Fiddle Sticks tunes up music students

By Maggie Plummer

POLSON - It's called Fiddle Sticks School of Music, and it's found in a cute little red schoolhouse with a white picket fence on Polson's Fifth Avenue West, just around the corner from Main Street.

Champion fiddler Jeri Halford and her son Cole teach fiddle, guitar, mandolin, violin, viola, cello, banjo, and more to students of all ages. The school currently has 51 students. "My oldest student was in her 80s," Jeri said.

Fiddle Sticks is also a music store, offering sales, rentals, and repairs of string instruments and band instruments.

The little music school has been open in Polson for five years now, and Jeri is delighted to report that "whole families are taking lessons."

Students come from all over the area for lessons, most of which last a half hour.

"We teach every style of music," she commented. "We have students from Kalispell, Hot Springs, Bigfork, and Arlee. This year we have several tribal members. Music is so good for youngsters, and it's something that will stay with them for life."

The discipline, listening, and compassion involved with playing music "basically teaches life skills," Jeri explained.

"It's cheap psychology," she added with a laugh. "Music is also math."

She says one of her friends is going to make her some special signs. One will read: "Psychology $9.95, Lesson $.05."

Another sign will say: "All my students bring me joy; some when they come, some when they leave."

She is constantly amazed at how much sharing and counseling is included in teaching music. After all, Jeri said, music is about self-expression.

"The violin is probably one of the only instruments that you can't hide your emotions," she remarked. "To play a waltz properly, it's better to know what it's like to have had your heart broken."

She advises youngsters to pretend they're playing waltzes to the beloved kitty they lost.

In general, she finds that teaching music is "about giving people something they own."

Surprisingly, all stringed instruments give left-handed people an advantage, Jeri pointed out. That's because the left hand is doing the note-playing, requiring quite a bit of dexterity.

"We found out that (many) fiddle competition winners were left-handed players who had not turned their instruments around," she said.

Jeri, whose maiden name is Currie, was born in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho and raised in Polson. She began learning classical piano at the age of seven, and studying ballet. At nine years old, she began playing the clarinet and at 12 she added a third instrument: guitar.

In 1983, Jeri began teaching music in Kalispell. She lived in Kalispell for 28 years. Most of that time, she says, her goal was to come home.

Then she and Cole moved back to Polson, to the ranch in Mountain View where she was raised.

Her music business in Polson is "more than I ever dreamed," she said. "I wasn't sure about the economy in Polson and Lake County. But it's working, and it's so much better than Kalispell."

Having won two separate battles with cancer, the 54-year-old music teacher knows all too well that life is very short and very precious.

Four years ago Jeri trekked down to South America to study music in Ecuador and Peru. She played her fiddle along the Inca Trail, which leads to the sacred ancient Inca city of Machu Picchu, Peru.

When she came home, she felt driven to cut a CD of her own original music. It's called "Lost in the Mist" - a tribute to Machu Picchu.

Jeri has also formed the "Front Porch Swing Band," which plays swing, blues, country western, old west, old time fiddle, mariachi, and more.

In 1991, Jeri won the title of Montana State Ladies Champion Fiddler. Many of her other trophies and awards are displayed in the little music school, which was remodeled from a tiny home built in 1929.

Between teaching, her own musical pursuits, her beloved horses, and her involvement in the Old Time Fiddlers, the woman stays busy.

Her next planned project for Fiddle Sticks is to build a gazebo outside, on the east side of the building.

She wants to keep her school of music small and family-friendly, getting students primarily through "word of mouth," she said.

Fiddle Sticks is located at 8 - Fifth Avenue West. The school's phone number is 883-1519.