Patrick M’Gonigle is a Canadian fiddler, singer, and producer based in Nashville. He co-founded the Lonely Heartstring Band in Boston in 2012 and played fiddle on the band’s two Rounder albums. In 2020 he produced and played on Bella White’s debut album, Just Like Leaving. He also co-hosts The Breakdown, a podcast about classic bluegrass records.
Why M’Gonigle matters
M’Gonigle is a fiddler who studies the old records as hard as he plays them. His fiddle work sits inside songs rather than on top of them, and his podcast walks listeners through the albums that built bluegrass. For a picker, he is a model of the new working musician: bandmember, producer, teacher, and historian at once.
Life and career
M’Gonigle is from Canada and studied at Berklee College of Music in Boston. In 2012 a bulletin board notice at Berklee asked for a bluegrass band to play Beatles songs at a wedding. The group that took the gig became the Lonely Heartstring Band, with George Clements on guitar, Charles Clements on bass, Maddie Witler on mandolin, and Gabe Hirshfeld on banjo. The band won the IBMA Momentum Award for Band of the Year in 2015. Its debut album, Deep Waters, came out on Rounder Records in 2016, and Smoke & Ashes followed in 2019. After six years of touring the band went on hiatus in September 2019.
In December 2018 M’Gonigle and English violinist Emma John launched The Breakdown, a podcast that takes one bluegrass album per episode and tells its story. The two also write a column for the Bluegrass Situation. In 2020 he produced Bella White’s Just Like Leaving and played fiddle and sang on it. Rounder reissued the record in 2021, and he has toured with White. In 2022 he was playing in Vancouver with John Reischman’s Stringband Sundae, beside Trent Freeman and banjo player Allison de Groot, and he later guested on Reischman’s album The Salish Sea. He now lives in Nashville and works as a producer, educator, and scholar.
Playing style
M’Gonigle’s fiddle playing serves the song. On Deep Waters he opens the title track with a short repeating figure that comes back through the song, and his bridges stay close to the melody. He sings harmony as well as he plays, and his fiddle lines often move like a vocal part. Maddie Witler has said his sound draws on older players like Paul Warren and on the vintage George Jones and Hank Williams records, and you can hear that in his short, plain breaks and his steady shuffle behind a singer. He plays twin fiddle in tune and in time, as on The Crow and Gate with Greg Spatz.
Influences and legacy
M’Gonigle looks to Paul Warren of Flatt and Scruggs and to classic country fiddle on the George Jones and Hank Williams records. He has played beside Trent Freeman, Allison de Groot, and John Reischman in Vancouver. Through the podcast and his production work he has become a link between young bluegrass players and the records of the 1950s and 1960s. He teaches at camps, including Banjo Camp North.
Essential recordings
Deep Waters, the Lonely Heartstring Band (Rounder, 2016) Smoke & Ashes, the Lonely Heartstring Band (Rounder, 2019) Just Like Leaving, Bella White (2020, Rounder reissue 2021)
Awards and honors
IBMA Momentum Band of the Year, with the Lonely Heartstring Band (2015)
Watch and listen
The Lonely Heartstring Band plays In Time for Folk Alley. Watch how M’Gonigle’s fiddle fills between the vocal lines without crowding them.
M’Gonigle plays a solo piece, Tara, on his own channel.
What to learn from M’Gonigle
Learn a fiddle part from Just Like Leaving by ear. Pick one song, find the short figure he plays between the vocal lines, and copy it. The technique to steal is restraint. Play a single repeating phrase as an intro, bring it back once in the middle, and let the singer own the rest. That is how a fiddle earns its place in a song band, and it is a skill most jam fiddlers never practice.
Sources
About, Patrick M’Gonigle Lonely Heartstring Band, IBMA award recipients Bio, The Lonely Heartstring Band Lonely Heartstring Band going on indefinite hiatus, Bluegrass Today California Report: Maddie Witler from Lonely Heartstring Band, Bluegrass Today Deep Waters, Lonely Heartstring Band, Bluegrass Today The Breakdown podcast now available online, Bluegrass Today California Report: Mandolinist John Reischman, Bluegrass Today The Salish Sea, John Reischman and the Jaybirds, Bluegrass Today Bella White, Just Like Leaving, Discogs
Related players
See the fiddle players hub and the bluegrass fiddle guide for more players. M’Gonigle learned from the records of Paul Warren and plays beside Trent Freeman in Vancouver. Other Canadian fiddlers in Nashville include Ben Plotnick, and John Showman works the same old-time and bluegrass seam in Toronto.