State Fiddling Championship is Saturday at Hagood Mill

The Hagood Mill has hosted the Pickens Ole Time Fiddlin' Convention for a number of years, but this year's the contest is expanding.

The mill will host the First Annual South Carolina State Fiddling Championship Saturday

The competition will begin at 10:30 am. Awards and cash prizes will be given to the top three performers in each of the following categories: String Band, Banjo, Guitar, “Wildcat” Open (anything musical), Junior Fiddle, Junior Open (both Jr. divisions = 16 and under) and Fiddle. The Winner of the Fiddle Competition will be designated the 2012 South Carolina State Fiddling Champion.

There's no cost to attend.

“For 16 years we've been having fiddling contests just like in the twenties and pre-1900s,” said Dean Watson, who serves on the Pickens County Cultural Commission. “The last old one was held at Tillman Hall in the twenties. We've revived that, where a community of musicians from North and South Carolina – really mountain folk – come here and compete.”

The competition is primarily for fiddlers, but also features guitar and banjo categories, as well “wildcat open” where anything goes.

“They can do anything,” Watson said. “They can play a stump. It's really fun.”

Earlier this year, the legislature passed a resolution creating the SC State Fiddling Championship.

“It's ratcheted up a great deal in importance,” Watson said. “We've got 10-12 fiddlers coming from North and South Carolina. We've got six string bands that will be competing.”

The Upstate is “bluegrass country,” Watson said.

“But this music is technically not bluegrass, it's pre-bluegrass,” Watson said. “They call it ole time. It's the music that evolved into bluegrass. You still have your fiddle but it's more rhythm than lilting. You still have your banjo but it's not Scruggs style, Earl Scruggs. It's clawhammer style – mountain style. That's the way the slaves played it. It's high rhythm, rather than melodic.”

The championship will include categories for seniors and juniors in fiddle, Watson said.

The string band competition will be “really high energy,” he said.

“It brings in the fiddle and the banjo and the guitar, all together,” Watson said. “These are hundred-year old songs. They're not recent songs.”

Watson calls Nick Hallman “the old man of the mountain.”

“He plays 20 different folk instruments,” Watson said. “He's kind of seasoned – neither salt nor pepper, but a little cayenne pepper blended in.”

Hallman won the Pickens County fiddle competition three years running, and hadn't planned on competing in the state championship, but some fans convinced him otherwise.

“This year they're going to have an honest to goodness authorized South Carolina Championship,” Hallman said. “I had several people practically beg me to enter. I said, 'All right, I'll try one time.' If I can go to my grave with a state championship, that would be nice.”

Hallman, 73, has been playing the guitar since he was ten years old, but didn't pick up the fiddle until the 1970s.

“I got tired of telling people I could play anything with strings on it except the fiddle,” he said.

It took awhile for Hallman to get the hang of the instrument.

“It's the hardest thing I've ever tried to play,” Hallman said. “You never really master any stringed instrument.”

He began entering competitions soon after he began learning the instrument.

“I've told students over the years since then, 'Enter competitions when you know you don't stand a chance,” Hallman said. “That helps take some of the pressure and some of the edge off of it. It gives you some experience.

In addition to the fiddling competition, the Hagood Mill will be running throughout the day. In the old mill, fresh stone-ground corn meal, grits and wheat flour will be available, as well as Hagood Mill cookbooks and a variety of other mill related items. The Hagood Mill operates, rain or shine, the third Saturday of every month and is located just 3 miles north of Pickens or 5 ½ miles south of Cherokee Foothills Scenic Hwy 11 off SC Hwy 178 at 138 Hagood Mill Road. Hagood Mill is open Wednesday through Saturday from 10:00 until 4:00, to tour the buildings and grounds and to visit the Mill Site Gift Shop.

Food from Gatehouse Restaurant will be available for purchase during the event.

Hallman encourages everyone to come to the fiddle competition Saturday.

“It's a darn good program,” Hallman said. “It's an unbelievable day. You can bring your family and spend all day if you want to. You can drop in for a while, you can come early, you can come late. And if you don't like what somebody's doing onstage, wait a few minutes and somebody else will be onstage. Walk around some of the jam sessions. Buy a souvenir or two. It's just great all the way around, all day long.

“It doesn't cost a thing and it's worth every penny you pay for it – and a whole lot more,” Hallman continued.