Amazing Fiddler.mov 

Hey y'all, this little random moment has taken on a life of its own. I'm so pleased. But it's not the only time for me that this has happened. The two other times are when I heard Rose Ranger www.roseranger.com/ at Granville Island (I ended up hiring her for some sessions) also I first heard the great Don Alder www.donalder.com/ I think at the Arts Club on Granville whilst having a beer with some musician friends. They actually didn't think much of him. But come on!!! I had the pleasure to play on Don's last album and he's another Canadian treasure, IMO. Thanks to you all and keep dreamin' the dream!!! Mark

Fiddling doesn't get any better than this. Hot. Raw. Real. Great. There aren't many that can pull this off.

Hard to imagine how some folks can walk right on by ...

That dude just played the shit outta that fiddle!

Why don't talented people like this guy get more views?

I love how this kind of music automatically flips the switch in your brain to start either clapping, snapping, or stomping your foot. It’s super weird, but it almost feels wrong if you don’t do it

Well the Devil went up to Canada he was lookin for a soul to steal, he saw this guy and said fuck that shit I'm going home.

Shredding that bow jeez

Im shocked the fiddle didn't burst into flames, those skills are off the charts!

This guy is amazing!!!!!!!! Anyone else still watching in 2022!!!!!

The energy here is so unique, hes so talented its almost otherworldly. and people just walk by

music like this makes my body go bonkers no matter what the mood

After spending almost 2 yrs practicing fiddle I can truly appreciate how awesome this dude is.... I'm jealous

Mack Is one the best fiddlers i have ever had the pleasure to play with. He is an Artist.

Great fiddler who is tearing his bow up, and an engaging singer while fiddling.

AMAZING!!! When my tinnitus is gone, I'll try to learn that.

brother, take what you have and run with it, just please document everything because this just turned my bad day into good. Thank you!

How on earth does this not have more views?

Well feller...seams that twenty eight people done know what good music sounds like. He's god damn amazing boys.

Talent like this exists, and people would rather listen to mumble rap.

who could possibly walk by this beautiful, soulful music without stopping.

That’s some of the best fiddle playing I’ve ever seen

That's some fine playing and a good voice to go with it, if i was there i would have given him a really nice tip 👍🇺🇸.

I was playing that same exact thing! then I woke up. WOW!!!!

He's freakin awesome! He looks like Sam from supernatural

Man I could be listening all day without getting a headache.

God damn! That was the mad notes my dude!

My goodness! Isn't he wonderful??

:O!!! pure soul...breath taking :)

How has this video not blown up?

No shit that's the baddest fucking thing I think I've ever seen and heard!

Now that is fiddle soul! Fantastic Mak!

goosebumps all the way through

Best street performance ever!

Wish I could have been there too have that bow rehaired for him. Really talented.

The difference between a violin and a fiddle can be summed up in one word: attitude. :-) This guy is fantastic.

Makes me heart sing!

Outstanding!

This is a song called Reuben's Train. well done bro!

I seriously didnt know you could put this much awesome on one video.

He played it like a damn fiddle!

I'm a Texican I Love This Kind Of Music. This Guy is Good👍

He's amazing.. that is some pure natural talent there! Thanks for uploading this!

full of energy...enjoyed that. playing it from the heart..

Mack Jonsson es un gran músico muy sencillo y con mucho talento. Mira como toca la canción “Reuben’s Train” te dejará asombrado al 100%

You are an awesome fiddle player and love your singing!

He's shredding tf out of that fiddle

This vid deserves more views, amazing

I see this guy all over town. He is one hell of a good fiddle player. Just a small sample of some of the awesome talent we have in VIctoria BC. Check out The Sweet LowDown as well.

What a treat!

I saw this video when I was in middle school and was obsessed with learning Bluegrass music, and I finally have the opportunity! I've played violin since I was seven, but bluegrass is a little newer to me.

Very inspired and fiery fiddling, with great style! Sweet vocals, as well! Thank you for posting this!!!😀

Extremely talented! Wow! Love this!

This guy needs to be on America has tallent! I would buy a whole album with him and this style of Fiddle work!

DAYUM!! This dude is GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD!!

I wish I could like this video more than once

wow! thats the way its done.

that was just incredible.

Damn. Mack deserves platinum! Do AGT and the crown is yours!

Sounds like a combo clinch mountain Reuben’s train thing. Nice!

I can't get over how talented this guy is!

Hilarous how people can only comment on his form.

Fabulous! Should be giving a concert! More, please!

Wow incredible, gives me chills everytime I watch this

Miss ya Mack 💗

WOW!! This was absolutely amazing!!

I'd pay good money to see this

Way to make that fiddle sing!

