Cristina Vane Archives - Bluegrass Today

Lazy John from Hillary Klug’s Dancing Fiddler

Hillary Klug, also known as the Dancing Fiddler, has been quietly making a name for herself over the past several years online. By quietly, I mean outside the traditional channels for achieving notoriety in music, as the volume of her impact on social media has been anything but quiescent.

From her familiar look, attired in boots and daisy dukes with her long blond hair flowing, to her skillful buck dancing while playing old time fiddle tunes, Hillary has become a social media sensation. Either alone, or with one or two of her Nashville music friends, she has videos that have view counts totaling in the millions, and just as many loyal followers across the many platforms.

All that to the good, but she has told us several times in recent years that she knows that to make the next step to live appearances, singing will be an important tool, and Klug has dedicated a good bit of effort, and a number of videos, in making that a part of her offerings.

Today, the first single from her upcoming Dancing Fiddler album is released, showcasing Hillary’s music in audio only form. She will drop one new track on the 22nd of each month through August, and the full album will hit on her 32nd birthday of September 22, which is also the four year anniversary of her debut project.

This first song is the old time classic, Lazy John, which shares the age old tale of needing to take responsibility for your own welfare. Accompanying Klug are Victor Furtado on banjo and Cristina Vane singing harmony.

Hillary tells us that most of the cuts on the record include a full string band with Tyler Andal also on guitar, and her husband, Evan Winsor, on bass. Other guests include Brenna MacMillan, Bronwyn Keith-Hynes, Ketch Secor, and Dom Flemmons. But the sound of her dancing is still a big part of the music.

“Lazy John is very stripped down, with the footwork tucked just under the sound of the banjo. I recorded my footwork using very unusual footwear, Tom’s sandals. Everyone knows the loud clackety-clack sound that I make using my usual harness boots. The sandals changed the texture into a gritty, shuffle sound like what you’d hear from a snare drum played with brushes. The sound enhances the song with a chill and mellow vibe, contrary to what you’d normally hear from my dancing, which can be very loud and obnoxious.

I’m very proud to have recorded the dance in a way that sonically fits the song, and I can’t wait for folks to hear my dancing in a new context.

Check out Lazy John…

Hillary is handling Dancing Fiddler pre-sales via Kickstarter, where $10 pledges gets you a digital copy of the full album upon release. Other benefits accrue for larger donations, including photo posters, audio CDs and vinyl LPs, personalized post cards and videos, and even a virtual meet and greet.

Check out all the pre-order options on Kickstarter, and be on the lookout as the 22nd of each month rolls around for a new single from Dancing Fiddler.

In the meantime, Lazy John is available today from popular download and streaming services online.

River Roll video from Cristina Vane

Cristina Vane offers a unique dichotomy with her original music. A certified member of young Nashville, and a talented and appealing young artist, her music goes back and forth between electric blues and old time stringband sounds. Not in a single song, mind you, but offering two distinct sides of a vocalist and multi-instrumentalist with something to say.

You’re as likely to find her playing blues slide on her roundneck, metal body reso-guitar, as to hear her knocking out clawhammer banjo on an old time fiddle tune. We may be accustomed to young musicians who do both bluegrass and country, but the two faces of Vane’s music are a new one for us. And she does both quite well, as you’ll see on her upcoming album with Red Parlor Records, Make Myself Me Again.

Her discovery of traditional Appalachian music came by a different path as well. Cristina was born in Italy, and lived all over Europe as a child, learning several languages along the way. Coming to the US for college, Vane received her degree in Comparative Literature from Princeton, and headed west to Los Angeles and a job at the fabled McCabe’s Guitar Shop in Santa Monica. There she developed and nurtured her love for fingerstyle guitar, and found a new passion in old time banjo. Living now in Music City, she is able to pursue both in the midst of its diverse cultural scene.

With a low-pitched, slightly smoky voice, Cristina brings a different vibe to old time music, as we hear on her new single, River Roll, which releases on Friday, May 6.

She says that she wrote it as a cautionary tale, contemplating a time when the rivers might not roll as they once had.

“River Roll is, in essence, a song about the end of our time on this planet in the largest sense. More immediately, it’s about our interfering nature as a species, our meddling having resulted in a climate disaster (‘we gonna fill the lake with iron and rust’). It contemplates a time in the near future that we might run out of luck, when ‘the river had enough,’ what would that look like? I had my feet in the river at Estes Park, in the Rockies in Colorado, and I was both baffled by the nature of a river in the most literal and also figurative sense, which got me thinking about the state we’ve put our environment in, ironically ruining it for ourselves.”

Cristina is supported here by Bronwyn Keith-Hynes on fiddle, Karl Smakula on guitar, and Brook Sutton on bass.

The arty music video, shot by Oceanna Colgan, finds Vane performing the song at a dilapidated and abandoned rural property near Nashville. It nicely conveys the darkness of the lyrics.

River Roll from Cristina Vane will be available on May 6 from popular download and streaming services online.

Make Myself Me Again is slated for a May 20 release. Pre-orders are available online.

Hillary Klug fiddles, sings, and dances for Bluegrass Today

We had an unexpected treat today when Sammy Passamano with 615 Hideaway brought Hillary Klug down to the media room at World of Bluegrass to perform a mini showcase for us. Hillary played fiddle, sang, and accompanied herself buck dancing, supported by Cristina Vane on banjo and Evan Winsor on guitar.

Hillary has established a reputation as a bluegrass/old time entertainer through her viral videos on YouTube and Facebook, with some reaching more than four million views. She is a buck dancing champion, and combines the two skills in a pleasing and engaging fashion, earning her this substantial following. This tasty merging of techniques came about organically several years back when Klug was busking on the streets of Nashville. One chilly afternoon, with passersby passing her by, she added some footwork to help stay warm, and found that suddenly people were stopping to admire her performance. Ever since, she is known as the buck dancing fiddler with the long blonde hair.

Cristina is a noted performer on her own merit, working both in the old time and roots music world, and in classic rock and blues as well. Her debut project, Nowhere Sounds Lovely, is available online.

Evan is not only an accomplished Nashville multi-instrumentalist, he is Hillary’s fiancé.

Here is their impromptu take on The Cuckoo.

They also recorded a video of Cristina singing Way Down The Old Plank Road.

Well done all – and thanks for stopping by!

Prayer For The Blind video from Cristina Vane

Cristina Vane is a young artist with an international, multi-ethnic background who found her musical voice once she settled in the US at 18 years of age. Her debut artist as a singer and songwriter, Nowhere Sounds Lovely, is due in April, focusing on her rootsy blues sound, but a single released in February explores her affection for old time music as well.

It’s one titled Prayer For The Blind that Cristina wrote after meeting some interesting people while touring across the country with her solo show. Vane plays banjo, accompanied by Nate Leath on fiddle, and spins a tale that is both personal and reflective, based on a strange but true anecdote shared in a random meeting.

“This song is partly woven of a specific story I was told by a Nebraskan couple that I met out camping in Iowa. The woman told me about her mother, who was elderly and suffered from dementia. Apparently, her mother insisted that her husband was cheating on her with a woman with two peg legs, going out dancing and such, and was resolved to wring their necks. She related this story to me while laughing, and the contrast of the comedic aspect of such a heavy thing for a daughter to watch her mother go through hit me pretty hard. The lyrics touch on that story and on the complexity of mother-daughter relationships, even as they relate to my own. I was also eager to write a modal banjo song, as I thought it set a good canvas for these difficult themes.”

The video is arresting as well.

Look for Nowhere Sounds Lovely on April 2.