A fiddle and folk adventure coming
Her love for the sound of a grassroots fiddle took Kiwi musician Flora Knight all the way to West Virginia, up the Appalachian mountains and through Cajun country. Now, she is bringing the sound home.
On a New Zealand tour, Knight and Sean Donald, a Canadian musician who she met on her travels, are sharing their new album that draws influence from early American folk music.
The record was made at the infa- mous venue, now recording studio, Chicks Hotel in Dunedin, and Knight said it was recorded live in a one-day session with the help of engineer Tom Bell.
‘‘We just used one microphone and just did a few takes for each track. We kept it pretty simple.’’
The record is made up of songs and tunes that Knight and Donald have collected on their travels around the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
Knight said they were learnt from mentors and older-generation musicians at square dances, honky tonks and from 78 rpm records.
Knight said she learnt to play the violin as a child, but found that when she picked up a fiddle in later years she felt a connection.
‘‘My dad played a lot of folk music when I was little and I remember something happening in my brain when I heard his version of a Jimmy Rogers song.
‘‘There is something about the way the music tells stories. I just really latched on to that.’’
Knight said Donald was at a similar stage of musical discovery when they met and after playing some gigs together she convinced him to come to New Zealand last year to assist her in putting on a tour of old-time square dances in rural town halls all over the country.
‘‘It was great. We brought some people that we had met in the US over, some musical gypsies, I guess, and we had a great time. The fiddle gets people up and dancing and square dancing is something anyone can do.’’
Knight and Donald will be playing in Palmerston North on September 3 at the Hokowhitu Bowling Club, performing a collection of tunes that they say is a ‘‘modest attempt to keep the music thriving in modern times’’.