Fort Worth Fiddle Player Ross Holmes
Fort Worth-native Ross Holmes is living proof that if you follow your heart from the get-go, chances are, you’ll end up where you belong. From a very young age, Holmes has been on stage as a musician in one form or another. His formative years were spent attending Daggett Elementary and then Paschal High School all while he was a member of the Texas Boys Choir. Overlapping in this time period, Holmes also jumped into classical violin under renowned Fort Worth musician and professor, Dr. Kurt Sprenger.
Holmes prowess for the fiddle seemed to run in the family given his sister Katie Shore, who also plays the fiddle, eventually ended up playing for American swing legends Asleep at the Wheel for nearly ten years. But Holmes resume isn’t any less impressive. He’s played with everyone from Bruce Hornsby, to Mumford and Sons, and was one of the founding members of the Fort Worth-based progressive bluegrass band Cadillac Sky.
Currently, Holmes is touring with American country-rock legends the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, who will be swinging by Bass Hall on July 27. Tickets and best availability at www.basshall.com. We recently had a chance to talk with Holmes about carrying the Olympic torch in 1996, his Grammy Award-Winning stint with Mumford and Sons, and why he will always consider Fort Worth home.
FWM: Obviously, we’re going to be talking about music, but I read that you were the youngest person in Fort Worth to carry the Olympic torch when it passed through on its way to Atlanta for the 1996 Olympics. How did this happen?
RH: Probably because of my involvement in music around Fort Worth. Not that I had some fan base, but I was recognized by a lot of people and I think that as I remember right at the time, Kay Granger was mayor of Fort Worth. I think she had contacted my folks to say that this was happening and if I would like to be a part of this. I got to meet her later that afternoon, got our picture taken. It was actually in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. My mom has it framed proudly, but yeah, we didn't realize it at the time, but I think their office later came back and said that was pretty cool since I was the youngest to run with the torch.
FWM: When did you first pick up the violin? Or is it a fiddle? What’s your consensus on this age-old question?
RH: As the old-timers used to say a violin has strings and a fiddle has strangs (laughs). There's no difference. It's all about how you play it. Unfortunately, when people hear the word fiddle, they immediately go to the stereotypical hillbilly with a piece of straw hanging out of his mouth playing dance music with a violin. We think of people in a tuxedo standing in front of a symphony, but the truth is existing very squarely in both worlds as a soloist in front of symphonies and playing on tons of country music records here in Nashville, they are equals musically. The instrument just happens to be the same, and it's been pretty cool to be a fiddle player with the opportunities to play on a Stradivarius. Fiddling is just as valid of an art and in many ways more difficult because improvisation is a major part of the fiddle scene more than violin playing. As for when I first picked up a fiddle, my sister and I both went through the Kinder Music Program at TCU. We were really young, 3, 4, 5, and started playing piano and that was the track until the fiddle kind of made its way into my hands and then it was game over. I knew that was going to be it.
FWM: What was it like being at the groundbreaking for Bass Hall while standing next to the legendary Van Cliburn himself?
RH: At the time, I didn't realize how important that would be in my life; for many reasons. The Texas Boys Choir had been asked to perform at the groundbreaking, which makes all the sense in the world, and I just happened to be one of the taller kids and stood at the end of a row. We didn't know that we were actually going to turn dirt, but they handed us little mini shovels, little trowels and we were standing in a line with Van Cliburn and I believe Ed Bass. Several other important figures were right next to us while we turned our dirt for a photo opportunity. Later my mom was looking at pictures going, ‘oh my God, you turned the dirt for the groundbreaking, and who's that standing next to you but Van Cliburn.’
FWM: Is it true you were also one of the Texas flag bearers for three years for the Stock Show and Rodeo when it was held at Will Rogers Coliseum?
