Maybe it's because they have to make horrible cat noises for about 10 years before anything they play sounds even halfway decent...

Maybe it's because their hands are always sticky from rosining their bows...for playing with their fiddles...I mean...not from...

Maybe it's because they alienate all the other musicians with viola jokes and banjo jokes and trumpet jokes...

Maybe it's because they're obsessed with playing fast...girls just aren't as impressed with speed as guys like to believe...

Whatever the reason is, apparently fiddle players are lonesome because one of the most popular jam bluegrass tunes is the Lonesome Fiddle Blues. Lonesome Fiddle Blues was composed by the father of hillbilly jazz, Vassar Clements. Vassar was a member of Jim and Jesse & the Virginia Boys in the 50's, and went on to play with the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, and even the Grateful Dead. Lonesome Fiddle Blues is probably Vassar's most well known composition, and was even borrowed by Charlie Daniels in his most famous song, The Devil Went Down to Georgia.

Vassar probably had the most unique sound of any bluegrass fiddler, and his phrasing is difficult to replicate. In the Gold Member lesson on this tune I've taken great pains to transcribe his exact bowings so that you can take a crack at sounding like him. Below I've put together a bunch of different YouTube videos of cool performances. Check it out, and if you have the stomach for it, take a crack at figuring out some of those licks and putting them into the more basic version I taught.