I believe it was Doc Watson who once said that the accumulation of bad techniques and your limitations are what ultimately give you your "style".

I must say that most average people not steeped in the music seem to react with more interest to fiddlers who were classically trained. I suspect it's because it gives them something familiar to recognize. When faced with a funky fiddler with lots of "style" but not any classical training, those people just don't quite know what to make of it. It sounds foreign to them. Not homogenized enough to dial into. Of course, after you've become immersed in the genre a while, things will sound different to your ear.

Al