RH: It's really interesting. I was really involved in a lot of historical projects. History's always been an important part of my study, my interest, but growing up in Fort Worth, while we lived in town, we had horses outside of town, took care of 'em every day. Just through our connections in the rodeo scene as well as the western music scene, when you play fiddle, it's inevitable in Texas, you're going to wind up playing Bob Wills tunes. And my sister and I both found ourselves playing for a lot of these ranch families and ranch hands and going out to dances in Aledo and Weatherford. We met a lot of people and they found out that I rode and had an interest in history. During the grand entry at Will Rogers as well as the actual parade through downtown, there are about 5 million Texas flags and American flags that are paraded through, but it was meaningful to me. I grew up going every year to that rodeo, and that was one of my favorite parts, was just seeing all these horsemen, and horsewomen get out there and ride with their flags. And when the opportunity came up, my mom was like, ‘yeah, you got to do that.’
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Cadillac Sky
FWM: Is Cadillac Sky planning on getting back together? Last we heard, y’all were on hiatus not broken up.
RH: When we went on hiatus in 2010, we all kind of scattered to other projects because we had already been invested in a whole bunch of other projects. The band started in Fort Worth, but we all kind of migrated to Nashville eventually because we were spending so much time there that it just made more sense to be in Nashville. But we have called it a hiatus simply because we never wanted to shut the door for the band to get back together at some point in time, and we all stay in touch. The banjo player, Matt Menefee and I have been a part of several major projects together and find ourselves in the recording studio fairly often together here in Nashville. And Bryan Simpson, who is the lead singer and mandolin player, he's a major songwriter here in town, so we cross paths often, and I do hope at some point, man, we can even come back to Fort Worth for a gig.
FWM: This hiatus was serendipitous for you as a fiddle player, right? I mean in like no time you were in Mumford and Sons.
RH: Mumford and Sons were actually big fans of Cadillac Sky, and we were playing the Telluride Bluegrass Festival, and we met, and they were just breaking out their song ‘Little Lion Man’, which was on the wave. People were really starting to get into the band, and we became really close friends and wound up doing a joint tour with them in 2010. As soon as the tour ended, that's kind of when Cadillac Sky said, ‘we've got a lot of things happening. We're going to take a break for a bit.’ And within a very short period of time, maybe a week or two, the Mumford camp reached out and invited me to consider joining their lot. The one catch would be I'd have to spend a lot of my time in London, and at the time, with our first child, our daughter, who was almost three, it was a big decision, but I couldn't say no. I could literally taste the energy in the air. The electricity was palpable, and I knew that something special was going to happen in my time with that band. And my years with them were, when they established themselves as the presence that they are now, it was really, really special to be a part of a band with such a meteoric rise. I cherish those years.
The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band
FWM: How did you wind up playing with the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band? It seems like a perfect fit being a fiddle player, right?
RH: Nashville, Tennessee for as big a city as it is, and Fort Worth and Nashville share a lot of similarities in terms of growth and demographic, everybody knows each other in the music crowds. Whenever you buy a house or settle into town, you're inevitably going to be near some musicians. And as it wound up happening, we met Jamie and Dorian Hanna, Jamie being the son of Jeff Hanna, who founded the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. So, it was just kind of happenstance that we moved in with family relations to the Dirt band. And so, after we kind of got settled, the Dirt Band guys would come over and jam and grill out, and I got to know him that way.
I can still remember my dad placing one of the records for ‘Will the Circle Be Unbroken’ on the turntable when I was 6. I remember it vividly because of the album cover, the handwriting, the flags, the Image of the Union General, and that was a memory that stuck out. But I didn't realize until I was in the Cadillac Sky phase and we were deep in bluegrass and Americana that had this band of long-haired hippies from California not come to Nashville in 1971 to record with Doc Watson, and Mother Mabelle Carter, and Vassar Clements, and Merle Travis, like all these country music legends, Americana music as we know it would look a lot differently. It's argued that ‘Will The Circle Be Unbroken’ is ground zero for Americana music. And certainly, for a band that has spanned 58 years and had hits in rock, pop, and country music, they have affected many genres even beyond the folk bluegrass acoustic scene that they're associated with.
