mighty Columbia River, great cabins, porches & patios, and a majestic Great Room. A small intimate camp with lots of personal attention.
https://menucha.org/programs/bluegrass
June 15 – 21, 2025
Kaufman Bluegrass Kamp, Knoxville, TN
This is a surprisingly mellow camp that many folks have returned to for decades now. A bigger camp on a really nice college campus with lots of amenities and better-than-usual food. Some well-known instructors here! https://www.flatpik.com/steve-kaufmans-acoustic-kamp
June 29-July 5
Swannanoa Fiddle Week (also Mandolin and Banjo week!) Black Mountain, NC
Best camp food; another venerable camp in a beautiful location: a college in the Blue Ridge with a working farm.
Great, memorable faculty performances every night. LOTS of jamming til all hours all over campus.
https://swangathering.com/our-programs/fiddle-week/
July 20–24, 2025
Rockygrass Academy, Lyons, CO
It’s a pleasure and a joy to be back at the spectacular-in-every-way Rockygrass Academy in 2025, with my band Mr Sun. This event may already be sold out. It’s one of the most popular music camps in the US. It’s also the only one of these camps that could possibly involve a tent.
https://bluegrass.com/rga
August 20 – 25, 2025.
Casey Driessen’s Blue Ridge Fiddle Camp Brevard, NC
For really serious fiddle players and jazz and pop violinists, this camp is at the top of the list. World-Class faculty, and every style is treated as something to go beyond. One of my favorite camps ever.
https://www.blueridgefiddlecamp.com/
Nov 13-16, Westford, MA
Fiddle Hell
Not a camp in the classic sense, this monumentally huge all-participant event takes place in a forgotten convention hotel somewhere north of Boston. Lots of jamming, every style from old-time to the ten flavors of Celtic to Jazz, Bluegrass to psychedelic whatever. Almost as many faculty as attendees. And that is a lot!
https://fiddlehell.org/
Hey, it's here!
OK... in other news, the earthshaking release of my Big Book of Original Tunes Volume # 3 has occured.
It's purchasable, for some needed distraction from all that... other news.
In Seattle on March 25, a large group of musicians and music fans celebrated Dawg's 80th birthday with a monumental concert.
The opportunity to contribute to any part of the world of music is an incredible privilege. David handed me that opportunity. Here's to the guy who 50 years ago helped me get my advanced degree in Dawgology. and gave me a priceless opportunity to play music all over the world while learning the most immediate and crucial lessons possible from the greatest fiddlers and other string players of the 20th century. David's commitment to my musical development and education was strong, steady, incredibly generous, and inspired an equal commitment from me to his music, and to a higher goal of bringing valuable and worthwhile music into this world.
When I first heard David on the recording Muleskinner and later on the Old & In The Way recording, I remember being knocked out by his total commitment to the musical flow of a song and his ability to shape the dynamic and textural "story" of a musical experience, like a great drummer and guitarist combined. That sense of "story" and that kind of groove and flow and majestic drama was just what I was looking for in music, and music was my universe. When Todd Phillips brought me from Santa Cruz to David's place in Mill Valley to jam for the first time, it was the most intense musical experience I had ever had and it was exactly where I wanted to be. After a few more sessions we were all pretty certain that this was where our energies were going to be directed for the unforeseeable future.
David set an indelible example for me not only in the department of self-guided education and always pursuing excellence, but in embracing and enjoying musicians and music: Don’t be intimidated by musicians who appear to be “ahead” of you in various areas of technique or conception.. One of the greatest things David ever said to me was "Hey man; I'm scared of being scared!" Don't be scared…Life is way too short not to accept the challenge to learn while creating your own means of expression. His sense of the world-as-library and his interesting mix of academic/business outlook that's totally embedded into a volcanically emotional, expressive and productive artistic lifestyle still makes more sense to me than anything else.
I am so lucky to be part of an older cultural structure built on mentorship and artistic lineage, in which knowledge and inspiration is passed on in a visceral and direct way. I can trace this mentorship back directly back through David, Tony Rice, Stephane Grappelli, Vassar Clements, and the other musical giants we worked with, through David’s mentors Ralph Rinzler, J. D. Crowe, Jimmy Martin, Bill Monroe, Django Reinhardt, and beyond. This treasure is beyond price, can't be codified or marketed, only lived, expressed and shared.
A very short time after Tony Rice came out to California and we jammed for the first time, David had his 30th birthday… I was 21. 50 years ago. David was having his moment of decision. It looked like we were going to put everything we had into this band…and we did. To be part of that moment, that setting off on a journey of discovery, has given my life reason and shape. I was inspired by his example to eventually strike out on my own as a teacher and sharer of musical culture, and a facilitator of new musical ideas with younger brilliant players. It is a sacred trust.
April/May 2025:
Mr Sun will be recording its next recording in mid-April! And the band will appear in Northern California on May 1,2,and 3rd. Check the “Shows” page.
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2025:
Here we are in a brave new world. I'm sure everything will look a lot different in a few months. I'm planning to try to communicate more with my community through this website rather than scary social media. And I plan to better figure out this website's quirks and vagaries so staying up-to-date and having both new and older music available will be easy and “transparent” for everyone. Although I'm definitely into keeping all the text on all these pages as opaque as possible! Readability is a must. To that end, I'm also going to be going for shorter sentences . Yes.
