Truman Price

Music of the frontiers . . .

My facebook page may be more current.

2023 – Feb 5, Unitarian Farm barn, Dallas, 1-5, with video links to John Cobb and others.

2022 Calendar —
Wed, Mar 17 (St. Pat’s Day) 6 pm – solo, Opening for Pirate Jenny, the Pirate Rock Band!  Alberta St. Pub, PDX
Sun, Apr 17. – Dallas, zoom from/with John Cobb Eco Farm, 4 – 5 pm…
Sat. April 30 – Independence Heritage Museum Opening: solo, 1-3 pm (break for ribbon cutting at 1:15)
Sat. May 7 – Sheep-to-Shawl at Mission Mill, Salem, 10:15-11:30, solo; later with the OOTFA fiddlers.
Sat, May 14 – Polk County History Museum, Rickreall; solo, 12:30 – 4 pm
Sat Jun 4 (??) – 9-10 a.m, for Helmick Park Anniversary of Oregon’s 1st state park ?? (fiddlin’ was rained out!)
Mon., Jul 4 – 1:45-4 pm at Newell House, at SW corner of Champoeg State Park
Sat. Aug 27 – Brownsville Pioneer Days – wandering minstrel, 1-4 pm
Sat. Sep 17 – 4:30-5:30 for Independence Wine Crawl; Main Street in front of the Mural.
Sat Oct 1 – sometime between 2 & 6, tba: Monmouth City Park, for Melanesian celebration (!)
Sat Nov 19 – Waldport, 1 – 4 pm; playing for unveiling of Louis Southworth statue
Dec 12 @ – danzas por la Senora de Guadelupe.  Times t.b.a.
open jams included : 2nd Sundays, 1-4 intense fiddle tunes jam, back room of Knox Presbyterian in Keizer
—  2nd Wednesdaiys, 6:30 -8:30 low-key general jam, Monmouth Sr. Center

… a few leftovers of 2021:
4th of July — A short set of Patriotic songs; America the Beautiful, a military medley, the important verses of This Land is Your Land & Ochs’ Power and the Glory… among others.  Riverview Park,  4:30 – 5 pm. With Nathan Anderson of MusicalIndependence.
July 10 Sat , 11-1; for Sons & Daughters of the Oregon Trail, at Champoeg.
Nov 11, Friday, 11 am – solo, Vets’ Day, for a retirement home.,. inc. all the military anthems– “Who knows this one?” and bits of Oregon history.
Wed. Dec. 8, 6 pm : 30 min. solo set; Opening for Pirate Jenny, Pirate Rock! Alberta St. Pub, PDX
Dec 12 – danzas por la Senora de Guadelupe, in Albany at 11:30, in Independence at 4 pm at St. Patrick’s Catholic Church.
A few square dances were scheduled but cancelled, as super-spreader events.

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GENERAL MUSINGS:  … a few old video song links near the bottom of this page … notes on lessons …

Recent memories:  Summer of 2018 was nice.  Fiddled about half of all Sunny Saturday Mornings at the Independence Saturday Market. On that first warm spring day I did  2 1/2 hours without a break, as wide a variety of songs and tunes, from show tunes to hoedowns: after each tune or song, straight to the next, but changing key, and genre, each time and alternating between tunes and songs with lyrics.  Later, I wrote down a tune list, over 60 of them, all I could remember…  tunelist  here.

Elements that made Old Time Fiddle.  A program at Brown House, Stayton, June 2018: First, Mark Babson did a set on violin, sampling baroque/classical/romantic violin pieces.  My contribution sampled 10+ different threads that combined to make old-time fiddle, starting with the oldest tune, Soldier’s Joy, how it can be played many ways but is still the same; a tune sample in an open tuning; the Scots/Scots-Irish migrations to Appalachia and the Mixolydian mode of the bagpipe chanter; the influence of African-American fiddlers; their synthesis in a tune learned  in the New River Valley; for contrast, a regular New England/Eastern Canada tune; a French Canadian tune; in response to a question, stories about the Metis fiddlers; the influx of rags; swing; Scandinavian; a Norteno tune; and, for where do all these tunes come from, why I made up “The Swallows”, and played that.  A one-hour romp through Old-Time Fiddle as I see it.)  A hit.     (That Metis question inspired me to work, for a while, on Red River Jig.   Tricky! Doesn’t feel exactly like a jig to me, but like a regular 4/4 measure plus a half-measure, repeated many times very quickly. Hard! — and needs a lot more work!)

The St. Paul Rodeo July 3 was fun.  Opened for, and played breaks for, The Bronco Billy Band.  No firm set list: tunes whose titles mentioned large animals alternated with old country-western songs, finishing with Bill Staines’ great rodeo rider’s lament, Sweet Wyoming Home, yo-de-lay-ee oo… which Bronco Billy had never heard of (but all went well).

The “Steam Punk Jane Austen Ball” near Halloween was another kick —  dozens of extraordinary costumes wending through the hospitality tables in the formal Grand March around the upper floor of the Mission Mill Building, straight into squares and reels..  I love this stuff!
Poke here for 2017 
poke here for some of 2016
 Lots of old calendars here. … & a few old photos

ECLIPSE PARTY AND JAM: The eclipse centered over our house, so we had an all-weekend nonstop party.  Moon songs at eclipse party: W. B. Reid, human jukebox, tapped a huge storehouse, in memory, of songs mentioning the moon.   Here’s some of us: Vivian Williams, Adam Price, myself  & Suzi, Bruce Reid, Kevin Hendrickson; but all we old pro’s were bested after a few hours when we reached a lull and an 11-year-old stranger from a family camping in the pasture slipped through the crowd to the piano where she played a clean, simple and elegant Claire de Lune.

