WHAT happens when a seasoned Scots fiddler immerses himself in the music of Appalachia – music that emigrated to the New World from Scotland and Ireland centuries ago and evolved into a distinct and vigorous tradition in its own right?

From Carn Gorm to Blue Ridge, tickled by flatfooting fancy - By JIM GILCHRIST

WHAT happens when a seasoned Scots fiddler immerses himself in the music of Appalachia – music that emigrated to the New World from Scotland and Ireland centuries ago and evolved into a distinct and vigorous tradition in its own right? The result can be heard on a striking new solo album from the Nairn-based player and prolific tune composer Ian Hardie.

In Westringing, Hardie, a one-time member of the veteran folk group Jock Tamson's Bairns who these days spends much of his time playing with the Occasionals and Ghillies dance bands, has recorded the album using unorthodox fiddle tunings throughout, inspired by old-time Appalachian fiddle styles. The ringing, double-stopped sound is both familiar to anyone acquainted with American music, yet can also give an intriguing new feel to established Scottish material.

What put him on the road from Carn Gorm to Blue Ridge (as he expresses it in the title of one of his tunes) was his exposure to Appalachian music and dance while playing with the Occasionals at the 2003 Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington DC. "Spending a fortnight playing on the National Mall in Washington, I heard all sorts of players, and dance as well – the 'flatfooting', and it really tickled my fancy. I kept in touch with a lot of folk there, then I got the opportunity of some funding (from Edinburgh University's Kerr-Fry Awards] to go out and do something about it."

So in 2005 and 2006, Hardie, 55, who formerly combined his music-making with practising as a solicitor but who hasn't "darkened the door of a legal office since 2001", headed to Appalachia and the Blue Ridge Mountains to foregather with some of the best-known old time players. "I had tunes on front porches with legends like Bobby Hicks, Roger Howell and guitarist Chester McMillian."

During one trip, Hardie purchased from Howells "a big-toned fiddle" which sported machine heads instead of pegs – a common enough feature in the area as it eases on-the-spot retuning. Several tunes for the album were written on that instrument, which Hardie last saw on a bus, en route for North Carolina. One of album tunes, Banjo Branch Fiddle, is a perhaps surprisingly exuberant farewell to the vanished instrument.

The tune sounds straight out of the New World, and all those on the album, many by Hardie himself, use a variety of what, to the average Scots fiddler, are unfamiliar tunings – except perhaps a set of Shetland reels in the ringing AEAE turning we associate with the northern isles. But listen to him play a set of Highland pipe tunes, using the same "crosskey" tuning, giving them a new vigour. These different tunings, so favoured by American players, boost the volume, tone a

nd harmony characteristics of a melody, he says, enabling the fiddler to "make a lot more noise for dancing, without having a band. I'd always used quite a lot of double stopping and open strings, and I'm using them more now. What I found so attractive about the Appalachian stuff, and which was bang-on relevant to the other stuff I do is the rhythm. These old guys, some of them were pretty rough and ready, but they fairly knew how to crank out the rhythm."

Opening with the skittish drive of Carn Gorm to Blue Ridge, the album is by no means all hell-for-leather. It includes a beautiful version of his air, Tollaidh, and ends with a stately "fiddle pibroch", The Highlands of Nairnshire, its resonant, droning strings mimicking some bagpipe pibroch fingerings, and bringing this wandering music securely back home........http://www.scotsman.com