I'll be doing some fun touring on the West Coast in mid-and late-February, that's coming up fast: Bruce Molsky and I will be barnstorming up from California through Oregon up to the wonderful Wintergrass Festival; for details see my Shows page. Bruce & I will also perfom at the Savannah Music Festival in April, and oh yes, we'll tour SWEDEN in the first half of March, with the fabulous Vastana Band: Magnus and Sophia Stinnerbom and Sebatien Dubé. I'll also appear with guitarist/composer Joel Harrison at Big Ears Music Festival in Knoxville, TN and at David Grisman's 80th Birthday Concert at the Moore Theatre in Seattle on March 25.
But here's some news that I'm really excited about! I am moving forward rapidly on a new recording: the long-awaited (by me)
Diary Of A Fiddler 2, The Sequel: Empty Nest Syndrome
The first volume, Diary Of A Fiddler, was released on Compass Records in 1999 and featured me, Darol, accompanying a wide range of brilliant contemporary fiddlers in many of the styles which were exploding into popularity at the turn of the new century. I like to believe that it demonstrated fiddling’s deep relevance to just about every style of music. The duet format enabled my chosen duet partners and me to demonstrate a set of musical and fiddling skills that might have been unfamiliar to much of the music world prior to this release.
If Diary #1 was an expression of the recent coalescing of an international multi-stylistic fiddling community, Diary # 2 is a celebration of my particular connection to that community and a shared musical ethos within the acoustic string world.
This second volume, due out this year, 26 years later, celebrates the brilliance of at least 3 generations of spectacularly skilled fiddlers with whom I’ve been privileged to work. This spectacular bloom of talent shows no sign of slowing down and is directly attributable to the ongoing effect of fiddle camps created by Jay Ungar, Alasdair Fraser, Mark O’Connor and others, which sparked Diary #1.
Each of my duet partners in Diary #2 is a former student or someone with whom I worked at some level of mentorship, whether a short or longer period. I feel a deep connection and admiration for all of the players on this recording, just as with Volume 1.
Though I hope to record more projects for many years to come, I consider this project, Diary Of a Fiddler : The Sequel, to be the clearest expression of any musical legacy I might leave to society, and if it happens to be the last thing I release, I think I can consider my work on this Earth complete.
Stay tuned for information about this project!
DECEMBER 2024:
Well.
The Mr Sun Ellington's Nutcracker Tour is a wrap. Every show was musically successful with its special highlights, but a few shows stand out: Joe's Pub with Tony and Alex, our 'hometown' shows at One Longfellow, Sacred Heart, and at Analog with so many of our dear ones in the audience; the wild sellout show at the spectacular Groton Music Hall; The incredible, inexplicable Stoughton Music Hall, which made a 4-camera multitrack video of the show for us, just because they can; the super-intense 2 afternoon shows at the National Gallery Of Art in DC, the warm, open and exceptionally comfy SPACE in Evanston, with some of the best violinists in the world sort-of-not-judging me in the audience (I do that best for myself); camping out at each others' various domiciles. camping out at old friends' homes... The Band's 10th anniversary just 2 days before the start of the tour...!...and those VERY long van rides... we're all still speaking to each other! Mostly! Fave band of all time! Thanks everybody!
To Purchase the original Mr Sun recording of the Suite, go here:
or here!
https://mrsun.bandcamp.com/album/mr-sun-plays-duke-ellingtons-nutcracker-suite
And a few Fun Mr Sun Facts!…
Aidan, our bassist, lives on the 5th floor of a building in one of America’s major cities;
Coincidentally, Darol, our fiddle player, lives in a 5 room house!
None of the Mr Sun members have any medical degree whatsoever. Also coincidentally, none of them are doctors!
The Mr Sun band is evenly divided between player of fretted instruments and instruments with no frets at all. Which half of the band worries the most?
Aidan, our bassist, was born and raised in Scotland and has a charming Irish accent. Why doesn’t he announce all the tunes in concert? Many people are saying that his wife pays the band a small stipend to keep him from talking during shows. True? Just asking.
The band was named after an image on a banner which appears in the very first band photo taken in a children’s library. That image, in reality, happens to represent the largest object in the entire school system, with a mass 300 thousand times larger than the earth!
Amazingly, 75% of the Mr Sun band was born in the same country. Out of the entire band, ONLY Aidan, our bassist, was born in a different country. What are the odds?
Joe is 44 this year, Grant is 42. Aidan, our bassist, is 43, Darol is 71. Which one doesn’t fit?
Numerological fun fact: If you add up the total ages of the 3 youngest musicians in Mr Sun, you get a total of 129. 1+2+9= 12, the VERY SAME age that Darol started playing the violin! Amazing!
The combined number of years that the Mr Sun band members have been practicing their instruments comes to 149 years of experience. If you subtract bathroom and meal breaks, you get about 130 years. If you subtract sleep breaks, you get about 80 years. When you subtract school time and homework, you get about 50 years. Take away youthful crappy day jobs, we get 25 years. If you subtract driving to-and-from-the-gig time, you get about 18 years. If you subtract procrastination time, you get about 12 years total practice time for four people. Astonishing! It’s a wonder these guys can play at all!
In all these Fun Facts we always identify Aidan, our bassist, as “our bassist”. Yet he has the most largest and visible instrument of all. Why do we need to do that?
