and they danced all night, to the fiddle and the banjo...

My good friend, Joseph Edward Decosimo, married a lovely young lady from Shelby, North Carolina, Ms. Kasey Poole, now Mrs. Kasey Decosimo. We three California kids had the privilege of attending the affair, which was probably one of the finest weddings ever held in Chattanooga - beautiful stone chapel for the ceremony, good friends from all over the country, a sit down dinner at the historic Read House in downtown Chattanooga, and a string band present to play for a square dance once the eating was over with...

To give you a little background, I met Joseph during my first year of boarding school at McCallie. Our paths crossed on the cross country team - he was a freshman, and a rising star from the ranks of the Junior School running program. He was a muscular, shaved head rock climber with in an intimidating seriousness in his beady little eyes. I was almost 16, (older), scrawny, uncompetitive by nature, fresh out of the Atlanta the suburbs, and I had big hair. But I scared him because he was afraid I would beat him. And I did!  But we became fast friends when we realized we shared a profound love of music, particularly traditional music of Ireland and America. Since then, we've played music together on and off for the past 10 years, performed together a few dozen times all over the southeast at restaurants, on bridges, at the diamond of the South - The Mountain Opry, at a few weddings to the chagrin of just about everybody but ourselves, and we even made a goofy little CD before I went off to college. (The album was entitled "Traditional Non-Chilean Music" and featured traditional and original string music, as well as an album cover photo of an ancient Chilean woman sipping on Yerba Mate. Don't ask. But be informed that the album went platinum in Indonesia 4 years after it's release.) Since all of that, we've remained good friends - he stood by me when I married Laura, and I was honored to do the same for him two weeks ago when he wedded Kasey. 

On the musical front, I ended up quitting my job as a teacher and moving to California to play music for a church. Joseph, on the other hand, got hired as a teacher and has meanwhile gone on to become one of the most well-respected fiddle and banjo players in the old-time music community. (Note: Old-time is distinct from bluegrass in subtle ways, but most clearly in the way that old-time music has remained relatively uncommercialized, whereas bluegrass could be considered, among other things, a radio-friendly version of old-time music.) He can be found playing for awed audiences everywhere from the streets of Chattanooga to the legendary stage of the Ryman auditorium in Nashville, home of the original Grand Ole Opry. He won first place in the old-time banjo contest at Uncle Dave Macon days, a huge festival in the southeast. 

If you have a moment, check out this link to a Chattanooga Times-Free Press article about his accomplishment. There's even an mp3 and video linked from the article. 

Newspaper article link

Listening to him play might be one of the nicest parts of your day...And check out his band's myspace page for a few more tracks of good old time music.

River City Roustabouts link