These recordings, along with their narratives, are a tribute to the glory days of my discovery of learning—and often just attempting to learn—how to replicate old-style music as a classically-trained violinist.  It happened for me in the San Francisco Bay Area in the beginning of the 1970’s right after college, resulting in all the music you will hear on this album. This exciting adventure included my eventual formation of a ‘fiddle workshop’ which I taught for several years in an old church in the Noe Valley of S.F., as well as my being an honored member of the Grainneog Celli Band, led by celebrated accordionist, Kevin Keegan. This exalted musical life I was so fortunate to have experienced took new form in 1977 when I left the U.S. for further pursuits in Ireland, Scotland and the Shetland Islands.

Fast-forward exactly forty years to 2017 when serendipity put me in touch with a phenomenal musician and soon-to-be friend named Ray Frank. His stories of learning, playing and performing many different styles of music during his life, living coast-to-coast, took my breath away. We began meeting every Tuesday morning at his family home, thirty minutes away from mine. The music in these recordings, including the songs (representing a life-time of closet-singing at last set free) is the heartening result. Thank you, Ray, from the bottom of my heart.

The first time I heard a violin concert was in Sacramento when my music-loving father built a stereo system from a do-it-yourself kit in the late 1950s. As he eagerly tuned for the first time to a local FM station in our living room, I sat on the floor, transfixed by the other-worldly resonance of wood, rosin, and horsehair emanating from this new piece of equipment. I was eight years old, and by the time I turned nine, I knew I had to play the violin at all costs. And I accomplished this by joining my elementary school orchestra comprised of five students. The faeries had undeniably already taken me, as my parents needed regularly to tell me to put the violin down and stop practicing. 

From this time on, up until age twenty-two, I played in middle school, high school, and university orchestras and recitals. When I was a junior at California’s UC Davis, and having discovered psychedelia along with an electrified violin, I plugged in and also sang a few harmonies with my first band whose popularity relied on Credence Clearwater covers. On the Davis quad the following year, we performed for the very first Whole Earth Festival, a groundbreaking event.

Yet, at this juncture; and skipping ahead seven years after living having lived in the enchanted S.F. Bay Area learning, teaching, and performing fiddle music, I was determined to travel to Ireland with the intention of sprucing up my Irish fiddle techniques.

In the spring of 1977, on my way to the Emerald Isle, I stopped off in the Netherlands for what I believed would be a couple of weeks. This short visit was going to turn into sixteen years. It was partly due to my having travelled that same summer to Edinburgh, Scotland to check out the famed Fringe Festival. There, I had the inordinate good fortune of boldly introducing myself to legendary Shetland fiddler, composer and teacher, the then-67-year-old Tom Anderson, MBE (1910 - 1991) and his then-31-year-old fiddling cohort and lifetime friend, Aly Bain, who at that time was a member of The Boys of the Lough. I had never heard of either of them. After listening to their extraordinary concert, I had become so wildly enthusiastic about this style of fiddle-playing that Tom invited me on the spot to study with him in Lerwick, in the Shetland Islands, the hometown of both fiddlers. As a result, I made plans to spend a month during the Christmas holidays in Lerwick, and then, again the following year, eagerly soaking up (next to great whiskey) the friendship, local culture and unique sound of Shetland music.

In my second visit to Tom’s in 1978, there were preparations in store for an upcoming recording session in Edinburgh that would provide a second installment of the first LP, The Silver Bow I. In these darkest hours of the season were gathered a handful of local friends as well as myself, blissfully absorbing the joyous and poignant tunes ringing out in Tom’s modest residence, performed by himself, Aly, and—very significantly—the extraordinary pianist and accordionist, Violet Tulloch, as well as intrepid jazz guitarist, Peerie Willie Johnson (1920 - 2007).

During both of my visits, Tom composed several tunes for me which were later published in one of his many tune compilations, Ringing Strings (The Shetland Times, Ltd., Lerwick, Shetland, 1983).

Ironically, I never made it to Ireland, my original destination, until years later on a few short holidays while living in Holland with my Dutch-born husband and four children.

My family and I eventually emigrated from the Netherlands to Oregon in 1993 and later to my old hometown of Sacramento in 1998 where I have since remained. My three-member band, Stepping Stone, founded in 2012, continues to pay homage to the precious gifts of older musical traditions and to all the superb and magical musicians who have succeeded in keeping these traditions alive and well.