Late September, 2024
It's officially Autumn now, and the year grinds on. However, the summer flashed by, with a second wonderful trip to Sweden to play music with the Vastana Session folks and my ol' bud Bruce Molsky, tearing up the landscape with fiddles. I released the second volume in my original Music Book Series, the … uh oh… "Jazzy" tunebook. Also taught at a a fantastic fiddle camp, inaugurated this year by the Chopmeister Casey Driessen.
Additional festivals and shows in various special places such as Grey Fox Festival and Mendocino, California. Mr Sun reproduced, adding 2 new human beings to the earth's biomass. Welcome, Elias and Hartley!
So much more to share on on all this shortly; I need time to remember what-all just happened, while my thoughts slowly turn, like Niagra Falls, to this December's Mr Sun/ Ellington Nutcracker tour. Yes, folks, we're getting back out there and flogging Mr Sun's Magnum Opus in selected fabulous venues across the Midwest and New England. See the SHOWS page for details… we might come to your town. And if not this year, then perhaps next!
JUNE/JULY, 2024
What a Spring it was. Parkfield, California was particularly nice this time of year. Residencies in Maine and Oregon and a bout of COVID were high- and low-lights. I have been busy generating more original music material for a new Blur-grassy ensemble and for Mr Sun, and work on my long-term project with former fiddle students, has been another highlight. A wonderful virtual performance of my 3 movement piece for fiddle, guitar, and full orchestra in Charleston, North Carolina was also lovely. I've now instituted a Driving sub-channel on my YouTube Channel, where I post dashboardy segments of some of my favorite peregrinations all over this crazy world. My Artistworks Fiddle School is still kicking… so far.
And finally, my long-awaited recording project with Bruce Molsky has been released! It's called Lockdown Breakdown, after an original tune Bruce wrote during the you-guessed-it period. There's some great singing on it by Bruce, and some darn good and extremely spirited, if rather feral, fiddling. Since I've never been able to figure out how to make purchases work through this otherwise wonderful site, you can purchase the new recording and/or many of my other recordings and music books at my trusty Bandcamp page. Enjoy!
I’m pretty happy about the Kickstarter campaign for A QUIET REVOLUTION: The Story of Windham Hill Records.
Acclaimed filmmaker Tal Skloot, working with many of the musicians and the team that made it happen, is telling the story of Windham Hill Records - the music, its influence, and its enduring impact.
Just as Windham Hill Records remained true to itself and its independent sounds, Tal and his team have launched this campaign on Kickstarter to help them tell the story truthfully and independently.
The early 1980's in Palo Alto, CA represented the cusp of the digital revolution. Life was getting faster, and contemporary music was getting louder - punk had rebelled against corporate rock with electric guitars grinding and angry lyrics being shouted; the loud marching beat of disco dominated dance clubs. A carpenter named Will Ackerman began writing and recording original compositions for solo guitar. His cousin (and fellow carpenter) Alex De Grassi did the same. Will and Alex were also disenfranchised by corporate rock and pop radio - but they took a gentler, more modest approach, with pastoral ambience and introspective mood, and kept their focus squarely on their music. After Will built a number of cabinets and shelves for Chris Strachwitz’s Arhoolie Record company in the Bay Area, he got the idea. Windham Hill Records was born.
Windham Hill Records began making and releasing music that spoke simply to our humanity. The sounds reflected meticulous care, were timeless, and very much of the Northern California and Pacific Northwest musical esthetic that had been slowly developing since the late 40’s.
Will wanted to spread the word, and share the sounds. At first, he did this by loading up his station wagon with his catalog and selling what he could to bookstores and health food stores up and down the West Coast.
Soon after Will and Alex began their musical journey, Will met a uniquely talented like-minded fellow who happened to play piano just like John Fahey played guitar. George Winston joined Windham Hill Records. George came up with the brilliant idea of calling every community radio station he could and proposing benefit concerts where they would split the profits 50/50; the station would play George’s music to promote the shows. This kept George driving his VW bug on the road for 3 years, spreading the word about his music and the label.
There was interest in the music. It became quickly evident to Will that he had tapped into something, sonically and societally. Additional talented musicians like Michael Hedges, Liz Story, Barbara Higbie, Darol Anger, and Phil Aaberg joined the label. Mike Marshall, and Michael Manring joined as well. These musicians were not seeking to be rock stars. None were fixated on image or pomp. They were artists who had musical stories to tell. They wanted only for audiences to listen. Windham Hill Records became a reliable fount of music for people who wanted honest sounds made by emotional human beings. My musical colleagues Barbara Higbie, Mike Marshall, Michael Manring, Michael Hedges, and Phillip Aaberg were able to make some really true music for Windham Hill that I believe still stands today.
APRIL 2024
Trips to New England and Sweden were highlights of this late Winter season.
A wonderful series of DUO shows with my 44-year music pardner Mike Marshall, and the amazing Berklee World Strings, led by cello inspiration Eugene Friesen. Here's our performance at Berklee Performance Center.
A short-notice trip to Sweden with Bruce turned into an unforgettable, amazing musical ride with Magnus and Sophia Stinnerbom and their bass bud Sebastien Dubé at their annual Vastana Sessions at the Västanå Musik & Teater, an enormous Performing Arts Center in central Sweden. Can't wait to return!!
