Kalia Yeagle: Waxing On Old Time

Old time musicians have the uncanny ability to make old music feel fresh again. They revitalize songs from long ago and create sounds that appeal to an audience’s sense of familiarity and nostalgia.

- Deanna Kerr

Fiddle player Kalia Yeagle is such a musician. She immerses herself in old forgotten country music and uses her fiddle to breathe new life into it.

Kalia Yeagle was born and raised in Alaska. The daughter of a bluegrass, folk, and jazz musician, Kalia found herself surrounded by different types of acoustic music. While she was growing up, she would accompany her father on gigs to small bluegrass festivals and on recording sessions. The Anchorage Folk Festival – held annually in January – played a prominent role in her musical development. “It took over the town for weeks. I used to think about it months before and months afterwards,” said Kalia. Old time music in particular became a growing interest to her. “I was always fiddling,” Kalia said, “but old time forced me to engage with my instrument in a different way.” After four years at Vassar College, it was Kalia’s move to Johnson City, Tenn., to attend East Tennessee State University’s (ETSU) Bluegrass, Old Time, and Country Music Program that eventually committed her to a career in old time music. She used the opportunity there to immerse herself into the past.

Roy Andrade, associate professor of Bluegrass, Old Time, and Country Music Studies at ETSU and banjo player for the New Reel time Travelers, hired Kalia to be his research assistant. She listened to early archival recordings from the Bristol, Johnson City, and Knoxville sessions and thumbed her way through songbooks that were circulated before wax-cone recordings were invented. Discovering those old tunes was just the beginning. It paved the way for her to play for various documentary projects initiated by the Virginia Historical Society. Roy Andrade also invited her to play fiddle with the New Reel time Travelers – the legendary band that played on the Cold Mountain and Old Brother Where Art Thou soundtracks.