From the Herald (Everett, WA), Aug. 19, 2007

link

The fiddler on the sidewalk

EVERETT - Sometimes it's a melancholy tune that drifts on the breeze outside the Snohomish County courthouse. But wait a while and hear it shift to a hopeful reel, something almost foot-stomping. Trace it back to its source and you'll find Fred Weisz.

His eyes are focused in concentration. He wrings music from four passive strings. The violin sings. The melodies are simple. His violin case stands open. "Tips appreciated." Two women huddle and search their purses. They muster $10.

"Oh wow ... thank you so much!" Weisz said, surprised by their generosity. After they leave, he says, "That's great. That'll buy, well, almost ... I'm trying to make enough today to buy my vitamins. That really helps." Few would suspect that Fred Weisz is an urban folk legend. And playing tunes on a downtown Everett sidewalk is a long way from playing on "The Ed Sullivan Show."

Forced to play

Weisz had little choice but to play the violin. "My parents were from Vienna and loved music and the violin," Weisz said. "My father forced me into playing the violin." Weisz was born in 1944 in Port of Spain, Trinidad, a safe harbor after his Jewish parents fled Vienna in 1938. Adolf Hitler had joined Germany and Austria and the family was no longer safe. "It was either join the German Army or be killed," said Weisz, who practices "middle-of-the-road Judaism." "We were running from Hitler and that (Trinidad) was one of the only places you could go."

In 1947, the family moved to New York City on a medical visa for Weisz's mother. "My mother's eyesight was failing and she needed some operations," he said. Soon, the family settled in the nice Jewish community of Passaic, N.J., Weisz said, about 12 miles from the Lincoln Tunnel to Manhattan. In this town, Weisz was forever changed.

"I started playing music when I was 11," he said. "I started by taking classical violin lessons." But one day, he put Bill Monroe's Blue Grass Boys on a record player in the hallway of his parent's home. He heard Chubby Wise and Monroe, the father of bluegrass, playing "Can't Ya Hear Me Calling." They didn't play violin. They played fiddle.

"When I first heard bluegrass, it was like magic," Weisz said. "It knocked me out. I hunted out bluegrass records and bluegrass shows, and they were sparse," he added. "I was thirsty for bluegrass music."

Jug band craze

The once-forced marriage between Fred and the violin blossomed into a love that has lasted more than four decades. In his teens, Weisz learned to play guitar and banjo, and vowed to be the best bass player in the metropolitan area of New York and New Jersey. "I think I did it," he said. "I got a lot of work - two, three, four bands - and did a lot of playing." In Passaic, Weisz went to school with David Grisman, who went on to become a famous mandolin player. The two eagerly hopped on the urban folk music craze of the early 1960s. They and the rest of the world also fell under the sway of Beatlemania. Even so, Weisz and other musicians donned matching vests and played in jug bands alongside ragtime piano, the twang of a bluegrass fiddle and washtub basses. Between the Beatles and bluegrass, "everything was so magical in those days," Weisz said.

Flyin' Fred

Weisz turned 63 on Friday. He lives a few blocks from the county courthouse in a modest studio apartment. The place is decorated with photos from his heyday. There's a framed copy of the Even Dozen Jug Band album, and black and white photos of him playing with his earliest bands. When the mood strikes him on a sunny day, he ventures out to claim a piece of sidewalk in the shade outside the county's justice hub. When he's not smiling or giving a friendly hello, his attention is riveted on the melody, the four strings, the fingerboard.

In his suspenders, T-shirt and sneakers, few would recognize him from his close-up on "The Ed Sullivan Show" in 1970. "That was the highlight of my musical career," Weisz said wistfully. Back then, he was "Flyin' Fred," a fiddler with Goose Creek Symphony and at the peak of his game.