Finally, for April, I'm excited to be releasing Volume 2 of the Big Book of Darol Anger Tunes (That’s me!) with all the more Jazz-oriented compositions that I’ve written up to now. You can order a physical copy from my Bandcamp page.
The book includes 16 Darol Anger originals spanning a time period from 1979 through 2023, with tunes recorded by the David Grisman Quintet, The Montreux Band, the Anger-Marshall Duo, the Turtle Island String Quartet, Comotion, The Republic Of Strings, Psychograss, and Mr Sun. There are a few relatively popular tunes included in this collection, including Key Signator, which has recently entered the repertoire of Billy Strings. Some of the tunes include my improvised solos on the changes of the tunes. A full score for my total re-imagining of Deford Bailey’s Evening Prayer Blues also makes an appearance. I’m really happy with this collection, which contains some of my most catchy ditties. Melody, chords, counterlines, background info, all that stuff.
https://darolanger1.bandcamp.com/merch
FEBRUARY 2024
February got off to a banging, or rather, sawing start with the creation of a new recording by myself and renowned fiddler Bruce Molsky! Presided over by the brilliant engineer Dave Sinko, this is a raw and very rambunctious duet record of all fiddles and some singing. Very excited about this project! Apparently we already have some festival appearances on the books for this summer, and hope to have the recording out by May 2024.
Here's the title cut from the recording, Lockdown Breakdown.
Also a DEBUT (sort of) of my 3-movement Symphonic work for the wonderful West Virginia duo, fiddler Jenny Allinder and guitarist/banjoist Jim Mullins, entitled Suite For Nelle. I got to appear at a lovely reception in Charleston, WV with beautiful food, meet and play music with Jim and Jenny ( and also banjo legend Adam Hurt) and play a recorded demo of this 3 movement piece which we're hoping that some West Virginia or other regional orchestra will perform. I received a generous grant from the Nelle Ratrie Chilton Foundation to write this piece for full orchestra, using traditional West Virginia fiddle tunes and some of Jenny's own beautiful compositions. You can hear the orchestra demo using London Symphony samples and my live rendition of Jenny and Jim's solo parts here.
And finally… Wintergrass, up in the land of my birth, where dreams become reality for a magic moment. So much great music at this festival! You can visit Wintergrass' facebook site for photos, or Tony Trischka's Facebook site for a video of a raging torrent of fiddles there at the fester.
Going to Sweden in March to play music with Bruce Molsky and the Stinnerboms! Come on out.
JANUARY 2024
Well. That was bracing. First Solstice/Xmas tour I've done in many a year. Good success, played well, nice venues, some sold-outs, great audience responses, happy presenters. Got sick at the end, good timing. People bought our recording! Thank you! It tends to sound OK even in months without an R in them.
Jumping right into another year full of projects: I'm making a duet recording with the amazing BRUCE MOLSKY in mid-January, and heading to the legendary WINTERGRASS festival in late February.
In between those dates, my 45-year musical brother Mike Marshall and I are doing a run of dates in New England, some of which will feature a dream we've had since 2003: The Duo in front of a cracking, virtuosic String Orchestra!… in this case, the Berklee World Strings, led by the legendary Cellist/Composer Eugene Friesen. This is the "North Texas State big band" of the strings world. World-class players and improvisors young enough not to know better!… Check the “Shows” page for a list of everything we're doing there.
And a prestigious MR SUN appearance at the very very prestigious BIG EARS Festival in… prestigious March, I prestigiously think.
Meanwhile, huge earthshaking events in our little world: our beloved guitarist Grant Gordy and his wife produced their first child, born on January first! Congrats and Good luck! Other possibilities loom large this year; meaning Mr Sun will not be performing in every nook and cranny of the world in 2024. But we're all up to lots of things, and the Creative Force will not be stifled.
Stay tuned for further news.
NOVEMBER 2023
Wow, So things are really ramping up here in the Interholiday So-Called Slack time. On December 1, The Mr Sun Plays Ellington’s Nutcracker will be OUT! (Meaning, you can go to our BANDCAMP site (here→)
…and download the whole recording at any of a number of resolutions including super-high-rez, or order a beautiful perfect-sounding forever CD, or order a physically satisfying Vinyl Disc, with giant frameable art!
Our Mr Sun Magical Mystery Tour in which we Magically and Mysteriously perform the whole record is also coming right up! This year, it’s New England and Northern California, both Beloved Haunts where I’ve made my home for decades.
Find the concerts and info here.
Next year we hope to cover the rest of the Inner Planetary System, as the rest of the Human Population will have discovered this recording…. or so we hope. Right now we’re grateful to those forward ( backward)-thinking individuals who have jumped on the Sun-Ellington-Tchaikovsky train…. Thank you!
Also, we're getting some really good reactions to the new Bluegrass & Fiddle Tunebook featuring my original tunes from 1978 to 6 months ago... you can also order one on Bandcamp, and if you order it before Dec 2nd, it will be in the mail by Dec 3rd... also makes a nice gift for your fiddling cousin... if they read music, of course.
I've also now collected recordings all the tunes for streaming through my Bandcamp site, so purchasers can hear what they're seeing! You now get a free download of the audio files for each tune with each book order.
Those intrepid folks who already ordered will be getting your download codes in your email shortly… It’s kind of complicated for an older fiddler to work that stuff out, but I can do it.
