2020-09-04

Paul Anastasio

Paul Anastasio (Richard, Louisiana)

Paul Anastasio began studying violin at age nine and soon gravitated to popular and folk music. By his mid-twenties, he had studied with jazz violin pioneer Joe Venuti and had begun performing in Merle Haggard’s band, the Strangers. Later he served four years in the western swing band Asleep at the Wheel and worked for three years with Larry Gatlin and two years with Loretta Lynn. From 1997 to 2006, he traveled to Mexico to study and archived the folk fiddling of southwestern Mexico’s Tierra Caliente, transcribing over 1,000 tunes, which became an ongoing project. Paul has been teaching vintage jazz, swing, western swing, improvisation, traditional country, and Mexican fiddling annually at music camps and workshops across the U.S. He is a musician in Lafayette, Louisiana-based bands including Stop the Clock Western Swing and Runaway Fiddle.

Interviewed by Holly Hobbs, 09/04/2020.

Holly Hobbs

Music; United States; Covid-19 Pandemic

Richard, Louisiana

Musicians in America during the Covid-19 Pandemic

Society for Ethnomusicology