He was also no good at winning instant acclaim at the national bluegrass fiddle competition in Tamworth, NSW, in 1982. ‘‘I was disqualified because I played for 12 minutes instead of three. But there was a film crew filming it, so what could I do? That film has since been shown in about 120 countries around the world and I haven’t made a cent from it.’’
But getting kicked out of the competition spawned the beginning of his success in a way, because he met two other fiddlers who also were disqualified: Ray Schloeffel and Pixie Jenkins. A friendship struck up and a few years later Schloeffel suggested the three team up with another rising fiddle star, Andrew Clermont, as a tutu-clad novelty act on the Red Faces segment of television show Hey, Hey, It’s Saturday. It would be 10 years before the idea (sans tutus) became a reality but the result, the eclectic band Fiddlers Festival, has since become the impetus for the rebirth of a fiddling tradition in Australia.
Multi-genre violin events such as the Hawkesbury National Fiddle Festival and the Golden Fiddle Awards, inaugurated last year at the Tamworth Festival, were largely inspired by the example of Holden and his crew. Japan will hold its own fiddle festival this year, starring Holden’s band.
It is going to be a big year for Holden. He has just turned 50, his band turns 10 this month at Tamworth and will have its third CD out later this year, an overseas tour or two is planned, his recording studio — Bloody Dog — is so busy it’s threatening to overrun his live work, and he’s about to publish a book of Australian fiddle music written and arranged by Schloeffel, his longtime friend and fiddling hero, who died in September 2002.
It’s the culmination of years of hard work, determination and luck. Holden’s career has meandered through a dozen or so musical genres and included collaborations with just about everyone who has been anyone in Australian music in the past 30 years, from Jimmy Barnes to Diesel and Don Spencer to the state symphony orchestras.
‘‘[In 1994] I started working with Jimmy Barnes and those guys, and I started getting a bit of work writing music. But it was all a bit hit and miss. One minute you’re a pop star playing between Sting and Bryan Adams and the next you’re playing in some smoky pub.
‘‘Then, in ’96, Fiddlers Festival started. I guess that was the thing that changed my life because I saw that not only as a vehicle for things in Australia, but also for me because I didn’t fit in.
‘‘You couldn’t pigeonhole me. I’ve got so many influences and I didn’t want to play any one style of music. Being eclectic was, up to a point, a bit of a disaster.’’
Holden was classically trained, but curiosity and dissatisfaction with the classical world propelled him in other directions. ‘‘I started playing in bands when I was about 16. I think I was the second person in Australia to amplify the violin. And I was playing in rock bands, jazz bands, blues bands, fusion bands . . . then I moved to Adelaide and started playing with country bands.’’
He spent about eight years as a country fiddler before deciding to broaden his musical horizons. But getting gigs was an uphill battle because the violin was seldom seen outside the classical and country music scenes. ‘‘There wasn’t a lot of recognition for experience outside of reading music and that’s still true . . . but it’s slightly changing. What’s happening now are the sorts of things that at 35 I would have loved to have seen, or even [at] 25.
‘‘I still don’t think it’s the perfect situation, but just the number of [fiddle] players that play in bands now . . . rock ’n’ roll, jazz, anything. The fiddle’s become so much more prominent.’’
The music education system has not caught up with the changes yet, he says.
‘‘We’ve still got this education system that’s designed to create players for orchestras purely and solely even though there aren’t enough jobs. And yet that education system hardly recognises that there’s a parallel world out there that has nothing to do with reading the dots on a page. It has to do with creating music and creating something different, and [it’s] just as valid and just as employable. ’’
But he’s confident the message will get through. ‘‘If you’ve got the right ideas in your head, you’ll develop the momentum. I can see the Australian fiddle-playing movement turning into something, becoming an indigenous art form. There’s got to be some tearing down of the old and rebuilding of the new.’’