Many happy holiday returns and again I'm so grateful to you folks for supporting my efforts to make some helpful music down through the decades.
OCTOBER 2023
So! The recording's coming out, there's some press, people are liking the project! Very exciting.
Here's a link to Fretboard Journal's premiere of the
“The Making Of Mr Sun Plays Ellington's Nutcracker Suite”
Again thanks to Freshgrass Foundation, Studio 9 and Mass/MOCA
SEPTEMBER 2023
We did it! “Mr Sun Plays Duke Ellington’s Nutcracker Suite” debuted to a packed house at FreshGrass on Friday Sept.22. Much thanks to the FreshGrass Foundation for commissioning the work, and special thanks to Leo Austin-Muehleck, Dan Bui, Ella Bebe Jordan, Kathleen Parks, Clara Rose and Caleb Swan, aka the Hollywood Honk, for rounding out the “big band.” We couldn’t have done it in such style without them!
AND special huge thanks to Dave Sinko for being there to engineer.
The album comes out December 1 on Adhyâropa Records,
but you can preorder vinyl, downloads and CDs at mrsun.bandcamp.com
<iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/810278547?h=21b15c71d8&color=ffffff" width="640" height="338" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; fullscreen; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<p><a href="https://vimeo.com/810278547">Studio 9 presents: Mr Sun</a> from <a href="https://vimeo.com/greatskymedia">Great Sky Media</a> on <a href="https://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>.</p>
A full summer with lots of fun festivals such as Green Mountain, Grey Fox, Rapidgrass, Grand Targhee, Rockygrass, The Mendocino Music Festival, Swannanoa Gathering, Miniera Music Camp in Italy, and others.
I was able to record a large number of new Fiddle Lessons for my Artistworks Fiddle School this summer, too. They should be hitting the School in late September, along with a Fiddle Round Table on Wednesday evening, Sept.13… check that out Here.
Emy Phelps' offspring organized a beautiful memorial event for her in July.
We have ordered physical product for the Mr Sun Plays Duke Ellington's Nutcracker recording, and will probably have CDs by the time we perform our World Premiere at Freshgrass Festival in North Adams on Sept 22! You will be able to order it at my Bandcamp page and through Adhyâropa Records.
Also, I was able to produce a new Tune Book: Volume One, the Fiddle and Bluegrassy Tunes. Find it at my Bandcamp page, click on the title or photo.
On to many performances of Ellington's Nutcracker all over the Northeast, Midwest, and Northern California this fall! See the Concerts page.
MAY 2023
OK, I'm 70 now. Add a bit of COVID into the mix and it's a Full Transition.
So grateful to all the wonderful folks who sent me their good wishes and love over the Birthday Weekend.
It's been another Very Packed-out Month. Mixes are done on the Ellington/Tchaikovsky Project.
An amazing evening on the Ryman Auditorium Stage with the Watkins Family Hour.
Beautiful tours in Northern California and New England… a wonderful visit to my old haunts around Santa Cruz.
I headed out to the Czech Republic for a big friends' Anniversary Party – A couple of days in Prague.
Getting ready for summer. Its coming on! Lots of great music camps: Swannanoa, Targhee, and this incredible fantasy camp in… Italy!
Everyone should come to that one.
MARCH 2023
What a month! Packed, as they say. This kind of thing was not what I was envisioning for my Later-In-Life After-Party. But it's constantly amazing.
Right on the February-March cusp, I attended Wintergrass near my old home place in Seattle, and covered 2 special projects: Pas De Cinq (videos coming soon) and a Fiddlers 4 reunion…documentation of that will happen as well… too much going on right now… can’t believe I’m taking time to report this!
Started off March by recording some mind-blowing tracks for Wes Corbett's next project with Sam Bush, Chris Eldridge, Casey Campbell, Todd Phillips, Paul Kowert (2 different sessions). Then we tracked most of the Mr Sun project MrSun Plays Ellington Plays Tchaikovsky up at Studio 9 in North Adams, MA . My old buddy the redoubtable Dave Sinko managed the inputs and outputs. The whole project was generously funded by the Freshgrass Foundation, and we got the best use out of that place, thanks to its managing engineer, my other old buddy Dave Dennison. What an amazing studio space!
Right after that, I zoomed down to Orlando with the whole band and Sharon Gilchrist to the American String Teachers’ Conference, where I received the American String Teachers' Association Artist-Teacher Award for services rendered over 30 years of teaching folks how to achieve their goals on bowed string instruments.
ASTA is a fantastic organization and I have learned so much from the other dedicated string teachers from all over the world who convene every year. It's a great honor, and I'm grateful and it makes me want to do better.
Here are my acceptance speech notes:
Artist-Teacher: a nice distinction, and a real honor to be acknowledged to be sharing both descriptors.
This observation may be obvious, but I feel that I’m in a category of humans who found it much more challenging to be a teacher than an artist.
As in the art, I had to make my own way to some extent, because of lack of a clear path, my contrariness and bull-headedness, and some bad examples early on – which did help me decide how not to be.
Thanks to Bob Phillips for his surprising, steady, appreciations and advocacy.
Also to my fellow Artist-Teachers who share this hallowed patch of musical ground and have given me crucial help to develop what skills I have:
Matt Glaser, David Baker, Julie Lyonn Leiberman, David Balakrishnan, Renata Bratt, Chris Howes, Mike Marshall, Miriam Rabson, Rob Thomas, Tracy Silverman, Alasdair Fraser; Their generosity boggles my mind.
