Chattanooga Times Free Press entertainment reporter Casey Phillips spoke with fiddler/vocalist Ann Whitley-Singleton of the Atlanta-based multi-genre musical trio The Rosin Sisters about how they met, why friendship is so important to her and what to expect at their Chattanooga show.
Casey Phillips: What were you personal musical origins?
Ann Whitley-Singleton: When I was eight, I started piano lessons. Then, when I was 10, I was fortunate enough to have a string program in my home town of High Point, N.C., in public school. I started on violin and played all the way through college. I sort of put it down off and on and would put it down and pick it up until I discovered square dancing and contra dancing. Then, I decided I needed to a fiddler, and that was in 1981. I got started in 1985 and have been fiddling ever since. I took a lot of work shops and jam sessions and playing to get that bow arm to get to be a fiddler’s arm instead of a classic bow arm. Old time fiddling is so much about rhythm so there was a lot of work to do with the bow there.
CP: What struck you about that music when you first heard it?
AWS: In college, I fell in love with bluegrass music. I was raised in a very musical home. My mother played, my dad didn’t, but he loved it. My brother was my biggest musical influence. He brought home every kind of record there was. We grew up in the ’50s and ’60s, and he brought home jazz and big band and swing and folk and everything.