The Freight Hoppers and Friends at Clifftop in 1998
(more photos)
What is it about oldtime fiddle music that stirs the soul? And what is oldtime music, anyway? Maybe it’s easier to taste it than it is to define it. It’s like staring at a faint star in the sky: you have to look askance before you spot it. Sometimes you can’t see the forest for the trees.
Here is a half-hour documentary from West Virginia Public Broadcasting that looks inside the annual Appalachian String Band Festival, or Clifftop as it’s called. Makes me wish I was back home in the hills, sitting on the front porch, just playing tunes.
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