If you come here from that one Amphibia Fanfic, i salute you 🫡

DamnGoodDiddler.mov

He is just.... Wow.. who is this amazing human? Love this!

Absolutely amazing

LOVE this! Makes me want to get up and dance!

Absolutely fantastic I am very impressed thank you for sharing your great talent with us all !

wow this is great

Awesome, Mack...y'ever get down So-Cal way, look me up (Matt Brislawn) --- we'll burn this Long Beach-town DOWN, double-fiddle style..

GO MACK!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Now that's some great 111.

A lot of energy there. I'd drop dead breathless after the first minute...:o) Great job .

He is amazing!

cross keyed fiddling is the best.

the gansta lean of all fiddle techniques...... but hell it sounds amazing

Oh my. This was incredible. Wandered on over here after hearing some of the best Orange Blossom Special renditions, and just sousing myself in good old Americana. Which was why I was sure I was peeking into some scene in Kentucky or Tennessee, some Appalachian high rolling - and then discover I'm listening to a Canadian in Victoria B.C. I would not hold that against him. I'm over here on the other side of the same country. Later. So I tracked down the Tequila Mockingbird playlist. The contrast between just two of Mack's clips - this one, and another one where he's sitting in a studio room by himself playing a trad. Irish fiddle song (in both he sings) stands out like a sore thumb. here, he's a fiddler. And obviously touched by angels. There, he's nothing but a violinist. They clipped his wings. 99 percent of what he knows how to do just doesn't happen. It is truly excruciating. I don't mean to be mean to the band. I'm sure that they're a lovely bunch, but I roamed through multiple songs on their online playlist. and look. As a longtime songwriter myself, I'd give their writing a solid c+ and that's the best I can do (and if you were to ask me can I do better, there are a few online clips of me to prove my point.) But this ain't no pissing contest. What's the point? I was just deeply disappointed, to discover that what appears to be the only actual cd recorded evidence that I could play on my stereo - doesn't even have fiddling. That is a tragedy. And what's with the name changes? I've discovered at least three different monikers used. Like a man running from the authorities, or a past, or maybe even a future....

AMAZING!!!!!

Amazing!!!!

DAMN THAT’S COOL!🙏👍🏻🎶

Amazing he can do that all with one horsehair! ;)

This dude is flat getting into it. Cool stuff man!!

You are on point 🙌

Awwwe- some son. That is some hot fiddlin', could almost see the flames coming out of the f holes! I can't believe people are walking by, I'd pull up a seat.

SHE PLAY THE FIDDLE IN AN IRISH BAND, BUT SHE FALL IN LOVE WITH AN ENGLISH MEN

Quote - "Tell your friends about this and let's hear more from Mack in future!!"YES, I would like to hear more from Mack. Good on ya mate.. - From New Zealand. (Next to Australia???) ;-DThe public in the video, aren't stopping, they don't seem impressed?????

