Roots Round-Up: five new fiddle albums from North America that push tradition forward

I must be on a real fiddle kick since this column is all fiddles this month! It’s nice to be blessed with so many wonderful fiddle traditions in North America, so why not focus on an instrument that takes us to such great heights (and, as a fiddler myself, such deep lows)?

Out here in the Pacific Northwest, as in most regions in the US, we have our own rich tradition of contra dancing. Derived from 17th-century British/French roots, today’s music for contra dances is a blend of Celtic influences, reaching over to Appalachian roots as well. Few folks outside the scene have heard this music, since it’s mainly just played for dances. With their new album, Flow (Countercurrent ****), the best young contra dance band (and just a duo!) in the Northwest, Countercurrent, is putting this music on the map. Through virtuosic, twisting original tunes and thoughtful traditionals, with French-Canadian foot percussion from fiddler Brian Lindsay and drop-D guitar and Irish bouzouki from Alex Sturbaum pounding alongside, you can hear the pulse of this music as it propels the dancefloor along. Countercurrent is also at the forefront of a wave of non-binary and trans musicians, dancers and community organisers who are remoulding these traditions in beautiful ways.

The great hope for Mi’kmaw music in Eastern Canada, young fiddler, singer, and songwriter Morgan Toney’s new album, Heal the Divide (Ishkode Records ****), is a big step forward for him. Not just because Toney’s a better singer and songwriter than before, but because he’s dipping deeper into Mi’kmaw traditions. Including Stoney Bear Singers and a Mi’kmaw pow wow drum, Toney connects Mi’kmaw song traditions with a larger North American Indigenous identity. Importantly, he’s also fiddling more and fiddling even better, pushing himself to live up to the legacy of the great Cape Breton Mi’kmaw fiddler Lee Cremo. For a long time, Mi’kmaw music was little known outside Cape Breton and even today, the music of the Mi’kmaw of New Brunswick and Newfoundland is not well-known. Toney’s changing everything and doing it with fearless heart and care.

The new album, Copley Street 2 (Nathan Gourley, Joey Abarta & Owen Marshall ****), from Irish-American trad trio Nathan Gourley, Joey Abarta & Owen Marshall, is a delight from start to finish. It’s not just that these three artists are three of the best Irish trad players in the US; it’s actually more about how each fits together. Abarta has a very staccato rhythm to his piping, giving a measured eye to the music, while Gourley flows more fluidly as a fiddler, pulling out restful pauses in tunes and looking for silence between the notes. Apart, they’re both quite good, but together, they mesh with a kind of perfection that can’t be copied. Of course, Marshall being an incredible guitarist and bouzouki player with an uncommon ear for harmony is the real secret sauce here.

Fusing Norwegian sounds with old-time Appalachian music seems revolutionary but it actually makes a lot of sense. Appalachian fiddling is rich with drones, sustain and fiddled chords (or double-stops as they’re known). It’s a lovely combo and the debut album, Hardingfele & Banjo (Rosalie Coleman ****), from American Hardanger fiddle and banjo duo Rosalie Coleman & Brian Slattery, goes down nice and easy. Slattery’s worked with lots of interesting folks in old-time, especially Jake Blount, but Coleman is a real newcomer to the scene. She’s at college studying electronic music, but came up playing Scandinavian and old-time together and wanting to fuse the two. Slattery plays a fretless banjo for this album, lending some nice microtonality. Though this album is all old-time, things get lost in the weeds at times, bringing in Scandinavian harmonics with the Hardanger fiddle. And with such lovely auditory scenery, who wouldn’t want to get lost?

Taken from unpublished notebooks of original tunes written by the great John Hartford, Julia Belle: The John Hartford Fiddle Tune Project Volume 2 (John Hartford Music / Wixen Music Publishing ****) unites a who’s-who of female roots musicians, a star-studded cast including well-known names like Sierra Hull, Brittany Haas, Laurie Lewis, April Verch, Alison Brown and bluegrass band Della Mae. Co-produced by Hartford’s daughter Katie Harford Hogue, each track is a mini band of awesome pickers, including folks like cellist Natalie Haas, bassist Missy Raines, blues guitarists Cristina Vane and Meredith Axelrod and banjo master Alison de Groot, among many others. There’s even a reunion of the key string band Uncle Earl, which is kind of amazing. It’s a follow-up to a 2020 album of the same idea, reworking Hartford’s great tunes for modern audiences long after his passing. The tunes come from 68 handwritten music composition notebooks that Hartford left behind for family and friends after his death. They were published in a tunebook in 2018, but come to life with such handy interpreters and there are even some new songs from Hartford! What a goldmine!