Trails of Rosin Dust / Episode 5: The Wild Wild West
.jpeg)
Trails of Rosin Dust / Episode 5: The Wild Wild West
Through the Mojave Desert to the Pacific coast, fiddlers reach the edge of the American soundscape where global influences, jam culture, and tradition converge, opening the music into its next evolution
Before radio. Before records. There was the fiddle, banjo, mandolin, bass, and guitar, building a medley tradition that resonates across cultures, ethnicity, language, socio-economic background, and age. Music sewed by many cultures over centuries and collectively carried west past the Rocky Mountains and the Mojave Desert, through gold rush country to the redwoods and sandy beaches along the Pacific shore, everything that came before meets new influences in The Wild Wild West
In this Trails of Rosin Dust’s fifth and final region, The Wild Wild West, traditions stretch and expand. Through Miles and Alex, we discover how Asian musical traditions became part of the Old West, as instruments like the lap steel guitar, dobro, and ukulele reshaped tone and texture within American roots music. Through Tristan and Tashina, we explore how Indian ragas influenced jam band culture, allowing old-time melodies to stretch, evolve, and flow through thirty to sixty minute musical journeys. Across coastal gatherings and forest clearings, dawg music and deadhead traditions fuel extended improvisation and musical exchange, creating a space where boundaries dissolve and the fiddle moves freely between past and present, preserving tradition while continually exploring beyond it.
Between festivals, free flowing late night jams, and contests that last days, the spirit of competition and collaboration converge. Like travelers drawn from every direction, these fiddlers carry their sound to the National Oldtime Fiddlers' Contest and Festival, where styles, influences, and generations meet in a final convergence, revealing the West not as an endpoint, but as new beginning.
Website: https://trailsofrosindust.wixsite.com/trails-of-rosin-dust
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/trailsofrosindust
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@trailsofrosindust
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/trailsofrosindust/
Co-Director | Heather Bennett
Co-Director | Sadie Cibula
Cinematographer | David Rush
Camera and Lighting | Hunter Lawson Cibula
Editor | Nancy Richardson
Colorist | Andrew Lichtstein