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Roger Howell - Friend of Fiddles
by Sabrina Greene
"I just kind of take them, when people has laid them back, abused them, neglected them, I'll get them and fix them up and get them to play again. ...It's old technology, I mean way back yonder. Nobody's really got the science of it figured out."
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Have you ever heard the sound of a lonesome fiddle drifting over the mountaintops? If you have, you may have heard Roger Howell playing one of his old fiddles in his workshop.
Howell is a Madison county native who lives on Banjo Branch in Mars Hill. He joined other traditional performers Saturday, Oct. 4, at the Bascom Lamar Lunsford Festival, as he has every year since the festival began.
Upon entering his workshop in the basement of his house, one would never notice what it truly is, because it looks just like a normal basement. That is until you look to the left and see about a dozen fiddles hanging on what used to be an old needle punch frame. Glancing around the room there are instruments hanging from the rafters and leaning against almost anything that can hold them up. You can smell the wood just as if you were walking through a forest, and then you see Howell sitting in the midst, working on what he loves to do best.
"They ain't a one of these hanging here less than 75 years old," Howell said, as he pointed to each of them on the needle punch frame. He pointed to another fiddle that looked as though it may have had better days and said, "This fiddle right here is pre-Civil War."
While he was a young man his family knew a lot of great local musicians, and they used to go to their houses during the week to play and listen. "Front porch pickings! The old people used to have them, everywhere on this branch, and every one of them played. They played mostly banjo, but there was some fiddle players along. And I'd watch some of them and mess around."
One of Howell's favorite musicians was a lady named Pearl Ball. "When I was just a little boy, I'd go over there and help her work on her place. I would help her work in the garden because she was seventy or so, but she could flat play a banjo." Watching her he began to pick up things. "She would play the old way, with two fingers, drop thumb, double finger, then she would play claw hammer. It wasn't but two or three days and I was playing that thing."
Howell eventually got to where in his younger days he didn't want to listen to the old stuff anymore. "All I wanted to do was grow my hair and play 'rock and roll'."
It wasn't too long, however, before he saw the growing problem with all of Madison County's traditional music. "I got to noticing that all these old people were dying out." No one had taken the time to preserve their music, so Howell took it upon himself to do it. "So I started taking an old cassette player around and recording their music," Howell said, "I've got lots of cassettes up here of old people playing."
It was at one of these "pickings" that Howell became interested in the fiddle. "An old fellow I played with had an old fiddle, and he said, 'take that thing home, son, and don't bring it back until you learn how to play it.'"
"I tinkered with it every-now-and-then," Howell said, "but I never really tried to learn to play it."
"A fiddle is the worst in the world - if you don't pick them up and play them every other day, they will fall apart. Stuff happens to them Guitar is pretty bad for that. A banjo, you can't hurt a banjo unless you just abuse it."
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He also was friends with Tommy Hunter's son and used to go to his house to pick and sing. "Tommy Hunter was the best fiddler who ever hit these parts," Howell said. "I'd learned how to play the fiddle, a little, but I was doing it wrong." It was from this man that Howell really learned to become a great fiddle player.
As he grew older, Howell was asked to perform with the group that Tommy Hunter played in because Hunter was having a hard time going because of his failing health. Howell then had the chance to play in front of large crowds.
"It was just like all of a sudden you're sitting in the house playing, you're going to people's houses, and sitting there virtually unknown. Then the next minute you are in front of 50,000 people in Raleigh. I mean it was big time. We went everywhere; you're talking about a rush!" While he played with them he had the chance to travel the country and to play in front of thousands of people.
Howell was just a local boy, and he played like many other people do in the mountains. "After awhile you pick up stuff, and it's no big deal. Everyone done that around here. They'd farm during the day and they'd play by night."
Howell commented that that was how Bascom Lunsford found them. "Most of them had never played in front of anybody before, but some were good enough that people like Lunsford took them up there and threw them on stage."
Howell was one of these people and he has played at the college every year since.
When things began to slow down, someone showed him an old fiddle that had fallen apart. He thought to himself, "Well dang! I can take that apart and fix it." Sure enough he did. "Now I get them from everywhere. From individuals, flea markets, and EBay. You name it and I fix them up and resell them." Howell has all kinds of fiddles, including a German Hopf (1840); an Irish; a Japanese; a Ladies 7/8; a child's fiddle; French; American-made, and some from pre-Civil war times.
"It's fascinating to me. I love to do it. ...and then I've got guitars. And I've got banjos laying around. Fix them up and sell them."
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Howell not only works on fiddles but also works on other instruments as well. "I love to work on fiddles, banjos, guitars, or whatever you have. I might as well. It's something you enjoy. You can make a little money at it, and have a good name, get into the business, and it won't hurt at all."
Every instrument in his workshop has a story behind it. Some have very interesting ones that could keep you captivated all day. "Oh yes, every instrument has its own story. You know some of them have been pawned off too because someone was in jail. You wonder who had it and for how long." In one instance Howell acquired a fiddle that he believed wasn't worth "ten cents," but the bow was appraised at $1,000 because a famous violinist had owned it. "I didn't even see a bow when I ordered it," Howell said, "but now I have something worth this much and I only paid $50 for the whole thing."
If you ever see Howell play, you can see in his eyes that it is his passion and a part of his life. He has dedicated his life to preserving the mountain music and all of its traditions
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