The Handmade Music School presents Fiddle Tunes for Mandolin Workshop with Mike Compton in the Handmade Music School Community Room at Floyd Country Store on Saturday, May 13, 2023 at 3:00pm. Cost is $35.

Narmour & Smith Mississippi Fiddle Tunes for Mandolin

This class is designed to help mandolin players interested in learning how to navigate fiddle tunes with success. In this case we will use the tunes of the landmark Mississippi duo Narmour & Smith. Topics will include using alternating strokes, double stops, slides, chord position shifts, right hand rhythm accents, how to simulate bow strokes, chord substitutions and more. Material to include: “Mississippi Breakdown”, “Avalon Quickstep”, “Avalon Blues”, “Charleston No.2”, and “Sweet Milk & Peaches”. Others available upon request.

More About Mike Compton

Born in Meridian, Mississippi, Compton grew up hearing old-time country music and took up the mandolin as a teenager, drawn to the powerful mix of old-time fiddle stylings, blues influences and pure creativity embodied in Bill Monroe’s playing. By the mid-1980’s, he was a founding member of the Nashville Bluegrass Band, which quickly became one of the most prominent and admired in bluegrass.

He recorded a half-dozen albums and toured extensively with the legendary John Hartford in the Hartford String Band. Working with producer T-Bone Burnett, Compton performed as a Soggy Bottom Boy on the Grammy-winning soundtrack to 2001’s O Brother, Where Art Thou? and on the subsequent Grammy-winning Down from the Mountain soundtrack and tours.

Today, Compton performs widely both solo and in ensembles with guitarist/songwriter/banjo player Joe Newberry, Jumpstead Boys (which includes Peghead Nation Old-Time Fiddle instructor Bruce Molsky), Helen Highwater String Band, and many others. He is an in-demand instructor and runs the popular Monroe Mandolin Camp in addition to teaching at high-profile workshops around the country.

Wearing his signature pressed blue overalls, Compton stuns not by tricks or artifice, but through his singing, his ability to engage a crowd, and through decades of honing his technique into the unique, one-of-a-kind Compton signature mandolin sound.

Mike Compton teaches a Monroe-style mandolin. His workshops detail Monroe’s style and technique through classic tunes, kickoffs, and solos. Students also have access to Mike’s own note-for-note transcriptions of Monroe’s playing.