by CONNIE TABBERT
Editor
COBDEN — Ian Hamilton`s trophy collection continues to grow, even though he took a year off from competition.
The Cobden fiddle player won the 45-64 age group at the Pembroke step dancing and fiddle competition held this past weekend at the Pembroke Memorial Centre.
“I’ve been playing for 30 years,” he said after the competition. “I picked it up when I was 19.”
Mr. Hamilton won the same division in 2011, 2012 and 2013, and because of an “unwritten rule” that if you win three years in a row you don’t not compete the fourth year, he sat out 2014.
Looking back at his musical career which began where he grew up in London, Ontario, Mr. Hamilton said when he was seven years old, he began taking lessons to play the accordion and throughout high school played brass instruments.
Even though four generations on his father’s side played the fiddle, it wasn’t his first choice for a musical instrument.
His parents and grandparents didn’t mind he didn’t play fiddle, but he had to play music of some sort.
“I had a red accordion and took lessons until I was 16,” he recalled.
However, one day he became bored and decided to try the fiddle. In secrecy, he taught himself the scales on the fiddle.
“When nobody was home, I’d take the fiddle off the wall and plunk a note on the piano and I would try and find it on the fiddle until I got all the scales learnt. Then, I’d open up a piece of music, because I could read music, and figure out the tune,” he said. “But my bowing was atrocious. I wasn’t bowing right, because I didn’t know when you were supposed to do an up bow or a down bow.”
He was hoping to surprise his family with his fiddle playing ability at a family function, but that didn’t happen, he said.
“My daught caught me playing one day,” he said.
His father said he was playing it right but doing it wrong.
“He woke me up early one morning and asked me how serious I was about learning and I said very,” he recalled.
A few days later, his father did the same thing again, and when Mr. Hamilton answered yes again, his father gave him a gift.
“He brought in my grandfather’s fiddle and put it on the bed and he says, ‘There’s an early inheritance present, learn how to play it’,” he recalled.
While there’s no date on the fiddle, it’s believed to have been created in Germany sometime between 1880 to 1890. It’s a copy of a David Techler, who made violins in the same era as the Stradivarius.
Mr. Hamilton said the only difference between a violin and a fiddle is the type of music that’s played.
Mr. Hamilton said after his father gave him some tutelage, he then began taking lessons for the next four-and-a-half years from world-renown fiddle champion player Chuck Joyce.
“I saw my father change when I started to play,” he said. “Our relationship changed.
“I knew he was happy I was carrying on the family tradition.
“From not even liking it when I was a kid to complete admiration for the fiddle, I can’t even explain how that happened,” he recalled.
As a child, he would go to his grandmother’s house, but instead of enjoying the outdoors fishing in the nearby river, he had to sit in the house and listen to fiddle music.
“When you could be out fishing, I was indoors listening to fiddle music, so it leaves a bad taste in your mouth for it,” he explained.
As for his own sons, Connor, 16, and Carter, 7, neither play the fiddle but are musically inclined. Connor plays the drums and Carter is taking piano lessons, he said.
“Patty (his wife) is the critic,” he said. “She can read and play piano. Sometimes she’ll get on the piano and play.”
Mr. Hamilton began competing about a year after a learned how to play. He used to compete in the open class, which is only for the very elite.
“For 20 years, I did really well,” he said. “I was a Grand Master’s finalist in 1995. You had to score so many points in the Ontario circuit to get an invite to the Grand Master Invitational.
“They would invite five people from each province and that (event) was held in Ottawa,” he said.
Today, that Invitational moves to various locations throughout Canada after many years of being held only in Ottawa, he said.
Twenty-three years ago, Mr. Hamilton moved to the area, met a Valley girl and married her. Since she wanted to remain in the Valley, they did, and are now settled into a home just east of Cobden.
However, after marrying and having children, Mr. Hamilton stopped competing in 2000, but began volunteering parking trailers in Fiddle Park, which he’s done for 15 years.
