Get Up in the Cool

Welcome to episode 50 of Get Up in the Cool: Old Time Music with Cameron DeWhitt and Friends. That’s right! 50 episodes! Technically 53, but 3 of those are rebroadcasts or best of episodes, so they don’t count. And who better to feature on Get Up in the Cool’s 50th episode than Tricia Spencer and Howard Rains, experts in the field of traditional Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas fiddle tunes, fantastic v...

Welcome to Get Up in the Cool: Old Time Music with Cameron DeWhitt and Friends! This week’s friends are Palmer and Greg Loux from Run of the Mill String Band! I got to know them at my first clifftop back in 2014, when I gave their son’s friend a ride and ended up camping with them. I remember sitting in on a jam with them and not being able to keep up. Palmer has a taste for notey melodies with le...

Welcome to Get Up in the Cool: Old Time Music with Cameron DeWhitt and Friends! This week’s friend is Scotty Leach! Scotty was one of the first names on my list when I started asking people to be on my show, because he was basically the first friend I made at my first Clifftop. That was almost 4 years ago, and I think playing with Scotty that week was yet another point of no return for me and my r...

Welcome to Get Up in the Cool: Old Time Music with Cameron DeWhitt and Friends! This week’s friend is Patrick Heavner, the CEO and founder of Pisgah Banjo Company. If you’re a banjo nerd, this episode’s for you: we talk a lot of shop. I’m actually pretty ignorant when it comes to how banjos are made, so it was really cool to talk to someone who’s passionate about this whole other aspect of Old Tim...

Welcome to Get Up in the Cool, Old Time Music with Cameron DeWhitt and Friends. This week’s friend is one of my favorite flat-pickers, songwriters, and old time musicians, Ethan Hawkins. I met him at Mt. Airy a couple years ago, and immediately got a big ol’ crush on him. He’s a very good guitarist, with a dreamy voice, and he’s a very animated performer, so I’m really glad I got him on video. Oh,...

Welcome to Get Up in the Cool: Old Time Music with Cameron DeWhitt and Friends! This week’s friend is Kilby Spencer, and he’s kind of my new favorite fiddler. I wasn’t able to fully enjoy his fiddling while playing with him, because I was really concentrated on trying keep up, and not make a fool out of myself. But I just finished editing our interview and jam, and my jaw was on the floor the whol...

Welcome to Get Up in the Cool: Old Time Music with Cameron DeWhitt and Friends! This week’s friend is Mark Simos, fiddler and professor at Berklee College of Music. I visited him in his home back in February when I took my Boston trip. I didn’t know Mark at all prior to our session, but both Mark Kilianski and Adam Hurt recommended him, so my expectations were high. And I wasn’t disappointed! Mark...

Welcome to Get Up in the Cool: Old Time Music with Cameron DeWhitt and Friends. This episode features a lot of my new friends! Thornton, Emily and Kilby Spencer, Kelly Brieding and Debbie Bramer. Kilby Spencer reached out to me a while back with some recommendations for guests, so I crashed at his and Kelly’s place in Crumpler, North Carolina, and he lined up some amazing guests for me, including...

Welcome to Get Up in the Cool: Old Time music with Cameron DeWhitt and Friends! This week’s friend is Shohei Tsutsumi. He recently moved from Osaka, Japan, to Boone, North Carolina for an Appalachian Studies program at Appalachian State. We talk about what led him to do so, as well as the thriving Bluegrass and Old Time scene in Japan. Also, Dave Wood, the academic program director of Shohei’s pro...

Welcome to Get Up in the Cool: Old Time Music with Cameron DeWhitt and Friends! I hope you’re ready for more banjo duets, because this week’s friend is Tim Rowell! Tim’s a fantastic clawhammer banjoist, tune collector, and educator, and we had an awesome time hanging out in Bach Bui’s apartment in Boston. And Bach joins us for most of the tunes, kind of playing fiddle back up while we take the mel...

Welcome to Get Up in the Cool: Old Time Music with Cameron DeWhitt and Friends! Today’s friend is one of my favorite Philly fiddlers, Liana Moskowitz. Liana started the most recent incarnation of West Philly’s bi-monthly jam on the 2nd floor of the Gojjo Ethiopian Bar & Restaurant, and regularly plays Cajun music at Fiume, which, incidentally is also on the 2nd floor of an Ethiopian establishm...

Welcome to Get Up in the Cool: Old Time Music with Cameron DeWhitt and Friends. This week’s friend is Aaron Olwell! We recorded in Charlottesville, Virginia on my recent trip South. Aaron is a fantastic fiddler and clarinetist, and I’m sure he plays lots of other things too. In fact, I think we met in a jam at my first Clifftop, and he was flatfooting while playing a double slide whistle. That was...

