Grand
Traditionalists- Jay Unger and Molly Mason
by
Peter Aarony
Peter Aaron
...“Molly
suggested the name as a tribute to the Ashokan Fiddle and Dance
Workshops, which we’ve been running since 1980. Two of the
guys in Fiddle Fever were working on the soundtrack to Ken Burns’
second film, The Brooklyn Bridge. They played him the record and
he was really affected by ‘AshokanFarewell,’ so when
he started working on The Civil War he asked to use it.” Since
then, Ungar and Mason have been featured on the soundtracks of several
other of Burns’ PBS films, including his most recent, The
War, as well as on those of Legends of the Fall and Brother’s
Keeper.
Bassist
and guitarist Molly Mason grew up in the tiny town of Battle Ground,
Washington. While a member of The Mostly Sisters, an Andrews Sisters/Boswell
Sisters-style swing trio, she first met Ungar in the late 1970s
during a tour stop at Dutchess County folk club The Towne Crier.
From 1978 to 1979 she lived in Minneapolis, where she worked as
the house bassist for “A Prairie Home Companion” when
it was still just a regional phenomenon. “It was in the pilot
stage then, only going out to about six states altogether,”
recalls the tall and slim Mason. “At that point, NPR wasn’t
sure if people living on either of the coasts would get the whole
homespun Lake Wobegone thing. But eventually the show got picked
up by stations all over.” From there Mason moved east and
joined Fiddle Fever; she and Ungar also began performing as a duet,
continuing
after the parent band broke up.
Raised
in the Bronx, Ungar began playing the fiddle at age 7 and during
the early 60s went on pilgrimages to North Carolina and Tennessee
in search of old-time musicians...
CONTINUE...
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