One of the reasons we wanted to visit the Port Townsend area was because it is the home of the Festival of American Fiddle Tunes, a week long fiddle extravaganza featuring workshops and performances by some of the best traditional musicians in the Americas.

Synchronicity was working in our favor this March. Centrum, the force behind Fiddle Tunes, had hosted a three-day intensive workshop on music from Quebec, and the teachers were three lads who form the group De Temps Antan. Thursday night they played for an old fashioned Québécois-style dance. I’d found out about it before hand and bought tickets. Glad I did; it was sold out.

It was fantastic. These three young men are hot musicians (and easy on the eyes too). This is high-energy music; like good rock music, it forced my feet into motion and I danced sets until I was dizzy. When I got tired of dancing I tried to draw the band, but they were in such constant motion, all I could manage were gesture drawings (tiny because all I had was a tiny note book).

After I came home, head still swirling with music, trying to figure out  3/2 rhythms and crooked tunes, and feet still clapping and clattering, I tried to sketch portraits of the lads based on my gesture drawings, and, to be honest, watching them on YouTube videos. I never could get André Brunet, the fiddle player right. He was in constant motion, even more than the other two musicians, and that’s saying something. The box player was fond of standing up and dancing while playing.

I’m just posting the drawings of the accordionist Pierre-Luc Dupuis (seated in this drawing) and the guitar player Éric Beaudry.

Get their cd, or better yet, keep track of where they’re playing and go see them. They’re terrific!