• 		Solo fiddling and calling, an 1800’s Reel for a sesquicentennial party at Newell House by Champoeg, with authentic 1859 dinner and dance. – Suzi on the left. You should have seen that gray cloth skirt swirl when the lady twirled in the center of “Bird in the Cage”… touched everyone’s ankles!

  LOCAL JAMS:  ...all suspended in 2020… resuming 2022
  Appalachian fiddle tunes: A nice Appalachian fiddle tunes jam in Keizer on the second Sunday of each month — Restarted! Feb 2022.  Inquire here, or of Roger Applegate.   Here’s a few recent tunelists.  About half of the core group of 15 or so musicians show up at any particular jam.  
  General fiddle jam: in Corvallis, 1st Thursdays of each month; at Old World Deli, 7 pm; hosted by OOTFA … A good varied jam. Hasn’t restarted yet.
  Appalachian fiddle tunes: in Corvallis, was on 3rd Thursdays of each month; at Old World Deli, 7 pm; hosted by John Luna (when he’s not in town, it is not)
  Second Wednesday each month, a few friends practice/perform for a small but regular audience at the Monmouth Senior Center, 6:30 – 8pm; musicians and listeners welcome!
  General jam: Guthrie Park, 3 miles south of Dallas at 4320 Kings Valley Hwy, has resumed Dec 2021; it ran every Friday night, 6:30-10 pm, for 28 years (I never missed a Friday in the first ten years or so).  [[Note — I did stop for a while in 2019-20 after a lead musician accidentally dropped her loaded pistol on the stage… I haven’t resumed after covid, and may not.]  A large jam – 10 to 20 musicians each week, a large and faithful audience of folks listening or dancing.  Strict rotation around the circle of musicians, playing country-western, older pop, folk, fiddle tunes and waltzes.  If weather is nice, fiddlers may move out to the porch.
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• MEMOIR:         Canora: Notes from an Old-Time Fiddler  Perfect-bound pb, 8.5″, 254 pp Some nice comments from readers   Back cover shows our music room, where we used to have a monthly jam.

Ancient History:

—-> “An Appalachian Christmas” with Jane Keefer and Tim Crosby was a fun gig! Asked to present an hour program, we studied, practiced once and nailed it: widely varied and perfect; many groups around the valley would love to have it  —  if only they knew of it!

An Appalachian Christmas – “Presenting three of the valley’s most respected folk musicians Truman Price, Jane Keefer, Tim Crosby.”   details

• ABOUT THE OREGON TRAIL MUSIC AND LORE:
  In the 1980’s, back to Oregon after many years of random fiddling, including a few years in Western Virginia, I was asked to put together a 40-minute set of authentic music of the Oregon Trail as introductions for 16 performances of the Oregon Trail Pageant at Champoeg.  After research,  Jane Keefer and I recorded a cassette collection (which became a CD, Songs of the Oregon Trail);  then another 16 performances  each year (Jane working back East).  Later the Oregon Historical Society sponsored 50+ one-hour presentations, schools, libraries, conventions; usually solo, sometimes duo or trio with True West Band.  Another 24 times solo for Oregon Trial Interpretive Center near Baker. And more, from a few songs to two hours +… (- the two-hour set seemed short!)
  Might also mention OT dance: have called over 100 evenings of dance for various adultish groups; because of that, taught old-time dances to about 15,000 kids grades 1-6, in 60+ schools, through Artists in Schools.
•     —> Seattle concert with Adam Price – fine banjoist, fine person! —>
• <— Aside: For many years I’ve been la violinista for the annual danzas por la Senora de Guadelupe on/around Dec. 12 with the local Mexican community.
•  A wonderful experience.   Anyone can attend, and the food is super.
• Here’s a page  About the Dances for Guadelupe Celebrations
• and a brief sample of one tune: Pico Perico
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• Some Youtube Video: Solos filmed by Josh Meredith & Bob Zybach near Corvallis 2005, part of a presentation on the old California-Oregon Trail which ran through that meadow.   We had just spent two hours finding camas roots and grubbing blackberry vines out of the watershed, and were all kinda muddy!  (“Out standing in the field!”)
  • St. Anne’s Reel
  • Uncle Sam’s Farm
  • Oh Susannah (the Gold Rush hit version)

  A few nice verses of June Apple filmed by Ray Leach at Centralia Campout August 2005, trio with Adam Price and Tom Peloso (of Modest Mouse):

  • June Apple

  These are with Adam on banjo, at Northwest Folklife Festival, Seattle, Memorial Day Weekend 2007:

  • Frosty Morning
  • Mississippi Sawyer  (with the modal D-C second part)
  • Wait for the Wagon

  These videos, and a few others, are on YouTube, some with nice comments – poke here, or just enter the words “old time fiddle” and see what comes up!—

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  Two CD’s:

  • Songs of the Oregon Trail CD Truman and Jane Keefer
  • Rough and Ready CD Truman and Wes

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  LESSONS:
      I’ve taught beginning violin to advanced fiddle for many years.  Former students have become players and bandleaders.  Also enjoyed presenting a workshop “fiddle for violinists,” seven times at NW Folklife in Seattle and for the Oregon Oldtime Fiddlers annual convention in Rickreall.

  From the desk window in Early Spring . . . . . .	Same thing in June, with organic Jerseys . . . . . .	Hey, Stop Scaring My Cows!

  BOOKS:
• We make part of our living selling antiquarian books, especially children’s literature, and Suzanne’s site at http://www.oldchildrensbooks.com is really nice.  Also I offer a few hundred titles of folk music which can be searched here. (not my personal collection of a few hundred more, not yet)  For more titles, change the keywords… e.g. “music” or “fiddle”.
  – truprice at gmail dot com