The first act we saw, Melvin Goins and his band, had a fiddler. As the band played its lineup of country and bluegrass songs, I was entranced by the way the fiddler’s fingers ran up and down the fingerboard, the way the music came out of him as naturally as wind blowing through the pines. The more interested I became, though, the more impatient William grew, leaning back in his chair, sighing, tapping his sister on the shoulder.
“When are we going to go?” William whispered loudly to me.
“After a while,” I said. “Just enjoy the music.”
He rolled his eyes and kicked the dirt. Rose giggled, looking over at me and quieting down when I gave her a look that said shush. My husband sat there stoically in his lawn chair, glancing over at me and the kids when we started whispering.
“Want to walk with them around the campground for a bit?” I begged him. “Please?”
He looked at me just as William had a moment earlier, and I was struck, not for the first time, by the similarities between my husband and our son. Both were charismatic and boyish, with blond hair and a natural attractiveness, as well as a tendency toward frustration when things weren’t exactly right, exactly perfect. And it occurred to me, looking at my family, that maybe it had been a bad idea to bring them all along to this festival. Maybe I should have just come myself. It had been my crazy idea, anyway.
“I guess,” he said. “Come on, kids.”
He walked off with them to the edge of the audience area, and the kids scurried around under the pine trees, picking up sticks, looking at holes in the trees. He stood nearby, his arms crossed, glancing over at me now and then. Sitting there alone, I turned back to the music and listened, entranced, to the notes cascading out of that fiddle. I was amazed by the way the fiddle player picked up melodies and riffed on them as if such improvisation were the easiest, most natural thing in the world.
And in that moment, I fell in love with fiddling.
After the band wrapped up its set, I walked over to where the fiddle player had gone to the side of the stage. John Rigsby, he said his name was when I introduced myself. He seemed surprised by my interest, and shy, looking at his feet now and then, scratching the campground dirt. He told me that he lived down near Martha, Kentucky, that he also played mandolin and sang, and that he had played off and on with the Melvin Goins band for a few years. In his blue-and-red-plaid shirt and jeans, he had dark-cropped hair and the demeanor of someone comfortable in his skin, comfortable with his profession, happy with his performance, and slightly flattered by my questions—though he didn’t seem to much fathom what I hoped to find out by talking with him. Honestly, I didn’t know myself.
He told me he’d played fiddle since he was nine. I told him that I played violin, and he looked at me curiously, the beginnings of a smile wavering on his lips.
“Is that right?” he said, his words rolling out in a slight Kentucky drawl.
“Just violin,” I said. “But I’m trying to learn fiddle.”
“You know how to read music?” he asked, eyeing me rather like the concession woman had a while earlier.
Surprised, and not sure if this was a trick question, I said, “Yeah, don’t you?”
He looked at me, bemused, smiling broadly now, as if he were letting me in on a fairly open secret.
“Nope,” he said. “Do it all by ear.”
I stared at him, stunned. All by ear? All that music? How could that be? How could he not know how to read music and play so well?
Almost conciliatory, he said, “Want to see my fiddle?”
“Sure,” I said. “I’d love to.”
I followed him back to the band’s trailer, this time with Rose, who’d left William and my husband to run over to join us, interested to see what Mommy was up to. John carefully took out the black leather fiddle case and opened it up on a stump by the truck. Then he pulled out one of the strangest fiddles I’d ever seen: a five-string fiddle with a ram’s head carved in great detail in place of a scroll, the horns curving down on the side, the eyes staring hard out at anyone who might pick up the instrument, as if saying, So let’s see what kind of fiddle you play. Let’s just see. I stared at the ram’s head, considering the challenge inherent in the glint of its ebony eyes, the deep shine of its wood.
“Wow,” I said. “That’s a beautiful instrument.”
Rose looked at it, pointing to the scroll.
“Look at the eyes,” she said. “Weird.”
“It’s got a nice, deep sound,” he said. “Not too loud a fiddle.”
He himself was also soft-spoken, but he clearly loved this fiddle, and loved talking about things related to fiddle.
“Any more, that’s all I play,” he said.
He handed me the instrument, and I took it gingerly, not sure what to do.
“Go ahead; try it,” he said.
I bowed a few notes, mostly open strings, unable to think of any of the fiddle tunes I’d been learning from the Mel Bay book, and suddenly shy, worried about measuring up. Plus, there was that ram’s head. I felt it looking at me, up from the scroll. I played a few scales starting on the low C fifth-string, which made the instrument something of a cross between a violin and the lower-keyed viola.
“It’s lovely,” I stammered, because it was. Rich and full, just like he’d said.
“Yeah, it’s a remarkable instrument,” he said.
I looked inside the f-hole for the label that would tell me who made it.
“It’s an Arthur Conner fiddle,” he said before I could locate the little label in the bright sunlight. “Down in Virginia.”
I nodded, reading the label: Arthur Conner, Copper Hill, Virginia.
“So he makes fiddles down there?” I asked.
“Yup,” he said. “He’s gettin’ pretty old, but he’s still making them, near as I can tell.”
I thought about Copper Hill, Virginia, envisioning hillsides covered in copper-flaked rocks and thick woods. It seemed like a magical, mystical place. And as I stood there, looking at that fiddle, I began to formulate a plan.
John and I shook hands, and I thanked him for his time.
“Sure thing,” he said, placing the fiddle away carefully in its case like he was putting a baby to sleep in its crib.
Chapter 3
The Fiddle Maker
Once home, I couldn’t put the thought of that fiddle out of my head. I dreamed of those ram’s eyes, daring me to do something, though I didn’t know what. That fiddle struck a chord deep within me. It was a challenge, a promise, and a mystery, all wrapped into one. I wondered about Copper Hill, Virginia. I wanted, more than anything, to find the man who had made that fiddle. I Googled Arthur Conner and tracked down his phone number. Then, partly just to have an excuse to call him and arrange a visit, I queried the magazine Bluegrass Unlimited about doing a profile story about Conner and his fiddles. The magazine’s editor agreed to look at the story on spec, and that was enough for me, since it gave me a reason to give Conner a call and arrange a meeting. But I knew the story was just an excuse: I really wanted to meet the man who had made that beautiful fiddle. I wanted to discover its secret. To discover, perhaps, the secret of fiddling itself. It seemed, suddenly, vitally important that I pay a visit