Guest post by Spencer Peterson
This week’s Open Studio is a chat with fiddler, banjo-player and music teacher Alex Caton, who keeps a busy, productive schedule as both a musician and singer-songwriter. She just released Fiddle Tunes, an album of Irish music recorded with Pat Egan, and recently wrapped up a round of studio sessions with Pete Winne, Stuart Gunter and Lew Burrus for the follow-up to her second solo album, The Sinners and the Saved.
Caton plays “Black Lung,” with Pete Winne on harmonica and backing vocals.
Caton started playing shows with Old Calf a few months ago, and also fronts a new country group called Sin City with piano player Betsy Wright, which you can catch at Fellini’s #9 on August 18, and every third Thursday of the month thereafter. In 2009, Caton’s productivity paid off in a nomination for a Virginia Heritage Award for her preservation and continuation of traditional Appalachian music.
When Sin City covers Cash, Lynn or Parsons, your choices are a) dance, b) nod knowingly or c) weep into your whiskey at the end of the bar.
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For the last seven years, Caton and a few friends have been spreading the Bluegrass/Old Time/Irish music love with a little something called Mountain Road Fiddle and Music Camp, a weekend retreat of outdoor workshops and nightly jam sessions with Caton and friends. This year, camp is in session at The Brazenhead Inn and Irish Pub out in Mingo County, West Virginia starting August 19.
And finally, check out this rough cut of “Willie Nelson, I Love You (and My Husband, He Doesn’t Really Mind).” Last we heard, the CD had been mailed to the Nelson ranch, and is undoubtedly somewhere in the old boy’s listenin’ stack.
Who would you like us to check in with?