Folk, Jazz, Etc: Stetsons Bobbing to Some Hell-for-Leather Bluegrass

Summary

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YOU may be all partied out, but we are lingering still in the Daft Days, as the Twelve Days of Christmas used to be known in Scotland. It is the season evoked by Robert Fergusson in his poem, The Daft Days, exhorting, "Fiddlers! Your pins in temper fix, And roset weel your fiddle-sticks", adding his famous enjoinder to "banish vile Italian tricks frae out your quorum".

But if the tragic bard of 18th-century Edinburgh's howffs and causeys raised a waggish eyebrow at the baroque art music so popular in his day, what might he have made of the hell-for-leather bluegrass playing of Betse Ellis, fiddler with The Wilders? The Kansas City-based quartet have been electrifying Fringe audiences since 2006 with their no-holds-barred brand of old-time country music; now they're kicking off the year with a concert at Celtic Connections - sharing the bill with their engagingly eccentric country stablemates, The Hot Seats (formerly Special Ed and the Short Bus), before playing several other Scottish dates.

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Folk, Jazz, Etc: Stetsons Bobbing to Some Hell-for-Leather Bluegrass

As I've written in the past, the Wilders in performance are a sight to see as well as a sound to remember, clustered on stag...

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