File: livingstonemarie06-oh-wellingtonjam_M.mp3
Speakers:
ML – Marie Arsenault Livingstone
EA – Edward P Arsenault
KP – Curator Ken Perlman
ML: Friday evenings for the last six years we have a jam in Wellington at the Boys and Girls Club
EA: Every Friday night
ML: And from 8 to 9 we have a workshop session, and all I do is go over two or three tunes with the people that are there. And we try to go over the same tunes for a few weeks in a row, and then learn new ones. And after 9 o'clock we try to just jam. It's just a fun evening. Some people call us the Friday Night Jammers some people call us the Wellington Boys & Girls Club Jammers.
KP: What do you call yourselves?
ML: We don't really have a name. It's not formal at all. It started out with Peter [Arsenault] and another fiddler named Norman Arsenault – Wanted to jam every Friday night so they invited me to jam with them. They often couldn't be there every week, and I was always there every week. And then beginners started to come so there was a need to teach. So that's kind of ow it evolved. Some nights when we jam, we're as many as 15 fiddlers, and some weeks we're down to 6, so it varies from different times of the year. When the students from University are home sometimes they are able to join us every week for a little while. And then when they go back to university it goes down, too. As well the established fiddlers like Albert [Arsenault], and Peter, and Louise Arsenault, and Eddy [Arssenault], they can't come regularly, but when they come we have a really good jam. Edward comes almost every week, so we're lucky. That's a good inspiration, very good inspiration, we need him! And Anastasia DesRoches is another one that comes once in a while when she can.
EA: It's a fun night.
ML: Yes it can be a very fun night. We have quite a few beginners. They are at a level where they're not fast yet, but they are leaning new tunes every week. A lot of them are learning to read [music] which is nice, cause it gives you a chance to learn more tunes. If you forget a tune you can look it up and it helps you to remember how it goes. That's an advantage for some people. The Fiddlers' Jamboree and the Acadian Festival are the only things that we regularly perform at. Besides that we just play at seniors homes, or benefits, or that kind of thing. So we're not really organized ,but when we're asked we try to get a few of us together to go do that. So it's more of a fun thing, a bit of a social evening for true fiddle lovers.