Welcome to Get Up in the Cool: Old Time Music with Cameron DeWhitt and Friends! This week’s friends are Ruth Rappaport and Ben Wetherbee. We recorded our jam in Bach Bui’s apartment during my Patreon-funded Boston trip a couple months ago. Ruth and Ben are a delightful mother and son duo! It was super fun and inspiring to hang out with them and imagine forming my own family band some day. I’m exci...

Welcome to Get Up in the Cool: Old Time Music with Cameron DeWhitt and Friends! This week’s friend is fiddler Sophie Enloe; we recorded this at her house in Portland when I was home for Christmas. She chose a bunch of bonkers tunes that I fully intend on actually learning someday. Especially Sift the Meal and Save the Bran. Tunes we’ll play: Cold Frosty Morning Bonaparte’s Retreat Christmastime in...

Welcome to Get Up in the Cool: Old Time Music with Cameron DeWhitt and Friends. This week’s friend is Gabrielle Macrae, of The Horsenecks and The Macrae Sisters! The Horsenecks (mention CD and UK tour): http://www.horsenecks.com/  Old Sledge by The Macrae Sisters: https://www.cdbaby.com/cd/macraesisters  Support Get Up in the Cool on Patreon:  https://www.patreon.com/getupinthecool

Welcome to Get Up in the Cool: Old Time Music with Cameron DeWhitt and Friends. This week’s friends are Dotty Moore on fiddle and special guest accompanist, Jordan Rast, on guitar. Dotty didn’t have any particular theme in mind, so we threw a set together last minute, which I think added a pretty fun dynamic to the music and conversation. On the spectrum between jam and performance, this epis...

Welcome to Get Up in the Cool: Old Time Music with Cameron DeWhitt and Friends! This week’s friend is fiddler Chris Dalnodar, and he brought with him a very serious topic: people should learn to play rags at old time jams and not be afraid of flat keys. And, you guys, I think he makes a pretty compelling case.  Support Get Up in the Cool on Patreon:  https://www.patreon.com/getupinthecoo...

Welcome to Get Up in the Cool: Old Time Music with Cameron DeWhitt and Friends! This week’s friend is fiddler and songwriter Jordan Rast. Jordan grew up going to clifftop, and he shared a lot of fun stories that I vicariously enjoyed. Most people sort of stumble upon or wander into Old Time Music, but Jordan was raised on the stuff. It’s always interesting, hearing people like Jordan talk about th...

Welcome to Get Up in the Cool: Old Time Music with Cameron DeWhitt and Friends. This week’s episode is very special to me; it’s my interview and jam with Carl Baron. My friend Stephen Landis, former and probably future guest of the show, taught me my first tunes, but Carl Baron hosted my first old time jam, and that’s when, for better or worse, my life took a turn. He’s another one of those people...

Welcome to Get Up in the Cool: Old Time Music with Cameron DeWhitt and Friends! This week’s friend is Deb Shebish, and she’s brought with her a handful of tunes and sweet memories of the late fiddler from Bloomington, Indiana, Joe Dawson. As transmitters of the tradition, we’re simultaneously channeling our sources, while becoming the source for someone else. Joe Dawson’s impact wasn’t far reachin...

Welcome to Get Up in the Cool: Old Time Music with Cameron DeWhitt and Friends! This week’s friend is fiddler Don Stratton, and he has some original old time tunes to share with a northern flavor. We recorded this in Alan Kaufman’s cabin during the Fiddlin’ Bear festival at Lake Genero in the Poconos; making it the final installment of that day’s marathon recording session.  Most of the tunes...

Welcome to Get Up in the Cool: Old Time Music with Cameron DeWhitt and Friends! This week’s friend is the award winning clawhammer banjoist, old time fanatic, and fiddler, Ludvig Drevfjäll. I’m really glad I had the opportunity to ask him about his story, because usually when we get together, we get straight to banjo playing and there’s not a lot of talking.  Sign up to support Get Up in the...

Welcome to Get Up in the Cool: Old Time Music with Cameron DeWhitt and Friends! This episode is a great departure from the fiddling you can expect to hear on this program, because my guest is Trip Henderson and his bag of harmonicas. We talk about the harmonica’s role in old time music, which led Trip to invent my new favorite word, which is: banjoistically. Also, we talk briefly about the Old Tim...

Welcome to Get Up in the Cool: Old Time Music with Cameron DeWhitt and Friends. This week’s friend is David Deacon, and he curated a nice handful of Kentucky fiddle tunes for us to play! We recorded this at the Brandywine Revival Festival last summer, hidden away up the path near a still pond with a lot of mosquitoes. You can still hear some distant jams from the other side of the holler, and a ve...

Welcome to Get Up in the Cool: Old Time Music with Cameron DeWhitt and Friends! This week’s friend is one of the first people I met at my first ever Clifftop, melodic clawhammer banjoist Bertram Levy. We recorded this late in the week at the Keith McManus tent, so there’s a lot of background noise, but I think it makes a nice, bustling ambiance for our competing bum-diddies. And trigger warning: t...