Mojo Mistress

Maybe this is too soon to add a bio...? Well, here goes.

I have taken formal music lessons only once, as a kid, on piano. I almost never practiced and nobody ever made me. So while I took them for 3-4 years, I never really was very good.

Years later, in the early '90s, I tried fifing (have always been interested to a most unseemly degree in the American Civil War), but didn't know much, and this was pre-Internet when it wasn't easy to find more information or people to help further one's hobby... it got very frustrating, so I gave up.

A dozen years later, a family member joined a local fife and drum corps, so I brushed off my old fife and tried again. This time it stuck, and I've found a whole new world of people and fun times.

Since there is no F&D corps in this town that accepts adult women (there are two youth corps, an alumni corps, and a re-enactor corps that doesn't allow women), I started holding monthly fife and drum jam sessions here in town, beginning in September 2006. They are still happening, but what also happened was a small group formed of people who want to play in a laid-back, fun-oriented corps that suits their busy schedules, and actually perform once or twice a year. And so we have Fife Mojo, a new, pretty informal "corps" that does not intend to get uniforms, and that defines "folk music" as "music that lots of folks like."

In the meantime, I have also taken up concertina, which I don't practice very much, and side (snare) drum in a Scottish pipe and drum band, and life is too short for me not to learn fiddle, which I have dreamed about playing since I was 12. That's how I found this site--looking for a fiddle teacher in the area, and finding a monthly fiddle jam right here in town. SAH-WEET!!

My husband has recently taken up the bagpipe; my daughter plays several instruments as well, including fife and Scottish side/snare drum. We recently fixed up our house so that we have a music room where we can keep all our stuff in one place. We all have a million other interests that we intend to keep pursuing, but I don't think any of us want to live without folk music.