Betse Ellis wowed audiences for years as a member of the popular Kansas City group The Wilders.
More recently, she has been performing in the duo Betse & Clarke with Clarke Wyatt, as well as with the Short Round Stringband, featuring Kelly Wells, Ryan Spearman and Wyatt.
The quartet will perform at the Kansas Bluegrass Association's Winterfest at the Wichita Marriott on Friday, Feb. 22.
Interview Highlights
What was your initial exposure to fiddle music and roots music? Was this something you heard as a child or did you come to it later?
Yes and yes. [Laughs.] I was exposed to it a bit, growing up in Fayetteville, Arkansas, but not at home. I grew up playing violin; I took classical lessons and all. I shied away from the word "fiddle." My first violin teacher said that, and I did not like it. I didn't like anything on that side of the musical spectrum.
As for the other stuff, there were a few times when my family would go to the Ozark Folk Center in Mountain View, Arkansas, or other historic locations. We'd go to one-day festivals where there'd be old-time musicians.
The Folk Center is the one that I remember best. It didn't move me, particularly, at the time. It was only later, after I'd moved to Kansas City and had gone to a music conservatory, that modern bluegrass came into my life. I got really curious about that.
I started getting into the history. What came before that? I'm not sure what prompted that. My boss at the Nelson Atkins Museum gave me some further guidance; he loaned me some records, I heard Doc Watson. My friend and bandmate in The Wilders, Phil Wade, would go to the library and poke around the shelves in the folk section and find these field records of old banjo players and fiddle players. I realized that this was music I really wanted to play.
You're talking about something I love to do, which is connect the dots. ‘Where does this music come from?' I spent my youth reading liner notes, looking for names of different session players. ‘Where else did this guy play? He used to be in what band?' I wasn't thinking that I'd find the answer but I figured I'd find some kind of answer that would bring it all back together.
Yeah. Context. Provenance. It was a lot more work to do it that way. Reading it on a piece paper and remembering the name, then making connections, maybe years apart.
I remember the time when you could read about a record in a magazine, make a note of it, but it would be maybe four years before you could actually locate a copy of it. One day, you'd walk into a record store and it was there, and it was kind of a miracle. [Laughs.]
[Laughs.] Exactly! You understand.
You play festivals and have for a long time. I would guess that you see a lot of the same faces. It might be a little heavy-handed to say that it's like going home, but I imagine you get to experience that feeling of connection through that community.
Homecoming is not too heavy-handed a term. At the Walnut Valley Festival in Winfield, they've got a series of stickers, Heading Home To Winfield. Certainly, that is part of the appeal of being a touring musician, in general, is seeing people that maybe you get to see once a year and sometimes not every year.
Wichita and its proximity to Winfield is a big deal to me. I hope I'll see a bunch of people I recognize.
Jedd Beaudoin is the host of Strange Currency. Follow him on Twitter @JeddBeaudoin. To contact KMUW News or to send in a news tip, reach us at news@kmuw.org.