My inspirers are too many to name here – The few most important who come to mind are David Grisman, Tony Rice, Marsh Leicester, David Baker, Dr. Billy Taylor – but it’s important to note, I think, that so many teach by example and the lessons are thick on the ground if you can learn to find them. That’s teachable.
Also important to note that some of the best lessons come from your students.
And Apologies to the many, both older and younger and brilliant,
who share this same role whom I haven’t named here.
Thanks also to the people who have believed in me from a place of pure love: Sharon, Emy, Joe, Grant, the Haas family, and many beloved others.
The Previous Awardees include Itzhak Perlman 2022, Edgar Meyer 2021, Jeffrey Irvine 2020, Mimi Zweig 2019, Roland and Almita Vamos 2018, Jamie Laredo 2017, Sylvia Rosenberg 2016 Kim Kashkashian 2015, Paul Kantor 2014, Matt Glaser 2013, Paul Rolland 2012.
Then the band & I ripped on a concert for the teachers and students, celebrating Vassar Clements who was born just a few miles away in Kissimmee, FL and my mentor David Grisman, pretty close to his birthday date.
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AAAAAANNND THEN… a short tour with the amazing and wonderful multi-mandolinist Ethan Setiawan, celebrating to imminent release of his wonderful new survey of Acoustic String Band styles, GAMBIT, which I produced and played on.
…Right up to now, when I'm recording a bunch of new Artistworks Fiddle School lessons and– this just in- I'm drafted to play some mandolin with Mike Marshall's GER Mandolin Orchestra at the Savannah Music Festival…
All you Northern Californians get ready for Mr Sun to Appear in your areas:
Santa Cruz April 20, Berkeley April 21, San Francisco April 22 (see Shows)
February 2023
Wow, this is shaping up to be quite a year… The Big Bounceback is bouncing a bit far, and right in my face at 120 miles an hour… but I'll take it. It's good to still be here and capable of moving. This Ellington/Mr Sun project (see below) is taking up a huge amount of bandwidth, but it's super-exciting… I haven't had this intense a translation project since Turtle Island days. The band is doing it! Everyone's deep in Adaptation/translation mode, for the recording up at Mass/MOCA in March, and we've already finished tracking 2 pieces of the 9-piece suite. If we get really energetic, we might even adapt something from the Ballet and jam on it Coltrane-style, in the Strayhorn Spirit. So grateful to the Freshgrass Foundation for making the production budget a thing of beauty. Got an Orchestral composing commission going on the side, and I keep getting asked to record stuff right here in Nashville, Music City, USA… I'm amazed! I'm working on Banjo Genius Wes Corbett's new project currently, so exciting to make some music with a fellow Cascadian. Got the amazing WINTERGRASS festival coming up, with one people I LOVE playing with, but we're basically starting almost from scratch with two insanely monumental bands: The Fiddlers 4, for our first show in 20 years, and a new band of old friends Pas De Cinq, with the brilliant-beyond-belief Haas sisters, Nyckleharpist Amy Hakansson, and genius foot percission percusssionist Nic Gareiss. Wo.
AND TOURING! California in April, Bluegrass Fester at the Freight & Salvage! So happy to be returning to Santa Cruz April 20 with Mr Sun!
And playing pretty-damn-close-to-Jazz at the legendary Kuumbwa Jazz Center too.
Santa Cruz …so much history for me there. Coming down there in 1971 for College at UCSC, back when Porter just had a number, which was “5”. Getting the Harry Smith Anthology right in the gut with the best possible commentary buy the great Marsh Leicester, who also turned Jerry Garcia on to folk music, though I never knew that at the time. I’ve spent a bit of time down there in the last few years as well, because of my old friends there who never left… smart folks…watching my friends start their Bagel company and the old Union Grove Music store. Now it’s soul-cleansing to watch the perennial surfers and the Monterey Peninsula still just a-hovering out there as near-eternal as things will get here on this planet anyway.
So many memories of sitting in with Annie Steinhardt’s band at the old Catalyst, playing wild power-grass on Pacific Avenue with banjo pioneer George Stavis, doing the pizza-parlor Bluegrass thing with the Fresno Bluegrass Pilgrim Surfer-guys Sweetwater, building mandolins and exasperating the amazing luthier David Morse in the basement of my house on Mission Street, discovering weed, getting under the VW bus with the feeler gauges twice a week, hanging with Richard Hoover before Santa Cruz Guitars was a thing, playing fiddle up in the Santa Cruz Mountains with Lacey J Dalton, commuting hundreds of times on Hwy #1 up to & back from Dawg’s tree house in Mill Valley, riding the roller coaster 12 times in a row with Tony Rice who just couldn’t get enough of that…. And more recently playing the Rio Theatre with Mike Marshall and Vasen… amazing times. How did I fit that all into 4 years?
JANUARY 2023
Hard to believe these numbers: 2 0. 2 3. …Looks like The Future, and in many ways it is, not exactly that wonderful future we had imagined either. But Music continues to help us get through an increasingly hostile landscape. I'll just keep doing that until something else stops me.
