Ellington

Chattanooga Times Free Press music reporter Casey Phillips spoke with Matt Downer, organizer of the Great Southern Old Time Fiddlers’ Convention, about the event’s historic roots and why it’s being reborn.

CP: This festival is only new in the sense that it hasn't been held regularly since the 1960s. In that sense, bringing it back is kind of a return to form for Chattanooga, right?

MD: I think so. It's a good opportunity for Chattanooga any time you can reach back that far, 85 years in the past, and lay claim to a local tradition like that. It's good, obviously, for the musicians interested in that kind of music, but it's also good for the city as well to connect with the past like that.

CP: Why did you decide to bring the festival back after it's been dormant for so long?

MD: On April 25, 1925. There was an article in the Chattanooga Times by G.H. Gaston announced the creation of the Chattanooga Old Fiddlers Association, and they held a concert at No. 1 Firehall and announced their plans to hold a fiddle contest in the coming months. They announced the formation of the Chattanooga Old Fiddlers Association with the intent of reviving interest in old time fiddling.

There were a great deal of that going on in the South at the time. Jazz was getting big and people feared a lot of the traditional music and regional music would have died out or fallen dormant when record players and such took off. Different types of music impacted those, but I think it's a testament to the staying power of the traditional music that it's still appreciated. It comes and goes in waves of appreciation, but it seems to be doing pretty well right now.

CP: So this festival is a way of capitalizing on the fact that interest in old-time music is in a boom period at the moment?

MD: Not at all. I've been interested in it for years now. It was really underground when I was first interested in it. I found Ken Parr and Ron Williams through finding the Pine Breeze Recordings at the local library. I sought them out and started playing music with them. At the time, we were the only ones old-time music in town. It's a celebration, not a capitalization.

CP: But the question is more why bring it back now, if not to take advantage of this renewed interest in the genre?

MD: I wasn't very involved in it. They held a fiddlers' convention in 2006. A lot of the people who are going to play at this one came to that first one. It was held at Lamar's over two days. It was the only chance I had to meet Mike Seeger. He came out to that one as a paying customer. That speaks to the history that Chattanooga had in the conventions and in music in general, that he would come out and support something like that.

CP: So the last time it was held was in 2006?

MD: Right, but before then, it was way back.

CP: So why didn't they host the festival again in 2007 or 2008 or last year?

MD: The people who sponsored it that time were from Atlanta and didn't have some of the local connections I think are required to maintain something on a yearly basis like that.

CP: And those are connections you've got?

MD: I think so. I've been living here long enough and playing music long enough to have all kinds of connections and know people interested in the music. Chattanooga, as a community, has been very supportive, not just musicians and bands, but some local businesses have been very supportive of the idea of bringing it back, which is great.

CP: Did that response surprise you? Or did you expect it, given the increased interest in old-time music in this area in recent years?

MD: I don't know. It didn't really surprise me, except maybe in a good way. It definitely is an important event, not just for the musicians but for the community, for Chattanooga. It definitely served a different purpose 85 years ago when it started because there wasn't the spectrum of entertainment available to people there is now. It was a very big deal at the time.

In the late '20s, they were attracting 4,000-5,000 people a day to the event. They had 200 fiddlers enter to compete. If you can imagine, playing a couple of tunes a piece, that's going to take all day.

It's not really surprising. Chattanooga seems pretty respectful of the past. I think a lot of people, like I was, probably aren't aware of the history it had. If you look back at some of the articles about it, every big name in string band music were here taking part in it, playing in it or competing in it.

CP: How long have you been working on organizing the festival?

MD: I've been working on it since November of last year.

CP: What lit a fire in you to try bringing it back again?

MD: Ken Parr is a local fiddle player I played with in Citico. Over the last four or five years has been scouring through back issues of the Chattanooga Times at the library. Those are only accessible through microfilm. You can't search a key word in a database; you have to go through, page by page, looking of this stuff. He did a marvelous job finding fiddle related articles and, more specifically, the ones related to the Chattanooga convention.

He did a small run of a booklet of those that covered from 1925 to 1929, which was definitely the hey day of the convention.

Seeing that, it would be that interesting to everyone, but to someone like me that's interested in the music, having all these household names - Uncle Dave Macon, Clayton McMichen and Earl Johnson - all coming and taking part in the festival was really surprising. It's kind of an overlooked part of history here.

CP: Looking through some of the contests you're including, it seems you're being pretty strict in focusing on authentic old-time instruments - no mandolin or guitar contests. You see those instruments in modern old-time music, so why not allow highlight them in the festival?

MD: I did think about that, and I think that there are plenty of opportunities in the area and region for musicians who choose to play those instruments to compete. A lot of the current fiddlers conventions will have a bluegrass category.

In 1925, when this started, bluegrass didn't exist as we know it. A lot of people confuse bluegrass and string band or old-time music, but they're another branch off the tree. I wanted to keep it strictly old-time, just out of respect for the history and to do something different. That's not a slight to any other type of music or instrument, but I wanted to keep it true to its roots.

CP: This is a first year, so a lot can happen, obviously, but is your goal for this to become an annual or even, as it was historically, bi-annual event?

MD: Definitely annual for sure. That's one of my main goals, to make it a self-sustaining annual event. Nobody talks about the bad old days. Nobody talks about that bad, old-fashioned lemonade. This is a chance for people to go back.