“Life gets busy with a wife, children and work,” he said.
However, in 2010 the competition bug caught up to him and he began practising so he could compete in 2011, but only in his age group, not in the open class.
He said his mother encouraged him to compete in the age category so more people would join. He noted this year there were only nine competitors in his age group, but that’s an increase in numbers.
“It was kind of getting thin, but there’s a little bit of a resurgence,” he said. “In the open this year, there were only 13. In my hay, I’ve seen 35.”
While he did place first this year, Mr. Hamilton won’t know what the judges liked or didn’t like until he receives the points and critique in the mail. They judge on timing, tone, difficulty, danceability and if it’s the proper old-time style.
To compete, a fiddle player must perform a waltz, jig and reel in Canadian old-time style, Mr. Hamilton explained. He said there are many styles of music, such as Celtic and even Ottawa Valley, which has a Scotch/Irish flavour to it.
“There is different music depending on where you come from,” he said. “Some people can tell where you’ve come from after they’ve heard you play….just by the way you attack the tune.
“The Canadian old-time style is the Don Messer style of playing,” he said.
Mr. Hamilton said Pembroke is the only competition he returned to, but is considering returning to the Shelbourne stage next year.
“Years ago, I used to compete at every contest possible,” he said. “At that time in the hay day, there were between 17 and 18 contests throughout the summer and they were back to back, weekend after weekend, from May until Labour Day,” he said. “You went from Stratford to Mattawa to Powasson to Sunridge, Belle River, Windsor, Lanark, all over the place.”
Mr. Hamilton said the atmosphere at a fiddle and step dancing competition can be electric at times.
“One, you have to have a good emcee,” he said. “They create buzz.”
He said Art Jamieson is the best emcee Pembroke can have.
“He knows everyone on the fiddle circuit so he can tell a little blurb about everybody,” Mr. Hamilton said. “It makes you feel good as a competitor when the emcee knows all about you, where you’ve been and what you’ve done.
“And they can inform the crowd and then the crowd, who doesn’t know you, all of a sudden now knows you, where you’re from, what you’ve done.
“That creates an electricism in the crowd.”
Mr. Hamilton said the best players come out to Pembroke.
“It’s like the Stanley Cup of fiddle players,” he said.
He noted this year’s anniversary included the return of the fiddle playing Schryer triplets and Piltatzke brothers step dancing in a 40-minute show.
“I hope Pembroke considers more shows like that during competitions,” he said. “If you always create that shiny new toy, you get more attendance, and attendance was up this year.”
This year was a special year for Mr. Hamilton as it was his 30th year competing at Pembroke, it was the 40th year for the fiddle championship itself and the 35th year for his parents attending the event. While his father had competed years ago, his parents come now to have family time.
“They spend about one-and-a-half weeks here,” he said. “It’s family time for them too, because I don’t get home much, so they get to spend time with me.”
And while Mr. Hamilton lives less than 30 minutes from Fiddle Park in Pembroke, he brings his trailer and lives there from the Sunday before the competition to Labour Day Monday.
Along with competing and working at CNL in Chalk River, Mr. Hamilton also gives fiddle lessons, something he’s been doing now for 24 years, 23 years in the Ottawa Valley.
“I’ve had some fantastic students come through,” he said. “I taught Ben Rutz, who is the fiddler for Johnny Reid.
“My first fiddle student was Shane Cook before I moved up to the Ottawa Valley,” he said. “Shane is the only Canadian to ever win the Weiser Idaho National Contest in the States,” he said, adding, “That contest has been going on for over 100 years.”
However, he’s also taught local people, those who want to compete, such as Terry Lynn Mahusky, Erin Kelly, and then those who want only the enjoyment of playing the fiddle.
“My oldest student right now is about 68 or 69,” he said.
If you want to take lessons from Mr. Hamilton call him at 613-638-2811.
