Hanneke Cassel

Dirty Linen

This is an excerpt from the print edition of Dirty Linen #119 (August/September 2005).
The full article is in the magazine, available on newsstands, by subscription, and at the Dirty Linen webstore.

Hanneke Cassel

The Three R's: Reading, Writing, and Reels

by Kerry Dexter

Hanneke Cassel fronts her own Celtic-based acoustic band, frequently backs up Irish-American singer/songwriter Cathie Ryan with fiddle, keyboards, and harmony vocals on tour, teaches at fiddle camps across the country and abroad, works with private students at her home base in Boston, plays Scottish contra dance gigs, and fits in the occasional appearance with fiddle ensemble Childsplay and eclectic acoustic group Halali. Though she finds it's sometimes a challenge to keep all this, along with her own composing and recording, in balance, Cassel thinks it's worth it. "I really enjoy being able to do lots of different things. I've never actually done just one thing, so I don't know what that would be like, but I know when I've done something for a while I get really excited about doing something else for a while. It's also fun to go back and forth," she said, "especially between the Cathie Ryan gig and my own show, between playing music that I wouldn't necessarily play, and just having that role, providing support. I really like playing behind singers and having my own show." In her own group, Cassel fronts a lively conversation among her fiddle, cello from Rushad Eggleston, and guitar from Christopher Lewis. Eggleston plays mainly Americana music when he's not working with Cassel, and Lewis "is a rock guitarist I'm encouraging to learn Celtic music," Cassel said. "It's not your basic Celtic band."

Although she's the former Scottish National Fiddle champion, it took Cassel awhile to find her way into Scottish and Irish music. "I studied classical violin for about two years, when I was about eight," she said. "I had played piano, and I'd pretty much played by ear; my mom [who is a piano teacher] had taught me when I was younger. So I was really frustrated with classical music because it's pretty much all reading." When her teacher moved away, Cassel entered a fiddle contest, "and I came in second to last, or something, but I saw all these great kids playing there, and they were amazing!" She met Carol Ann Wheeler, a musician who was entered in the adult contest. Cassel ended up studying privately with Wheeler, who introduced her to two styles of music. "She had all her life done this Texas-style fiddle, which was the stuff at the contest, but just had gone to Valley of the Moon fiddle school and met Alasdair Fraser and gotten into the Scottish thing. She kept telling me about it," Cassel recalled. "I wasn't interested. I thought it was dumb and hokey. I was really into the Texas stuff, although my judges' sheets always came back 'she's playing too percussively,' so I think maybe that was a sign I was supposed to play Cape Breton music and not smooth Texas style!"

[cover #119]