"He's my favorite fiddle player of all time," said Charlie Gearhart, the man behind Goose Creek Symphony. "He's Mr. Soul, Mr. Wonderful." Gearhart invited Weisz to Phoenix to try out as a banjo player. Things went OK, but during a break he took out his fiddle and started playing. "He blew everybody away," Gearhart said by phone from Nashville. "That's when all the magic came together. Right there. When Fred came to the band, that's when we knew what the band was and where we were going."

The band had a cutting-edge sound that mixed bluegrass, country and rock. Weisz toured with the band in three-week stints. That proved hard, he said. "You drive to the show, play the show, get back in the bus and travel 500 miles in the middle of the night," Weisz said. "You wake up and the bus is still moving. It was hard for me.

"Just playing a good show made it worth it. We had a good time." Fiddlers who play with Goose Creek these days still have to learn Weisz' licks, Gearhart said.

A 'really big shew'

Weisz and Goose Creek toured eight months with Miss Bobbie Gentry in 1970. After backing her up at a show at the Waldorf Astoria in New York City, the band got big news. The phone rang: Gentry and Goose Creek were booked on The Ed Sullivan Show. "She picked up a half dozen Goose people, myself included, and we did The Ed Sullivan Show, " Weisz said.

Weisz played the classic fiddle song "Fire on the Mountain." America saw Weisz in bib overalls with thick black rimmed glasses, he said. "There was at least a minute of me, close up," Weisz said. "Ed complimented me and Charlie. We were walking upstairs and he was coming down and he said to us 'You boys are mighty fine.' All I could think of was it's the very stage the Beatles played on. It was a tremendous high."

It's been years since he saw the performance. "I'm trying to locate it now, but no luck yet," he said. Weisz and Goose Creek also opened for guitarist Jimi Hendrix at the Atlanta Pop Festival, and saw him perform from just a few feet away. "When he walked past, I said, 'Hey man, you're beautiful.' He had his turquoise blue Corvette outside, and he was great. Me and David said we'd go deaf to hear Jimi Hendrix play."

A slower pace

For decades, Weisz made his living playing music, but he has struggled with mental health problems every step of the way. A nervous breakdown temporarily pulled him out of music in the 1970s, but he rejoined Goose Creek for his third and final album with them in 1975. Since then, he said he's played with other bands, on other albums.

Weisz said he came to accept that he has bipolar manic depression. "Sometimes I think I'm just normal, but I have this illness and have had it since I was 18," he said. "It's come and gone. For being in and out of hospitals, I still managed to make my mark."

He doesn't complain. He says everyone has problems. "This stretch has been particularly rewarding," he said. "I've been out six or seven years now. I feel good." In 1993, Weisz began collecting disability checks from Social Security. Things are at a slower pace he can manage. Throughout, the music has sustained him, he said.

"It's wonderful that I can play at all, and people still like my playing." Despite the drift of time, his skilled vibrato persists. His fingers still know the technical positions of dozens of tunes, but sometimes fall prey to a tremor in his hands. "Some days it's worse than others," he said. "The more I play, the better it gets."

A bad reaction to medication about six or seven years ago robbed him of some of his sense of time and rhythm, Weisz said. "I don't like to dwell on that. My tempo has slowed down quite a bit. I'd love to play bluegrass," he added, "but my tremor stops me from playing traditional bluegrass music. It calls for up-tempo playing. I just can't do it."

At the courthouse, his audience is mostly friendly, sometimes generous. "I come up here to play, make a few dollars and meet some nice people," he said. "I pretty much volunteer music. That's why I'm grateful for a few bucks. A few bucks is a few bucks." Four years ago, he raked in enough to buy himself a new guitar. But things slacked off.

"The other day I was out here in the afternoon and something clicked and I made $31," Weisz said. "So I said I'm coming back tomorrow. I did and only made like $10." In addition to his spot outside the courthouse, Weisz plays regularly with two bands that perform at Temple Beth Or and senior centers.

"I find a lot of beauty in music. It's carried me. I pretty much have it made. Like my friend David told me: We all get older, you just play the best you can and that's it."