I have received a fantastic composing commission for a West Virginia fiddle and guitar duet, with full orchestra. That should be amazingly fun, if I can get the trombone clefs right. I've hit the 12-year mark on my beautiful Artistworks Online Fiddle School, and I'm inspired to keep working on that more and more.
But what I'm really excited about, and working on A LOT lately, is this new, intense project that Mr Sun has embarked on:
Mr Sun Plays Ellington Plays Tchaikovsky...
We're going to translate the legendary and mind-blowing Ellington/Strayhorn Nutcracker Suite into our Acoustic String Band, the one and only Mr Sun, and record it. Should be beyond fun. We'll get a bunch of other string players on there for the big horny sound. We're trying to skip using drums, but we're not going to rule anything out... so that includes possible Dobros & banjos. Maybe.
The Project has been generously underwritten by the Freshgrass Foundation, and we will be using the Mass/MOCA recording studio in North Adams, and Mr Sun will premiere the work at the Freshgrass Festival in fall 2023.
This Suite seems to be pretty popular with the big bands. Aidan, our bassist, even toured this in Europe early in his career with the Scottish National Jazz Band. But it is pretty much undiscovered material for strings still. Maybe we can change that. Billy Strayhorn's treatment of The Nutcracker is so excellently radical, funny, loose, and personal that it just seemed right up Mr Sun's alley.
Lots of arranging, translating, transposition, further adaptation and some rearranging to do. Just as Strayhorn and Ellington completely re-imagined Tchaikovsky's monster hit, Mr Sun must do the same!… in the tradition of The Hot Club Of France, the DGQ, the Turtle Island String Quartet, and the Republic Of Strings. We'll generally play our own solos, though there are some short beautiful spots by giants such as Johnny Hodges which will be transcribed and played in their spirit.
Tchaikovsky’s extraordinary Nutcracker Suite contains some of the most beloved and familiar melodies in the Western world. Mr Sun has seized upon the inspiration of Duke Ellington’s brilliant, sly, & urbane re-interpretation of Tchaikovsky’s Suite as an opportunity to salute and re-invent this wildly multi-faceted work anew, through the lens of the American String Band, a musical form which contains many styles and is presently engaged in a marathon upheaval of innovation and expansion.
The Ellingtonian versions of The Nutcracker feature both Billy Strayhorn's wide-ranging arranging genius and the interpretive genius of the band’s members, all major figures in their own right. The string band tradition, which draws from a rich well of traditional fiddling melody and African rhythm and has steadily incorporated all the streams of American popular music, is an fertile new fold in the origami of this evergreen masterpiece. Using new and self-invented rhythm techniques combined with existing melodic and ensemble techniques, the Mr Sun band will add a layer and a new facet of artistic musical thought to this work.
This is a passage from the remarkable book “Something to Live For: The Music Of Billy Strayhorn”, by Walter Van De Leur.
Mr Sun plans to premier this work in September at the illustrious FRESHGRASS festival in North Adams, Massachusetts.
We'll be recording all through Spring 2023 and plan to have the CD release available at the Freshgrass festival. We'll see you in 2023 at the Berkeley Bluegrass Festival, the Strawberry Music Festival, Grey Fox Festival, Grand Targhee and Green Mountain Festivals as well, where we'll be happy to update you on the recording's progress!
Here it is halfway through December 2022 already. Shows and traveling are done with for this year. It was quite a marathon late summer and fall, with two very good tours with the California Bluegrass Reunion, old friends, some I've known for 50 years. I'll jump over to New England to play some of Joe K Walsh's original music for a week in January, then some wild reunions at Wintergrass in late February. And my amazing Artistworks Fiddle School: I have a lot of new lessons dreamed up for that next year.
August 31, 2022: Well, that all went by fast! hot hot hot weather everywhere, but we had a truly wonderful Eand'a tour in the northeast culminating in a magical Green Mountain Music Festival. There's Eand'a's better half.
The Summer festers are coming to a close, and our Fall projects are looming more... when will there be time to do them all? Mr Sun has an amazing, huge and exciting recording project coming up. I'm slowly working on the Diary Of A Fiddler sequel, with all former fiddle students. The California Bluegrass Reunion band will be barnstorming the east and West coasts this fall. I'll possibly be getting a big composing commission, and nutty things are dropping into my lap, such as sitting in with Alison Brown's band this fall.
Those of you who might still dig vinyl discs can now order a Mr Sun record through Compass Records.
Hear Joe, Darol, Grant and Aidan as actual physical vibrations through a medium. Might be better, might not.
Wo, that's a lot of yellow. Cover doubles as a caution cone for your car.
Yellow vinyl too! Hold it up to a light (not for too long!) and let the sun shine through.
July 1, 2022
Summer is here; so is massive COVID and a lot of great music... I was happy to spend a week at Steve Kaufman's Bluegrass Kamp, though it turned out to be a superspreader event! I wore a mask in the cafeteria every day and was pretty careful and came out without the virus; a minor miracle. Maybe those 4 vaccinations helped; it's hard to prove anything about an event that is avoided. Anyway, the Kamp was a lovely experience and very mellow. I re-connected with one of my musical heroes Alan Munde and we were able to perform a little tribute to Byron Berline there. I also met a couple of great musicians whom I'd never been around before: Carlo Aonzo and Andrew Collins, both mandolinists, and folks such as Gary "Biscuit" Davis. I also played some tunes with the amazing Jim Hurst and "vibesmaster" bassist Steve Roy, who sang some great songs, including one by Mr Rogers called "I Like You".