*SUM MIGHTY FINE LIKKER!*

One more comment on this. It's been a long and whacky road chasing around the ghosts and name changes of Mack all over that far and distant west, trying to track down some semblance of what I guess is some kind of career, the ups and downs, the changes and rearranges. Would have loved to have been one intrepid and stubborn old journalist determined to splash the story of him and all his confederates across newspapers, mags and rags, and hell. Maybe even write a book. He is the soul of the West, among a few other intangible, wonderful, wild and unmanageable things. But that's all just my guesswork over what still adds up to less than a week of research. So there I was, perusing a short ad for a gig somewhere on the island (Duncan, I think) with Mack and Kaitlyn (banjo) pictured not unlike a resemblance of a couple of hopefuls just decamping some Halifax-landed boat from the old country, and I mean maybe a hundred and twenty years ago, and in black and white. Along with the tools of their trade. I noticed the years was now 2019 the last year of Our Normalcy before the world went mad, among other things. And I thought to myself, this is good. This brings it far closer to a recognizable horizon. And so many of would agree that his music and his talent and his style and just all of what he does with a fiddle and a bow, not to mention the blessing of a voice just as interesting as to be almost a perfect match with the rest of the package... That there is something haunting and unforgettable, a thing that tickles, but that gnaws and nibbles, catches up the breath and winds around and curls up inside ourselves and won't quite ever let go. A thing that feels like a sweet but more a bittersweet longing to name a thing, but yeah, maybe just let it go because it is of a moment and whose freedom means more to us than even having it securely in our pocket. But dammit. This is how Mack's music makes us feel. And if we're lucky, that's only just the bare bones of the meal. There is so much more to it than just that. What I'm getting at is that even though we are lost in the moment, and it sure feels like bliss, we are not unaware that a kind of vagrant and gypsy offering, a thing that we sense is almost too fragile and vulnerable for this world - but that yet persists, thrives, and arrives alive anyhow. Like that fleeting and startling instant of a glimpse of some wild thing there in the forest, presented and then gone as if entering another dimension. Just long enough to remind us that we are a civilized sort, up against a wild that lives all around and often closer than we think. And alas, I have only captured a raindrop's worth of an entire storm of what this music can do. My point is that it (surely!) is not dressed up in finery (literally) nor is it full of vanity, star-appeal, pomposity, or any or all of the frailties. It is separate from all of that. As if the music overcame the flaws of the human, and carried nature up to finer things. Is this not possible? Hell, we live in a country that has two coasts, and regardless of all that is in the middle (and it is much) both coasts offer up fiddle traditions so firmly entrenched as to almost exist in a salty and oceanic climate that rocks to the bosom of two large and very different oceans. I can hardly imagine how the topography of seashores is so interwoven into the sound that if you were to put your up to that fiddle's wood you could hear the sound of a seashell's memories. But enough. I am half Irish, but never once used that hyphen to identify myself as a proud and stubborn Canadian. I remind myself of this only to grant myself the liberty of a critical point of view. A thing that goes, I know, with a strong Irish chin. I am lucky to have both. And yes, the literary traditions inherited in my very DNA mean much to me - that thread that linked every single school year of my life and since I grew to be a man, it grew to be a rope. I was raised in libraries. But no shrinking spectacled cloistered intellectualized and study-mad shrinking violet was I. The books never captured me thus - they flung me back into the world with the G-force of a Saturn rocket, they did. All was well. And what does all that have to do with the business of applying a shredded bow upon a fiddle string? A strong arm and a supple wrist? A dropped down chin rest in order to free up a vocal accompaniment? Well, It would appear that the Cape Breton musical establishment got a wee bit of an historical start and has captured a lot of the thunder. It's like all that lovely lilting stuff (I greet it warmly and with no shame) and even that clogging and dancing and winking and yes, even the fire and the fury because of course there were a thousand thousand stories woven and wrapped up so deep within that sound, long before it ever even washed up on Canadian shores. And when one embraces it fully, one can never quite forget these histories and stories, the rebellions and the refusals, and all of that collective and very human spirit of defiance, to overcome a thing that had to be overcome. And so it was. And that is one hell of a proud tradition. But yet. Over here on the other coast, the left coast as it were, some might venture, a wilder coast, there is certainly all of this, but something different, still. And the closest I can figure (having studied this much) is that down there deep inside the sound is a thing distinctly southern, a thing that surely goes back to an old country, yes, but after its arrival on North American shores, flew off to different places, evolved and grew, moved around in restless wanderings, washed up against so many different local styles and attitudes that half the time it couldn't hardly recognize itself. But you can trace where it's been. All you have to do is listen. The Irish and the Scot. But then there's almost a gypsy and a Django thing, certainly something French, something Cajun, something maybe even Acadian, but then it's off again and teases like a cowboy's dinner of bacon and beans, and a prairie star spangled sky. But it still doesn't stop there, because now there's this hint of Appalachia and an ache and a heartbreak and an impossibly hard life and a sound that drops you to your knees. And back you come again with a condition that feels like worry beads strung across your soul. And so it goes. We open up our ears looking for some sweet salvation. And we're lucky to find it. Lord knows we live in a world where the mundane and the watered down, grabs a lot of that pie, the largest share by far. But thankfully, that's not all there is. We have to do the work, dig a little deeper, even when it feels like there aren't possibly enough to care, to make a difference. But that is only one small standard of measurement to apply. Hell. A week ago I didn't even know Mack existed, even though I had been an aficionado of many years' standing, attracted to all that two-step, three-step and four=step rhythm applied by a well-bowed fiddle. But life has a way of wandering out there, jumping that backyard fence, hunting down things of value, and then dropping them on the doorstep like offerings barely thought of or asked for. Is Mack a national treasure? I sincerely think he could be, perhaps, should be, and maybe even the most interesting story wonders to itself, would be? But regardless of all that speculation. In the meantime, we remain far too busy chasing around a thing of value that is never in our face, never ubiquitous, never overdone or oversold, remains allusive, and is there to remind us that the very best things in life seldom, if ever, just fall into our lap like manna from the sky. The adventure continues.

Clinch mtn. Backstep/Rueben's train ..spreadin' a little musical love =)

Dang..My new inspiration

amazing diddler

Amazed

You heading by Tishomingo? I heard there’s a man in Tishomingo that pays folks money if’n sing into his can, I hear he pays extra if’n play real good.

WOOOoOoO GOOD JOB MACK!!!!