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Chattanooga: Local fiddler snags dual championships at a Middle Tennessee music festival

By: Casey Phillips
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When John Boulware lights into the tune “Brilliancy” on his fiddle, his face is composed, his tall, thin frame all but motionless. His fingers, however, fly up and down the strings like they’re being chased.

With the last note still hanging in the air, his composure breaks. He smiles and gives a slight nod.

“(‘Brilliancy’ is) one of my favorite contest fiddling tunes,” he said. “There are so many things you can do with it, and if you pull it all off well, it’s very high-scoring too.”

Mr. Boulware, 21, said he learned the traditional tune, which was made popular in the 1920s by fiddler Eck Robertson, about four years ago. Since then, it has helped him win four of the 11 contest fiddling championships he has acquired since he began seriously competing on the instrument six years ago.

At the annual Uncle Dave Macon Days old-time music festival held last month in Murfreesboro, Tenn., Mr. Boulware clinched both the contest fiddling and old-time music categories on the same day by playing “Brilliancy” and the tune “Across the Sea,” respectively.

Mr. Boulware has won the contest fiddling competition at Uncle Dave Macon Days every year he has been eligible to compete. Since contestants can win only two years in a row, he has had to sit out two years so far but will be eligible to return again next year. This was his first year competing in the old-time category, he said

Winning two fiddle contests on the same day is indicative of the skill Mr. Boulware has exhibited since he started playing music as a preteen, said Steve Daugherty, owner of the Mountain Music store where Mr. Boulware has been giving lessons since September.

Mr. Daugherty was at Uncle Dave Macon Days and watched Mr. Boulware’s performance. It was well played, he said, but that was hardly a surprise.

“Even when he’s tuning up, it sounds beautiful,” Mr. Daugherty said. “I don’t know that he knows how good he is.

“(Among) the fiddle guys around here ... the consensus is that they don’t get much better than he is.”

Mr. Boulware competes in about two contests a month during his busy season, which lasts from March to October. Most of the festivals he performs at are in Tennessee or North Georgia, he said.

Having won so many contests, Mr. Boulware said some contest fiddlers are intimidated by him even when he’s not there to compete.

“I was in Smithville, and I got there too late to enter the fiddle contest, but when I walked up, everybody froze like, ‘Oh no, he’s here,’ ” he said, laughing.

Unlike many bluegrass musicians, who might point to fiddling phenoms such as Stuart Duncan, Mark O’Connor or Charlie Daniels as the artist who convinced them to take up music, Mr. Boulware’s musical impetus wasn’t on the fiddle and the artist wasn’t playing bluegrass.

At a Boy Scout campout at age 11, Mr. Boulware said, he was entranced by the sounds of a guitarist strumming through the notes of the British rock band Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water.”

“I was really fascinated by that, so I asked my parents if I could have a guitar for my birthday,” he said.

After six months of lessons with Cody Kilby, guitarist with Ricky Skaggs’ perennial Grammy Award-nominated bluegrass band Kentucky Thunder, Boulware won his first contest — for flatpicking guitar — at a festival in Smithville, Tenn.

To his family, this award was a surprise, possibly a fluke, not the start of a trend, said John’s brother, Will.

“We didn’t expect it to continue, but it did,” he said of his brother’s winning streak. “I’ve grown up with him ... and the level of musicianship he exposes is above and beyond the average.”

Shortly after winning the Smithville contest, Mr. Kilby went on tour with Kentucky Thunder, leaving Mr. Boulware without a guitar instructor. He took up lessons with Bob Townsend, a fiddler living nearby on South Pittsburg Mountain.

The voice and versatility of the fiddle captured his attention, Mr. Boulware said.

“With plectrum instruments, you’ve got a pick, and you strike the string, and that’s about the only sound you can get out of it,” he said. “With a bow, you can continue the notes — make it louder or softer — within the duration of the sound.

“You can be a lot more expressive with it.”

Mr. Boulware said he will continue to play the fiddle competitively until it’s no longer a challenge. The thrill of the competition — not prize money or fame — is what keeps bringing him back, he said.

“To me, a contest is not really about winning; it’s about going up and playing against other people,” he said. “I like playing against somebody, but if I go home at the end of the day and I haven’t won anything but still had a good time, that’s all that matters to me.”

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