Bowin’ and Pickin’ in the Good Land

In certain moments, the rich folks’ tourist destination that is Santa Barbara seems to have its country/traditional music cred intact. This dawned on me as I was driving to the 53^rd annual Santa Barbara Old-Time Fiddlers’ Festival (nee Old-Time Fiddlers’ Convention) on a recent Saturday, while savoring the retro-country radio show “Country Kaleidoscope,” from veteran DJ Greg Drust, on KCSB FM (91.9 FM). 

Each early October for five-plus decades a healthy gathering of fiddlers, banjo pickers, guitar flat pickers, mandolinists and other folks, and old-timey purists take over the rootsy compound of the Stow House in Goleta. It’s a traditional music tradition, and a cultural jewel out Goleta way. On the main stage, the list of visiting artists included Suzy & Eric Thompson, Spencer & Rains, and Hannah Mayres and Friends (representing the Bay Area-based Black Banjo Reclamation Project), and mixed it up with contestants in the competition part of the package, while jam sessions and workshops speckled the compound and made wandering the grounds part of the full festival experience. 

What was launched by the musician and folk music evangelist Peter Feldmann, originally at the UCSB lagoon, has for a few years now been headed up and reconfigured by another fine musician and folk musicologist, Los Angeles-based (and UCSB alum) David Bragger. Bragger is a fiddler and multi-instrumentalist, who runs the record label and “multi-media initiative,” the Old-Time Tiki Parlour, and directs the UCLA Old-Time String Band Ensemble, in addition to his own solo career. 

Bragger showed up in different capacities and with different hats on, including as a fiddler guest with one of the most interesting featured musicians of the day, Mayres, who — like Rhiannon Giddens, the Carolina Chocolate Drops and others — is a crusader for promoting the African and black American roots of banjo playing. To help that cause, and the Black Banjo Reclamation Project she’s an active leader of, Mayres brought along two extra banjo pickers to amp up the sonic ensemble.

In related news, a special tribute focus this year was on the influential Black fiddler William Alonzo Janes (1850-1937), whose visage graced the backdrop of the stage, which had been renamed by Bragger as the “Alonzo Janes Performance Stage.”

Also gracing that stage were Suzy & Eric Thompson, who, according to their website, “have devoted their lives to the pursuit of weird and obscure old-time American music.” On this Goleta afternoon, the going wasn’t so weird — Memphis Minnie’s “In My Girlish Days,” something by Appalachian fiddler Clyde Davenport, and blues from Ma Rainey.

Fiddles appeared in duplicate with Spencer and Rains, a married musical couple from Lawrence, Kansas (home of William Burroughs as well as a heartland musical soil). They brought old songs from Oklahoma, Texas, and Kansas to Goleta, including “Who Broke the Lock on the Henhouse Door,” “The Crooked Waltz,” Huddie Leadbetter’s “Relax Your Mind” (always good advice, especially these days), and, to close the day on a festive note, a brisk fiddle tune medley including “Buffalo Gals.”

Once again, the Old Time Fiddler’s Festival conjured up its special ambience of earthy musical goodness, unplugged to the core, on this ideal property, which feels like an escape from the 21^st century suburbia in the neighborhood.

I actually have a bit of performance skin in the game, beyond being an avid pair of ears with a reporter’s notebook. I was a flat-picking guitarist, playing with my 8-year-old brother David on banjo, at the first or second convention. Maybe a reunion is in order at some point. Until that point, have open ears and a notebook, and will travel — to Goleta in early October.