Face Dancer » Fidders

THE FIDDERS

In the late 1970’s FACE DANCER was the preeminent rock band in the Washington/Baltimore area. Scott McGinn was the groups’ songwriter and performed on bass guitar, keyboards/guitar/and vocals. David Utter sang and played rhythm guitar. Later, Scott created and fronted the techno-pop band GROWING UP DIFFERENT and David continued as lead vocalist and guitarist with his project, FAST EDDY, and several other regional rock groups.

Today, these veterans of the local rock scene have combined their songwriting skills, vocals and musical talents to form THE FIDDERS. You can expect to hear a variety of popular songs spanning the decades as well as new original material. Whether performing as a duo, or joined by their various musical friends, THE FIDDERS are a must to see and hear. And enjoy.

It all started way back in England, during the Middle Ages. Several nomadic tribes had wandered their way up from the heat and desert of the Mesopotamia region (what we know as war torn Iraq today) to find the cold and bleak terrain of the British Isles. How they got from France to England still has archeologists baffled, but it is believed it had something to do with “backstage passes” the remnants of which were found during excavation of the new Wembley Stadium in London.

The original “Face Dancers,” so called because they often smeared their faces with shoe polish to disguise themselves from the local constables, were a crafty and agile lot. The men would feign illnesses such as drunkenness and laziness to avoid working, while the women would pass as “mystics” or “palm readers” persuading normally reasonable people to part with their money or property to win the charms of some coveted lass or lad or to succeed in business ventures such as finding gold in The New World. In fact, many Face Dancers decided “What the heck, let’s go to The New World ourselves and get a whack at that gold and treasure and such!”

It’s no wonder that many of the Face Dancers, or Fidders as they came to be known, turned to entertaining as their main occupation. If there was a tavern or bawdy house in any village or town in the colonies, you could bet you’d find a band of Fidders inside singing and one or two outside in the bushes rousting with wenches. Of course the townspeople loved them so much, that they traded them constantly, so it was common to find a Fidder band sent from town to town, usually on a rail but sometimes dragged behind a horse. People would gather at the outskirts of town to watch the cloud of dust moving towards them, knowing that soon there would be much singing ,dancing, and drinking along with varying amounts of property loss and surprise pregnancies.

Stories are told of long nights in rowdy barrooms and motels, where the Fidder bands played constantly, sometimes running through two or three bottles of whiskey each and never certain where they might wake up. A clean change of clothes was a rarity and a man learned to appreciate the smell of a woman on his skin, because that’s the best he’d smell the rest of the day. Times were HARD!

Which brings us to present day.

In the late 1970’s FACE DANCER was the preeminent rock band in the Washington/Baltimore area. Scott McGinn was the groups’ songwriter and performed on bass/keyboards/guitar/and vocals. David Utter sang and played rhythm guitar. Later, Scott created and fronted the techno-pop band GROWING UP DIFFERENT and David continued as lead vocalist and guitarist with his project, FAST EDDY, and several other regional rock groups.

And now you know…. The Rest of the Story.

Or you will.

Soon.