The Chokers are in town for a three-performance weekend, with two of the members down from Boston. The atmosphere resembles a family gathering more than a performance instruments are exchanged and in between sets of two or three songs, the members pause to drink, chat and laugh. Later identified as Jim Reidy (banjo), Chip Taylor Smith (guitar), Paul Strother (bass), Stefan Senders (banjo), and Chad Crumm (fiddle), the recently reunited Chicken Chokers begin to play on and off for the next few hours.
Slowly, a gaggle of folks filter out of the crowd to sit in a circle in a corner of the bar. Babies are passed amongst parents and friends, and drinks are flowing steadily among audience members. The bar is swamped, and folks who aren’t planted on couches are gathered around chatting. It’s only a bit past six on Friday night, but there’s barely any space to stand in Felicia’s Atomic Lounge. Suddenly, again, for old fogies and young inheritors, old time is all the rage. Both the Chokers and The Horse Flies have reunited, and younger players are picking up instruments and carrying on the tradition. The last few years, however have seen a renewed interest old time music. But by the mid-90s, the movement had lost steam for separate reasons, The Horse Flies and Chicken Chokers had put their fiddles and banjos back on the shelf. The album introduced new and vital styles of old time music to new audiences and the following years marked a great revival for old time music, centered largely in the Finger Lakes region and experienced at festivals throughout the country. Called Chokers & Flies, the record offered two takes on old time music: the traditional yet whimsical approach of the Chicken Chokers complemented the experimental efforts of the Horseflies who incorporated percussion and island rhythms into traditional forms. In 1985, The Tompkins County Horseflies released a split LP with Boston-based Chicken Chokers. The Ithaca area was a focal point in this tradition’s redefinition. In the late 1970s and early 80s, bands like Joy Division, Talking Heads and Public Image Limited dared to take punk and pop and “rip it up and start again.” While those groups were reworking Anglo-American popular music, another group of artists were exploring the sonic possibilities of an even more established genre: old-time fiddle music.
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