Thrifty Thurston Mixes Culture and Fun at the Olympia Old Time Music Festival

olympia old time music festival
With such a unique local festival, it’s no surprise that costumes and instruments are as unique as the music.
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By Holly Smith Peterson

capital heating and coolingIt was Olympia resident Emily Teachout’s 40th birthday party that inspired the original Old Time Music Festival in the South Sound.

“We gathered a bunch of friends to play Old Time music, which is a great time to get everyone together and was so much fun in the middle of winter,” Teachout remembers. “We promised to get everyone together every year to do it again. The impetus was that it was simply a way to connect people to have fun around music in the wintertime.”

Those comments sparked the original Olympia Old Time Music Festival, back in 2008. That event drew roughly 200 attendees, all by word of mouth.

olympia old time music festival
The Olympia Old Time Music Festival isn’t just for pros. Amateur musicians are invited to bring instruments and join in on jams.

Now that you know how old Teachout is, what she emphasizes as more important is that the festival has been successful from the get-go, and has grown by leaps and bounds since that first year.

“The Old Time Music community is pretty tight-knit.  That first year we just organized and told friends, who told their friends,” says Teachout, who, along with her husband, was one of the event’s founders. “We were also inspired by the Portland Old Time Music Gathering that took place a little earlier in the year. We spread the word down there, and in Seattle, and that brought a lot of people from both cities. That was then; this is now, and this year we expect more than 500.”

Teachout herself wasn’t a professional musician by trade, but when her husband bought her a fiddle out of the blue 14 years ago she connected with a woman who taught her the basics of the instrument. That progressed into a jaunt to Port Townsend for the Festival of American Fiddle Tunes, which “blew me away,” Teachout says.

“It was so danceable and fun, and I said, ‘That’s what I want to do,’” she remembers. “Then my husband started playing banjo, and my daughter started playing the fiddle … and now we have a family band Fiddlie-I-Ay, while I’m also in the trio Yodelady.”

Both of these have been feature acts in the Olympia Old Time Music Festival over the past seven seasons, which will be held this year from February 12 – 14 in downtown Olympia.

This year, the festival has vastly expanded their lineup of performers and participants. You can listen to authentic Old Time music from across the country and bring your instrument and play along at your inspiration.

“The old time music that we play is pretty participatory,” says Teachout. “It’s really more created towards people playing music just for the fun of it than for the performance.”

olympia old time music festival
Nashville native T-Claw will be calling dances and teaching workshops about Old Time music.

What’s changed in seven years? Says Teachout, whose husband and daughters also play in the venue, the basic format is the same. The main Old Time instruments include the banjo, claw hammer and fiddle, as well as the ukelele and cello, with many unique touches ranging from finger picking to resounds and slides. The upshot is that it’s mostly string, and all acoustic.

Equally interesting is the diversity of performers that sign on for the festival each year.

“We try to get musicians from across the country, and every year it’s very a diversified community of those who are historic and tradition bearers, ” Teachout explains. “At every event debriefing meeting we ask, ‘What were the magic moments?’ And we try to repeat them.”

Since the bulk of Old Time music is passed down by song rather than the written word, from community to community, the organizers and founders focus on finding musicians who appreciate and honor those very traditions. The Appalachian region is key to performance highlights, such as in 2013 when “mountain music” experts Elizabeth Laprelle & Anna Roberts-Gevalt from Cedar Springs, VA brought out their “Crank Music” shadow storytelling behind a hand-cranked story screen.

olympia old time music festival
At the Olympia Old Time Music Festival the costumes and instruments are as unique as the music.

“It’s a really compelling way to engage people in music, because it’s a scroll that tells the stories of music in a ballad,” says Teachout. “Elizabeth has an amazing, haunting voice and is a compelling storyteller and an old soul even though she’s only in her 20s, and Anna is an amazing instrumentalist. People were totally blown away.”

Another hit from past years was Erin Marshall, from Dallas, VA, the first woman to win the Appalachian String Band Festival.

“She’s an amazing accompaniment fiddler, originally from British Columbia, who then completed her studies in Virginia,” Teachout says. “She had to fight to get her weight in the performing lineup.”

It’s acts like these that are attracting visitors by the hundreds to the Olympia Old Time Music Festival in 2015. The event is even more compelling because of its cost-conscious and kid-friendly policies. (Check out the schedule that includes many kid-oriented, free workshops.)

Says Teachout, “We try to keep it really affordable because we want this music to be accessible to everyone. And if you’re a musician, you can come in as a beginning player and catch on with the rest of us pretty quickly.”

olympia old time music festival
The Olympia Old Time Music Festival is held in downtown Olympia from February 12 – 14, 2015.

A weekend pass is just $30 or buy day tickets for $15. (Tickets can be purchased here.) Scholarships are available. And there’s also free admission for kids.

“As founders, we made the decision to make this a tradition,” says Teachout. “We’re most well-known for being very family-friendly. And there’s a great group of kids who come that are great musicians, and that’s been encouraging to see.”

How are the last days of preparation prior to the festival? The team forms small groups for overall event review, website wrap-up and promotional finalization. They also use the time to tweak duties for their kids, who have fun making buttons, providing performance run-throughs, training greeters, and participating in other key duties.

“It’s a labor of love, and every year around this time I find myself anxious that things are going to come apart, or won’t come together,” Teachout confesses. “But this time I’m not stressing about it, because it always does.”

Teachout also places an emphasis on the sponsors, as the event depends on donations and trades from area companies such as Compass Rose and the Olympia Food Co-Op. For an event that was originally run on crowd funding donations to one that’s now in the black – the main expenses being the performers, workshop leaders and venue booking itself – Teachout is pleased at how community support has grown the event. But to expand more throughout the South Sound, it needs even more financial backing.

“The Kickstarter campaign carried us through for the last couple of years, but really we’re still on a shoestring budget,” she says. “We’re only just learning to ask potential sponsors to see the value in what we do, and to give back to the community in a way that’s unique and beneficial.”

olympia old time music festival
Kids and adults both gather ‘round for fun-filled improvisation music sessions during a workshop at the Olympia Old Time Music Festival.

In the end, though, Teachout and her family, and all of the event founders, organizers, volunteers and sponsors encourage you to visit for one event or the whole weekend.

“If you don’t know Old Time music, or if you ever had any inkling of wanting to play a stringed instrument, just bring yours down and you can take it out of the case and you’ll probably learn thing or two,” she says. “Put your iPad, laptop and phone screens away and just look people in the eye and dance to the music and enjoy a good time.”

The Olympia Old Time Music Festival begins on Thursday, February 12 with most activities happening on Saturday, February 14.  The event is held at the Olympia Ballroom and lasts all weekend.  Find a complete schedule of performers and workshops here.

All photos courtesy Olympia Old Time Music Festival.

Thrifty Thurston highlights inexpensive family fun in Thurston County. The weekly series focuses on family-friendly activities throughout our community. If you have a suggestion for a post, send us a note at submit@thurstontalk.com. For more events and to learn what’s happening in Olympia and the surrounding area, click here.

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