When: Tuesday, October 15th
Where: The Commons Theater
Cost: $10
We are proud and excited to bring these folks to The Commons, much can be said about these gunslingers and much will be…
Also, be sure to tune into an evening of stories and songs with special guest ‘Community of Goodness WDRT
Podcast & Radio co-host Tom Thibodeau.
Larry Long & Fiddlin’ Pete Watercott’s life story is something out of a John Steinbeck
novel. Throughout their early twenties they hitchhiked and hopped freight-trains
throughout the West passing the hat from bar to bar, performing most anywhere that
people gather. In exchange for the hospitality and generosity shown by those who
helped them out along the way, Larry would write a song in their honor. The lyrics were
left pinned onto their refrigerator door with a magnet before Fiddlin’ Pete and Larry
headed back on the road.
In the course of their travels they joined up with bassist Larry Dalton, who they met in
the High Sierra Mountain Range town of Truckee, California in 1976.
The music they perform together is deeply rooted in the American song tradition of
Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Hank Williams, and Bob Wills. Their live performances
are an equal measure of lyrical ballads, country-swing and old time fiddle tunes woven
together with threads of explosive instrumental improvisation. As the legendary Jesse
Ashlock, who performed with Bob Wills & the Texas Playboys remarked, “You guys
got an entirely different sound and I like it.” And then with a twinkle in his eye, replied,
“After sitting and listening to you play Pete, looking back, I should have never picked up
the fiddle.”
Now fifty-years later, Larry Long and Fiddlin’ Pete Watercott have come back together
with bassist Larry Dalton for this 2024 Reunion Tour to celebrate five-decades of
friendship. They are also releasing their new live acoustic recording entitled ‘As In
Those Early Days’, which they recorded along the banks of the Mississippi Rivers
through the good graces of Brett Huus, Soundstrations Audio.
Larry Long & Fiddlin’ Pete both have had remarkable solo careers, while Dalton has
been performing and recording with bluegrass, jazz, rock, rockabilly, gypsy jazz, big
band and orchestral groups.
Larry Long went on to write and perform hundreds of ballads both individually and
collectively with communities throughout the United States. His work has taken him
from rural Alabama to the Lakota communities in South Dakota. Long organized the
Mississippi River Revival, a decade long campaign to cleanup the Mississippi River,
was first-mate on the ‘Circle of Water Circus’s flagship boat called the Calapso,
troubadour on the Soviet/ American peace cruises along the Missisippi and Volga
Rivers, sang for Mrs. Rosa Parks at the 45 th anniversary of the Montgomery Bus
Boycott and assembled the first hometown tribute to Woody Guthrie in Okemah,
Oklahoma.
Long has over a dozen albums including two released on the prestigious Smithsonian
Folkways label. One of his songs, ‘Hey Coal Miner’, is featured on the Smithsonian
Folkways Children’s Music Collection along with works by Huddie Lead Belly,
Langston Hughes, Suni Paz, Ella Jenkins, Pete Seeger, and Woody Guthrie
Author, historian, actor, and broadcaster Studs Terkel called Larry “a true American
Troubadour.” When Pete Seeger was told that Larry is often referred to as the Pete
Seeger of Minnesota, Pete replied, “I would be honored to be called the Larry Long of
New York.”
After their wanderings, Fiddlin’ Pete found a home in the mountains of California where
he has been a musical favorite ever since. He is always a mainstay at local events like
the Mill Pond Music Festival and Bishop California’s Mule Days. He has produced
events and albums to highlight the western art called Cowboy Poetry, also traveling
each year to perform at the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, Nevada along
with nationally beloved ‘Buckaroo Poet” Waddie Mitchell. Pete also performs classical
viola as a member of the Eastern Sierra Symphony.
Fiddlin’ Pete has produced six albums, including “Songs of Curley Fletcher” the only
recording dedicated to the work of the great Western poet. Be it singing traditional or
original ballads, picking mandolin, guitar, Irish tenor banjo, or sawing on the fiddle, Pete
Watercott brings joy to those wherever he goes.
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