Hootin and Hollarin

Hootin and Hollarin

Celebrating Ozarks Heritage and Culture in Gainesville, Missouri

 

Aaron Albrecht

September 2024

A landscape photograph taken by the author in Ozark County, Missouri, nearby the festival.

I traveled this weekend to the small town of Gainesville in Ozark County, Missouri, for what turned out to be the event of the year -- Hootin and Hollarin.

The front page of the Ozark County Times, the town of Gainesville’s weekly paper, features the contestants for Queen of Hootin and Hollarin.

Hootin and Hollarin is a celebration of Ozarks heritage and culture that takes place every September in Gainesville, Ozark County, Missouri.

For readers unfamiliar with an event of this kind, it is similar in some ways to a typical county fair or harvest festival found in many small towns throughout the rural Midwest.

Along with the sale of art pieces made by talented local artisans and craftsmen, the festival boasts entertainment such as a beauty pageant, an antique car show, a pie contest, a cornhole tournament, a quilt show, and other competitions like hog calling.

However, the heart and soul of the celebration is found in the outstanding, energetic old-time fiddling and exuberant square dancing at night.

County marker on Highway 181 in the Southern Missouri Ozarks.

The community square dance on Saturday night proved to be the focal point of the festival.

David Scrivner (fiddle), Nathan McAlister (banjo), and Joel Hinds (guitar) prepare to play for more than a hundred dancers.

Two of the finest old-time fiddlers in the country, David Scrivner and Ashley Hull, provided music for the Saturday night square dance. 

Ashley Hull (fiddle) and Joel Hinds (guitar) play the dance on Saturday night.

Accompanying them, Nathan McAlister (banjo) and Joel Hinds (guitar) provided rhythm for the dancers.  McAlister and Hinds are both longstanding and formidable Ozarks-style fiddlers in their own right.

Nathan McAlister of Neosho, Missouri, plays the banjo in the old-time way, adding rhythm that is characteristic of traditional Ozarks dance music.

Three rising stars in Missouri’s old time music scene -- Hawken and Emily Boldman, and Mason Herbold -- got in on the action, taking the stage to perform the hard driving Ozarks music that the dancers in this region love to hear. 

This musically gifted couple, Hawkin (guitar) and Emily Boldman (fiddle), join David Scrivner (fiddle) and Nathan McAlister (banjo) on stage to fiddle for the dance.

As the musicians started playing on Saturday night, more than one hundred dancers got into sets of squares in front of the stage.  At the height of the dance around twenty squares were dancing all at once.

Mason Herbold of Hallsville, Missouri, is a junior music major at Missouri State University and an accomplished old-time rhythm guitarist.

Five sets of dancers, centered directly in front of the stage, put on a master class of traditional Ozarks square dancing that night, consistently dancing the traditional Ozarks figures as they have been passed down from previous generations over many years. 

A square set featuring noted musicians and dancers as Bob Zuellig and Roy Pilgrim.

In these sets, figures were called by master callers like Emma Neighbors, Andy Eldar, Bob Zuellig, Kyle Pompei, and David Cavins.  And as is customary in the Ozarks square dance tradition, the figures were called from within the set and the dancers jig stepped percussively through the figures in time to the music.  Some of the most jubilant dances were Grandpa’s Baby, Two Little Hobos, Texas Star, Dip and Dive, and Cut Off Six.  Elliott Crocket, Elsie Hinds, Asher Ferguson, and Hawken Boldman stood out among their peers as talented and promising young dance callers learning the traditional art.

A dancing set with notable musicians David Cavins, Asher Furguson, Amanda Arbuckle, and Mason Herbold.

And it was the fiddling that kept these dancers on the floor even well past midnight.

Some of the best old time dance fiddling in the United States was found on the stage at Hootin and Hollarin that Saturday night.

David Scrivner and Ashley Hull, two of the country’s finest Missouri-style dance fiddlers, presided over the night’s event.  Ashley and David both learned their craft at the feet of National Heritage Award recipient Bob Holt of Douglas County, Missouri, who is arguably the greatest square dance fiddler in the history of old-time music in Missouri.  David and Ashley were honored to be featured artists at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival last year.

A view from the stage of the hundreds of people gathered for the square dance on Saturday night.

Their renderings of classic, warhorse fiddle tunes such as Ragtime Annie, Eighth of January, Dance Around Molly, and Rabbit in the Pea Patch propelled the crowd to exuberance.  I measured the music’s tempo multiple times throughout the night, and each time the meter read exactly 140 beats per minute.  Bob Holt would be proud.

Traditional old-time music and dancing is reaching new heights in Missouri, as witnessed this year at Hootin and Hollarin in Gainesville.  As one participant put it, leaning over and shouting to be heard over the crowd, “Missouri is the best state for old time music and dancing in the whole country!”, and after this year’s event, I couldn’t agree more.

A digital road sign outside of town signals caution to motorists making their way towards the festival.

About the Author

Aaron is an accomplished old-time fiddler from Springfield, Illinois. He took up traditional fiddling as a freshman at Truman State University in Kirksville, Missouri. From there, Aaron began learning old-time fiddling in earnest, participating in the monthly square dance in Hallsville, Missouri, attending the fiddle camp in Bethel, Missouri, and playing in old-time fiddle contests and jam sessions across the Midwest region. Aaron has learned from some of the Midwest’s finest fiddlers, including Dr. Howard W. Marshall and Charlie Walden.

Aaron has taught traditional fiddling at the Folk School of St. Louis and teaches at the Old Time Music and Dance Camp in Mountain View, Arkansas. He serves as a judge for the Illinois State Fair Old Time Fiddle and Banjo Contest. He plays old-time square dances and presents workshops on the topic of traditional fiddling throughout Illinois and the region.

Aaron is also an avid folklorist. He makes field recordings of the traditional artists he plays with both to advance his knowledge and to preserve the music and lore for the next generation. Toward this end, he released his first album of fiddle tunes with his band The Down State Ramblers to much acclaim in the old-time fiddling world in 2021.