Fiddle camp leads to unexpected career
JJ Guy didn’t plan on becoming a professional musician, but a visit to the Emma Lake Fiddle Camp in the early 2000s changed everything.
“I didn’t plan on doing it fulltime. I was going to farm and then I got hired to teach at the camp and that changed my whole perspective,” Guy said.
The fiddler remembers being amazing by the other instructors and inspired to write original tunes. He also remembers being terrified, worried he’d be exposed as a hack. To this day, some of the best concerts Guy has ever seen took place at the Emma Lake Fiddle Camp.
The experience was also where he met Gordon Stobbe, a fellow fiddler and Saskatchewan native who now lives in Nova Scotia. The pair hit it off and started playing together. Today, they are an official duo called Twin Fiddles about to release their third album.
Guy grew up on a farm between Lintlaw and Invermay and started playing the fiddle as a kid. He suspects it was because he wanted to mimic his big sister. Guy never had a music teacher. Instead, he learned by ear.
“I’m dating myself now but I remember taking my cassettes and putting them in and rewinding and trying to mimic what was on them,” he said.
He can read music today but doesn’t have any formal training. His passion for the instrument grew hugely when he started writing his own music, a step inspired by fiddlers like Stobbe.
“I’d never heard fiddle tunes in that style before. He played in rock bands and had a totally different approach to fiddle tunes,” he said.
Guy’s been playing professionally for more than a decade now.
A year after going to Emma Lake he recorded his first solo album. That teaching gig also had a snowball effect, leading to other camps and a decade working in Manitoba through the Frontier School Division. He is now based in Saskatoon.
He and Stobbe released their first album as Twin Fiddles in 2015 and were nominated for a Western Canadian Music Award. Guy said they are united by a shared “warped sense of humour” and have a lot of fun recording and touring together, despite a large age difference. Guy said he’s had to pull the car over on the road because he’s laughing so hard.
Guy usually travels to Nova Scotia in November to work with Stobbe in his studio. The pair write original tunes that push outside the traditional fiddle boundaries, incorporating everything from Cajun to Spanish sounds.
“There are so many fiddle styles even across Canada. The Metis style is totally different than the Cape Breton style and the Quebecois style,” he said.
Many of their songs are inspired by people or places. The live show gives Twin Fiddles the chance to share the stories behind each piece. Audience members might be transported to Tulita, N.W.T., or Bella Coola, B.C., through their onstage banter.
Guy said he remembers fearing for his life as they travelled a narrow mountain road on their way to the latter. He and Stobbe wrote a song that recreates the feel of shifting gears. They also wrote a tune called Wolverine, named after Wolverine Air, the flying outfit they often use to travel to show in northern Canada.
Those stories have become a calling card for Twin Fiddles.
“People will say to us ‘Oh, we love your playing, but the stories, that’s the ticket,’ ” Guy said with a laugh.
Another musician he met at Emma Lake, Cathy Sproule, accompanies the duo on keys. Twin Fiddles 3 comes out this month.