If one’s life is measured by what is left behind, the legacy of the late musical icon John Hartford continues to grow exponentially. The discovery by his daughter Katie Harford Hogue of notebooks full of handwritten original fiddle tunes led first to a book collecting some of his unrecorded tunes, followed by the release of The John Hartford Fiddle Tune Project Volume 1, which garnered a 2021 Grammy nomination.
The project organizers whetted the appetite of Hartford fans in October with a fiddle marathon hosted by Brittany and Natalie Haas at the Nashville’s legendary American Legion Post 82. Joined on stage by a Who’s Who of the bluegrass world, many set to appear on Volume 2, they played through all 176 tunes in the collection.
On Friday, February 7, a second single “Availability” was released in anticipation of Julia Belle: The John Hartford Fiddle Tune Project Volume 2 set for February 28. The second album, an all-female project produced by Hogue, Sharon Lynch Chowning, and Sharon Gilchrist features some of the best-loved musicians in the bluegrass community.
The latest single recorded by members of Sister Sadie debuts on the heels of their recent Grammy nomination for Bluegrass Album of the Year. “Availabilty,” an instrumental tune, features Deanie Richardson on fiddle, Gena Britt on banjo, Mary Meyer on guitar, Rainy Miatke on mandolin, and Maddie Dalton on bass.
With the feel of an old-time jam, the tune highlights each of the musicians on solo breaks. Naturally, Richardson’s fiddle licks soar in the Hartford tune, but the interplay of her bandmates gives a glimpse into the dynamics that have made Sister Sadie a favorite in the music world.
Since Hartford composed the songs solely for the fiddles, in most cases the musicians on each track of the project came up with on their own chord charts, with help from Gilchrist.
According to Chowning, “one of the coolest parts of the whole recording process [was] watching everybody hunched over sheets of paper with pencils, trying different chord progressions and realizing that in many cases, the chords were giving the tunes even more life than they had before.” She says she believes, “based on [Hartford’s] constant drive to help people grow, improve, and learn—including himself—he’d be delighted.”
The video of “Availability” opens with a view of the stack of those notebooks Hogue discovered in her late father’s file cabinet, and it closes with a view of the musicians’ charts with a note at the end reading, “Jam as long as humanly possible!!!”
