Last night I went to the monthly jam at the Thinkwell Makerspace (aka the Decatur Public Library), which turned out to be a real banger. There were maybe a dozen of us, possibly more - a few people I hadn’t seen before, a few I hadn’t seen in a while. We started out playing D tunes, because of course we did, but managed to transition into A tunes about halfway through.

By then a contingent from the Champaign-Urbana area had arrived, two of whom have been lately living on an island in the ocean somewhere. One of the fiddlers in their number played a tune that I didn’t recognize but picked up without too much trouble. I asked the name of the tune after playing it, and the fiddler looked at me incredulously: the tune was “Dinah,” which they knew from me playing it earlier this year.

It was not exactly encouraging to me that I couldn’t recognize a tune I definitely know. Granted, the tune was not precisely the same: the other fiddler had streamlined it somewhat, thereby giving it a bit more “oomph” than my version. Its a tune that’s given me some trouble, and still play exactly as I learned it. Also, it was a tune I first encountered at a jam last winter at the University of Chicago Folk Festival, and the other fiddler was there too. At the time I assumed they knew it beforehand (they did not). I think we even exchanged contact info later that day, probably because we’d met before at the Decatur jam.

The festival jam was one of the first I went to as a fiddle player, and I knew comparatively few tunes. Chirps Smith, who knows approximately one billion tunes, was leading the jam and it was a lot of fun listening to him. The tunes were fast and lively - like dance music - and during the three or so hours I was there went through an endless succession of A tunes that I did not know, one of which was “Dinah.” After playing it, I remember Chirps saying “nothing fin-ah than Din-ah.” I liked the tune and resolved to learn it, dutifully copying it from some website into my notebook and practicing it for weeks. By the time I’d learned it, it had become clear it was a pretty obscure tune. I’d already gone through the trouble, though, and I was going to play it out, gosh darnit.

I seem to have a tendency to find real note-y tunes. Some of that’s definitely on account of the fiddlers I’ve listened to most in person: Chirps, Charlie Walden, and my friend Aaron. They’re kind of a note-y bunch, these prairie fiddlers.

To be clear, the fiddler from Champaign-Urbana-and-also-a-rock-in-the-ocean is also a prairie fiddler, and quite capable of playing note-y tunes, but it turns out they’re pretty good at un-note-ifying them, too. Definitely a skill I need to work on.

A lot of the tunes I’ve learned, especially the ones early on, I have to play just the same every time or I’m liable to get lost. I figure if I keep at it long enough, eventually I’ll be able to make variations on the fly, but I’m not there just yet. There’s no shortage of tunes to learn in the meantime, so I guess that’s alright with me.

The funny thing about the tune “Dinah” is that one of the reasons I like it is because it makes me think of the song of that same title played by Le Quintette du Hot Club de France - the legendary 1930’s recording group featuring guitarist Django Reinhardt and fiddler Stephane Grappelli - which was a version of a song performed by Louis Armstrong. Those recordings are both knockouts - pre-war jazz at its very finest. Nothing fin-ah than Din-ah, indeed.