Mr Sun has been out and about, playing shows mostly in the northeast. We'll be up there again in July, at Grey Fox Festival and various other venues scattered around New England, mostly outdoor shows. Check the Shows Schedule for specific dates and info.
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Work continues apace (a slow pace) on my various projects: mixing an EMP by the great Tom Rozum and the Rozumatix, some initial recording and assembly on the sequel to Diary Of A Fiddler; the next Mr Sun TOP SECRET project, involving 2 world-famous composers; and of course my wonderful Artistworks Fiddle School, where we as a community delve into the greatest mysteries of what it is to Fiddle Your Way Out Of A Paper Bag.
Also coming up in August: a One-time only Reunion of my EANDA band, wherein we play our Very First Acual Shows, by popular demand. This recording was apparently a very much-loved project and we're thrilled to re-create those tunes that we had so much fun recording! We'll play some shows in the Northeast, especially Club Passim in Boston and the legendary and insanely cool Green Mountain Festival in Vermont.
May 13, 2022
You can finally buy this recording! Pretty excited to share it.
https://store.compassrecords.com/products/extrovert
May 1, 2022
The seasons keep a-coming. Thinking I'd be ready for whatever comes up, I find myself continually surprised by such change in the world around me. Spring in Tennessee is shocking and sudden. I find myself in a place with barky broadleaf giants and veritable mobs of flowers exploding all over. Mowing the backyard is a sculpture project, at this point there are 3 levels of trim, plus the vast canopy. I let the tall wildflowers make their own beds and mow around them. Looks like someone's brilliant landscaping job, but it's the flowers & grass telling me what to do.
Meanwhile, I hear from friends that Spring is now getting rolling in the Northeast and will be in full rage when I get up there with my band Mr Sun in mid-May. And I hope I see some of you folks. We have a very tight schedule but we are going just about everywhere in New England. If you live up there, please check out the tour dates.
The new recording has finally made it to the warehouses and we'll be hoping to distribute some to various music lovers on this journey. The official release date is May 13, but you can pre-order the CD now, here.
We're delighted to have vinyl discs for this release also, and those will be available July 20, here.
We're thrilled to be playing out again and are completely digging each others' playing. I think you'll be surprised at how much we've grown , especially for older guys. Letting the music lead you seems to take a lifetime to develop. The band's in a sweet special place and the experience is quite emotional, actually. I almost forgot how beautiful four string instruments can sound together, even after 45 years of returning to this same darn format.
It's surprising, but now it's really about the people, not the ideas... especially when we remember to depend on each other. Including the intrepid listeners. We depend on you, too.
Adding to the magic, we thought up some silly fun additional merchandise besides the recordings to bring with us. You might dig it. See us in Manhattan, Boston, Saratoga Springs, Northampton or Rockport, MA or Portland, Maine.
Single "Breaker's Bakedown" release on Bluegrass Today
April 2022
Colorado with Mr Sun coming up... and a flutter of little recording projects coming in as Spring hits in Tennessee. I'm putting a nice halo of fiddling on an extraordinary spoken-word project with author Joe McHugh, decorating over a beautiful fiddling story read by the phenomenal voice of Joe Newberry. The Online Fiddle school at Artistworks.com continues to burgeon, with new lessons and ideas in the works: I'll be breaking down all the "Baker Plays Monroe" fiddle tunes over the course of the next year, at the rate of one a month. That's a good goal. Some shows in the fall for the California Bluegrass Reunion are coming together, which should be a fun ride: Freshgrass, IBMA, and the 3 Sisters Festival will be highlights there. AND! Mr Sun's recording extrovert will be finally released in May, but pre-orders can be made now through Compass records, as we turn our sun-baked minds to the next recording project: a top-secret blockbuster idea whose time has come! Details soon-ish.
March 2022
Wow, a New Year and so much has already happened. Painful goodbyes to many folks, banjo players especially. We had a great little west coast blur with the California Bluegrass Reunion project, led by the redoubtable Bill Evans. I've shored up my Artistworks Fiddle School with a large infusion of lessons and interviews, taking advantage of the insane concentration of talent that is here in Nashville. I'm getting ready to work on a new recording project of duets with fiddlers who I worked with when they were youthful.
We're ramping up the year 2022 with my incredible band Mr Sun. We hae a new recording coming out May 1st, on Compass Records. Since we're all so shy, we're calling the recording "Extrovert". It's the first LP release that I'll have done since 1989.
The band just had a wonderful time at the Wintergrass festival and then barnstormed down the West Coast, spreading light and quite a few notes of note. It was wonderful to see old friends and connect in a room big enough to do it in. Still being careful, masking and such. But this band is so alive, emotional, and tells a great, coherent story in each song. I'm really happy about that.
We're going to Colorado in April... Check the "Shows" section for all the details.
August, 2021
Now living in Nashville, Tennessee; barely believing it. But OK. Every day is now an Extra Bonus Life Mile day... I'm still doing a lot of fun Artistworks Fiddle School stuff and looking at a whole new landscape out the window.
Whole new internal landscape too, even though I keep having the same old Disastrous Sound Check dreams.
I get to visit with some excellent young musicians friends.
I even have some shows with Mr Sun lined up for this fall!
... And I bought my first actual purchased lawn mower.
