Tatiana Hargreaves is an Oregon-raised fiddler who won the fiddle contest at the Appalachian String Band Music Festival in Clifftop, West Virginia, in 2009 while still in the youth division. She works the seam between old-time and bluegrass in a duo with clawhammer banjo player Allison de Groot, in her band Hard Drive, and on Laurie Lewis records. Since 2017 she has lived in Durham, North Carolina, and she teaches bluegrass fiddle at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Why Hargreaves matters
Most fiddlers pick a lane. Hargreaves plays Eastern Kentucky old-time, Tex Logan style bluegrass, and Texas contest style with equal command, and banjo player Adam Hurt has said he cannot think of another fiddler who covers that range as well. She won Clifftop against adults as a teenager, then went to college to study the history of the music she plays. For a jammer she is the model of a fiddler who knows where each bow stroke came from and can explain it.
Life and career
Hargreaves grew up in Corvallis, Oregon, in the West Coast fiddle contest and fiddle camp scene of the 2000s. Her brother Alex Hargreaves came up in the same scene and won the Grand National Championship at Weiser in 2007. Their peers included Brittany Haas, Sarah Jarosz, and Dominick Leslie. In August 2009 she won the fiddle contest at Clifftop, listed as Tatiana Hargreaves of Corvallis, and won the youth fiddle honors for players 15 and under in the same week. Lester McCumbers won the senior honors that year.
In 2012 and 2013 she took part in the Acoustic Music Seminar at the Savannah Music Festival, where she met bassist Ethan Jodziewicz. The two recorded a self-titled EP in 2015. In 2016 she spent three months in Havana studying the history of Cuban violin music. She graduated from Hampshire College in 2017 with a degree in music and an ethnomusicology certificate. Her thesis traced the rise of the fiddle camp and its effect on American fiddling.
She moved to Durham, North Carolina, in 2017 to work with Alice Gerrard, digitizing photos and contributing to the documentary You Gave Me a Song. Since 2018 most of her recording and touring has been with Allison de Groot. Their self-titled album came out on Free Dirt Records in 2019, and their version of Gerrard’s Beaufort County Jail made a Rolling Stone Country list of the ten best country and Americana songs to hear. The album was nominated for IBMA Liner Notes of the Year. A second duo album, Hurricane Clarice, produced by Phil Cook, came out on Free Dirt on March 25, 2022, with recordings of both players’ grandmothers woven in.
Hargreaves also plays bluegrass fiddle on Laurie Lewis’s Grammy-nominated The Hazel and Alice Sessions, leads the four-piece band Hard Drive with Sonya Badigian, Aaron Tacke, and Nokosee Fields, and performs as a duo with banjo player and fiddler Jake Blount. She has toured with Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings, Jerry Douglas and the Transatlantic Sessions, Darol Anger, and Bruce Molsky. She released Soledad, a four-movement solo fiddle suite based on One Hundred Years of Solitude. She earned a master’s degree in library science at UNC, worked three years in the Southern Folklife Collection, and now teaches bluegrass fiddle there. She is working on an album of Tex Logan’s music.
Playing style
Hargreaves plays old-time fiddle with a big, thick tone and a heavy bow. Bluegrass Unlimited compared her sound to Chubby Anthony’s, and the comparison holds: the notes are full, the drones ring, and the bowing drives the rhythm as hard as a banjo. On old-time tunes she keeps the source fiddler’s bowing and ornaments in place instead of smoothing them out, which is why her Clifftop win came in a contest that rewards tradition.
On bluegrass material she switches to a cleaner, more separated stroke with long slides and double stops in the Tex Logan and Kenny Baker line. She plays a five-string fiddle made by John Sullivan and a four-string by Jonathan Cooper, and the five-string adds a low C string below the normal fiddle range.
Influences and legacy
Hargreaves came out of the West Coast camp scene with her brother Alex Hargreaves, and she studied and toured with Darol Anger and Bruce Molsky, two of the teachers at the center of that scene. Alice Gerrard has been her mentor in North Carolina since 2017, and she has toured and recorded with Laurie Lewis on the bluegrass side. Tex Logan is the bluegrass fiddler she studies most, and her Clifftop win put her in a line with Erynn Marshall, who won the year before, and John Showman, who won two years after. As a teacher at UNC and at camps such as Augusta Heritage Center and the Swannanoa Gathering, she passes the styles on with their history attached.
Signature tunes and songs
The Blackest Crow Nancy Blevins Beaufort County Jail Hurricane Clarice Rabbit, Where’s Your Mammy?.
Essential recordings
Allison de Groot and Tatiana Hargreaves (Free Dirt, 2019) Hurricane Clarice, Allison de Groot and Tatiana Hargreaves (Free Dirt, 2022) Random Access Mash, Hard Drive Soledad Ethan Jodziewicz and Tatiana Hargreaves (2015)
Awards and honors
Appalachian String Band Music Festival (Clifftop) fiddle contest, first place (2009) Appalachian String Band Music Festival, youth fiddle honors, first place (2009) IBMA Liner Notes of the Year nomination, Allison de Groot and Tatiana Hargreaves (2019) Ella Fountain Pratt Emerging Artists Grant, Durham Arts Council
Watch and listen
Hargreaves plays The Blackest Crow. Listen to the thick tone and the way the bow keeps time on a slow tune.
De Groot and Hargreaves play Nancy Blevins from Hurricane Clarice. Watch how the fiddle and clawhammer banjo lock into one rhythm.
What to learn from Hargreaves
Learn The Blackest Crow from the video above. It is a slow tune, so you can hear every bow change, and her version shows how to keep a drone string ringing under a melody without muddying it. The technique to steal is her old-time bow weight. She leans into the string more than a bluegrass player would and lets the rhythm come from the bow rather than from extra notes. Try one A part with a heavier arm and a slower bow, and listen to how much bigger the fiddle sounds.
Sources
About, Tatiana Hargreaves Projects, Tatiana Hargreaves Teaching, Tatiana Hargreaves About, Allison de Groot and Tatiana Hargreaves 2009 Appalachian String Band Music Festival contest winners, West Virginia Department of Arts, Culture and History Hurricane Clarice, Allison de Groot and Tatiana Hargreaves, Bluegrass Today
Related players
See the fiddle players hub and the bluegrass fiddle guide for more. Her brother Alex Hargreaves took the improvising road while she took the old-time one. Bruce Molsky and Erynn Marshall are fellow Clifftop champions, and she plays bluegrass fiddle on Laurie Lewis’s records.