Album Notes

Hi from Jessie, the fiddlin' storyteller! I'm a teacher, fiddler and storyteller, as well as a gardener, woodchopper, cook, dishwasher, and all round lucky person. I've played in orchestras and all sorts of dance bands; but finally all the driving got to me and I decided to stay home more and just teach, and play whatever's around here - Celtic, oldtime, Elizabethan...whatever I can find. I've made three wonderful, award winning children's CDs of the stories and songs that are the favorites in my K-5 classrooms. "Fiddletales," my first CD, is half stories, and half lively traditional songs like "Donkey Riding," "Turkey in the Straw," and "Lizard," all accompanied by fiddles, bodhran (Irish drum), and guitar. Some of the songs are obscure ones from my childhood, like "There was a Lady Loved a Swine," other songs are early music jokes like "Now O Now a Frog Must Croak (Frog Galliard, by John Dowland.)" The two stories are both about magic fiddles or magic fiddletunes. In "Cricket Story," a girl meets a magic violin-making cricket, and tries out different magic violins, all unsatisfactory for one reason or another. In "Lark Story," (based on an Irish tune/story), two fiddlers escape from a forced competition with the help of magic tunes that put people to sleep, or call up a storm, etc... "Fiddletales" is great! And so I wish good luck to us all!