Stroll through the gates at Red Wing Roots Music Festival held at Natural Chimneys, and you’ll catch a welcoming smile from Megan Tiller, the festival’s ticketing manager. Watch closely: bands of small children sweep by, tugging at her shorts and triumphantly handing up envelopes of dollar bills and pocket change. These miniature buskers, with their lively group play and wailing fiddle tunes, are the region’s newest generation of old time musicians, but they aren’t raising money for themselves. Their tips support scholarships to Red Wing Academy, a culture building initiative that is both the inspiration for their public jams and passion project of Megan Tiller.
Red Wing Academy’s mission is to give students the skills, talents, and community to join the long tradition of improvisational performance in old time music. Hosted every year by Eric Brubaker, fiddle master and band member of the Steel Wheels, the centerpiece of the Academy is learning to play original arrangements of classic Steel Wheels songs. During the Academy, students also attend workshops as varied as Bucket Drumming, Fiddle String Pop, and Create a Band. On opening day of the festival, all 120 students join the Steel Wheels onstage to perform, collectively, live music to cheering crowds.
Writing the orchestral arrangements is a labor of love, shared by Megan and her Associate Director Kelly Wiedemann. Each song is composed to be accessible to large, incredibly diverse groups, welcoming those as young as five and as old as 19. Skill sets range from playing with open strings — simply plucking or bowing a string without modifying it with one’s left hand — to budding professional. The Academy’s vision is simple: “We see the old lines between instruction and play dissolving, bringing the spirit of traditional American music into the classroom, fusing the culture of festivals with expert training in string instruments and live performance.”
Integrating Passion, Profession, and Place
Breaking down the barriers between instruction and play isn’t the only way Megan is finding wholeness as the Academy’s Director. The core idea of the Academy hatched five years ago at the intersection of her vocation, friendships, and community. Teaching at Eastern Mennonite’s preparatory music program, running her own violin business that specializes in putting tiny violins into tiny hands, and working on staff at numerous festivals, Megan’s interests collided with Eric Brubaker’s in a nexus of partnership and music. That summer, in conjunction with EMU’s Suzuki Strings Day Camp, they launched an afternoon-only fiddle workshop and invited their first small cohort of students onto the stage at Red Wing Roots Music Festival. The program’s wild popularity blew right through their enrollment goals.
Five years later, she shares, “Honestly, this combines every single thing I love to do in my life.” With equal parts teaching, management, entrepreneurship, community partnerships, and festival culture, Megan has had to learn how to bring all of her selves to the Academy. Some days she’s a “khaki teacher” of classical music, others she is loading up her Volkswagen camper van for festivals around the country at Bonnaroo or Pickathon. But to be home is to be seen, and so on the steps of Natural Chimneys in Augusta County, the divisions between work and play fade softly behind the toe tapping tunes of live fiddle music.
Growing Up in the Music
As her chosen family of 30 instructors makes plans to reconvene for the 2019 Academy, Megan prepares to once again be “super humbled” by the talent and care that is directed towards this region’s children.
“Teaching in this capacity, I can stay close to a student through their entire childhood,” she says. Musicians who began learning around kindergarten end up returning as student teachers in high school or as her employees in college, eventually working alongside Megan bringing up the next generation of artists. Megan was 24 when she launched her violin shop ten years ago, so in many ways she has literally grown up with her students.
“Most meaningful to me is giving the kids the tools they need to play independently of a teacher or adult,” she shares. “Autonomy takes practice at that age.” Her hope is that they learn how to socialize around their music, to experience the freedom of campfires and group jams without a leader or conductor.
“My favorite part last year was when I was already in my van, under the covers, almost asleep. I heard these girls strumming guitar, singing, playing violin, not being shy at all. It was so late. I got out, put my clothes on, and just watched them play,” she says.
“I knew we must be doing something right. It’s not about the glam, it’s about the magic of how we choose to be together. My heart was so full.”
