Long story bio for promotion

1. I like to tell this story whenever someone asks, “What’s Megan like?” Our band
had a northeast tour and we needed a fiddler. I didn’t know Megan then, but had
heard her play with other bands and knew she’d be great. I called her and she
said yes. She lives in Nashville—a small town in middle Tennessee famous for
Goo-Goo Clusters—so she flew to Boston to meet us. Almost. The weather gods
got together and decided they were going to throw a major storm in her path.
She was deplaned, replaned, derouted, and rerouted, and after two days ended
up in Portland, Maine. The airline had lost her luggage and she had used several
forms of transportation just to catch up with us. When we picked her up she only
had the clothes on her back and a fiddle. I was expecting a very grumpy
musician. Instead, she jumped in the van with a big smile, ready to hit the tour.
The only thing she asked was if we could stop to buy clothes and toothpaste
(“Quit being a prima donna,” I snapped back)—she never complained, knew all
our material, and knocked it out of the park on stage. I also tell that story
whenever someone asks, “What’s a professional?”
But let me introduce her to you. She’s from Redding, California (where Black
Bear Diners is based—so it’s sort of the Comfort Food Capital of the West), and
began taking fiddle lessons at the age of four. It took Megan four long years to
win the National Fiddle Championship at eight years old at the famed Weiser
National Fiddler’s Contest, considered the premier fiddling event in the world.
She didn’t win the next year—I suspect Colonel Mustard in the parlor—then won
three straight championships, following up with two more in 2003 and 2004.
When I introduce her on stage as six-time national fiddle champion, I hear gasps
from fiddlers in the audience. They know how hard it is to win one. Megan has
also won six California State titles (which I consider more difficult since you
have to invent a new form of social media while you fiddle), as well as the
Minnesota and Kentucky State Championships, and served as a board member
of the Grand Master Fiddler Championship.
She may not want me to say it, but Megan’s contest fiddling is really not what
she’s about. As a songwriter, I lift an aggressive eyebrow whenever someone
plays over the singing or tries to show off to the detriment of the song. Megan is
a musician who listens to, and respects, lyrics as much as melody. She knows
exactly what to play—and when—and is always about the song, not herself.
This selflessness comes across in her teaching, too. She’s a world-class fiddle
teacher, but it’s all about the students’ goals. When we teach at camps, her
students seem to have more fun than mine, which is fine, except they also learn
more, which I think is rubbing it in a bit. And she teaches clogging and singing,
too! Of course, I’ve never seen her do all three at once, but now that I’ve thrown
out the challenge, I look forward to our next encounter. She’s taught at Augusta
Heritage Week, the British Columbia Bluegrass Workshop, Sore Fingers

2. Bluegrass Week in the UK, and the California Bluegrass Association Camp,
among many others. Her latest adventure is FiddleStar Youth and Adult Fiddle
Camps. If I were crazy enough—I mean, smart enough—to take up fiddle, I’d
sign up for her camps. And if there are biscuits involved, I’m there. She has a
wide range of students from professionals and contest winners to rank
beginners, but she has the knack of making them all feel like they were born to
play fiddle.
If you can’t make it to one of her camps, she’s just recorded an excellent CD
called The Comprehensive Fiddler on Dark Shadow Records. It distills
everything you need to know to get started with bluegrass fiddling.
I said before that I’ve heard her play with a few other bands. She spent the last
four years playing with Pam Tillis and Lorrie Morgan, two country music
legends who have high standards of musicianship and professionalism.
Megan has also played with a Who’s Who of bluegrass stars (maybe that should
be a Hee Haw of bluegrass stars), such as Dale Ann Bradley, Roland White,
Larry Cordle, Jim Hurst, and Chris Jones, and she’s a former member of 3 Fox
Drive, Due West, and BEML, the duo of Bill Evans and Megan. I also recall the
Honeydews, a fiddling act with Barbara Lamb, and one of the great band names
of all time.
But go listen to her play, take a class from her, buy her records, and send her a
text message (I find that’s the best way).
She may play bluegrass, folk, old-time, country, celtic, punk, motown and Texas
styles, but really she’s her own genre. The brilliant ones are like that. Now, if she
could just get her suitcase back.
—Chris Stuart, Del Mar, California, Feb. 2011