Southside students get Swamp Rock lessons

SANDPOINT — Over the course of three days, Southside Elementary students became fiddle players.

Kelly Thibodeaux, from Oakridge, Ore., was at Southside earlier this month to present his Swamp Rock Fiddle Camp, where he taught all of the students, grades K-6, how to play basic fiddle tunes.

“His fun energy and inviting technique quickly engages potential fiddle players of all ages,” Southside principal Jacque Johnson said in an email to the Daily Bee.

All of the students received three 40 minute fiddle lessons, she said. On the fourth day each class played the fiddle sound effects for a Louisiana folk tale, followed by fiddle recital for every student.

“Parents, students and staff — everyone was smiling,” Johnson said.

Johnson was able to bring Swamp Rock Fiddle Camp to the school through a $2,031 grant from Panhandle Alliance for Education awarded to her in May.

Thibodeaux is a musician with 40 years of professional experience as a fiddle player and more than 15 years teaching K-12 students how to play the fiddle. He has developed techniques to teach students dynamics, basic chords and basic fiddling in three “easy” lessons, Johnson told school district officials during the Nov. 12 Lake Pend Oreille School District meeting.

Swamp Rock Fiddle Camp is a string-teaching residency focused on the objective of students acquiring, in a very short amount of time, enough basic skills on the violin to be able to solo perform a three-cord fiddle tune with guitar accompaniment.

Johnson detailed Thibodeaux’s style in her PAFE application in that he presents the violin as a folk music instrument and stresses accessibility over perfection, with the main focus being individual achievement. His entire approach is based on the innate sense of rhythm all are born with, she wrote, so it is a natural part of physiology. By utilizing this understanding, he is able to achieve “outstanding” results in a very short time.

During the Nov. 12 meeting, Johnson showed the board some videos of how Thibodeaux began the recital with a short folk story. The students used the fiddles to create sound effects for the story using some of the different techniques he had taught them.

“Kids just joined in and had fun,” Johnson said, as the video played. “Look what he had them doing in the three short lessons. This was their recital, and every student got to have an individual recital.”

The fiddles for all students were supplied by the instructor for use during Swamp Rock Fiddle Camp as well. At the end, all of the students got a “certification card” denoting them as fiddle players.

Mary Malone can be reached by email at mmalone@bonnercountydailybee.com and follow her on Twitter @MaryDailyBee.