When Mike Bryant puts his bow to string, the resulting sound is so engagingly toe-tapping it’s easy to reconsider whether “old time” is actually a misnomer.
Of course, it wasn’t always that way. The 56-year-old Harriman, Tenn.-based fiddler said he first took up the fiddle after being mesmerized by the sound at an early clogging lesson in the mid-’70s.
“The first time I heard it, that’s when I decided I wanted to learn to play it,” he said, laughing. “The only thing I heard was the fiddle. I just liked everything I saw about it, visually and aurally.
“It just spoke to my heart somehow.”
With more than 35 years behind the bow, Bryant has become something of a paradox: a modern old-time legend. He and his wife, bassist Marcia Bryant, joined the Goat Path String Band and, later, the New Dixie Entertainers, which regularly performed for Knoxville dances for years. He has placed or won fiddling contests throughout the Southeast.
Tonight, he’ll join fellow Roane County fiddler Charlie McCarroll, the son of Roane County Ramblers’ fiddler Jimmy McCarroll, to perform a benefit concert at Barking Legs Theater for the Friends of the Cumberland Trail.
As the elder statesmen of a genre with few remaining source musicians to actively learn from, the temptation might be to feel either over-important or under-resourced. Not so Bryant, who learned most of his 600-song-strong repertoire through listening to recordings from past greats like John Salyer and Tommy Jarrell.
Old-time music is too communal for one man to be integral to its survival, Bryant said.
“It’ll continue on,” he said. “We’ve got a bunch of young kids who are playing old-time music now, like I was when I started. They’ll keep it going, and hopefully, there will be more after them.”
IF YOU GO
* What: Benefit concert featuring old-time fiddlers Mike Bryant and Charlie McCarroll.
* When: 7:30 p.m. today.
* Where: Barking Legs Theater, 1307 Dodds Ave.
* Admission: $10 donation.
* Phone: 624-5347.
* Venue Web site: www.barkinglegs.org.
SIDEBAR
Charlie McCarroll, who will be performing alongside fellow Roane County fiddler Mike Bryant tonight, is the son of the famed fiddler Jimmy McCarroll of the Roane County Ramblers. The 74-year-old Charlie is known for a style that’s simultaneously wild and controlled, according to Bryant. McCarroll has been featured on the “Heartland Series” and the Knoxville-based radio station WDVX’s “Music of the Cumberland Trail.”