photo by: Mike Yoder

Professional violinist Laurel Parks, standing, instructs a beginners class for adults called "Drunken Fiddles" in January at Restaurant, Pub & Games, 724 Massachusetts St. Parks offers group classes in Lawrence and Kansas City for adults in beginning and intermediate fiddle.

Like a lot of violinists, Laurel Parks started playing the violin at a very young age.

She was just 4 when her dad, who was taking a music class at a community center, brought home a fiddle. Something about the shiny wooden thing “spoke to my little tiny heart,” she says.

After she grew up and became an accomplished musician, she realized that the instrument also spoke to bigger, older hearts. Problem was, many of these folks believed that learning an instrument later in life was just too daunting — they’d never get it.

That’s when Parks got the idea to start a violin class for adults — no experience required. She called it Drunken Fiddles — not because there’s any alcohol involved (although there can be), but because the mood of the class is jovial and uninhibited — a vibe that Parks found to be conducive to building confidence and imbibing, as it were, musical know-how.

Parks started the class in 2015 when she was giving private lessons to kids, while also composing for and playing in a string duo called The Wires.

photo by: Mike Yoder

Fiddle student Gretchyn Nothhouse, of Lawrence, plays along with 15 other fiddle students in a “Drunken Fiddles” beginners class in January at Restaurant, Pub & Games, 724 Massachusetts St.

“I was teaching a lot of private students at the time that were in middle school and high school, and their parents were — I could see it — really interested in playing, so I started a class,” she says. “But I wanted to keep the vibe really relaxed because adults come in with more psychological hangups than kids.”

But while adults can lack confidence, they also tend to be more attentive, she says, noting that there can be a kind of “forced feeling” with young pupils, who aren’t always taking lessons because they want to.

The adult classes proved a hit, and now Parks, of Kansas City, Missouri, offers them several times a year in both Kansas City and Lawrence.

Some students, like Chris Johnston, of Ottawa, attend in both places to maximize the learning experience.

Johnston, 63, didn’t know much about the violin when he started. His wife saw a Facebook post advertising Parks’ class and told him to sign up. It would be a good opportunity to make use of his late grandmother’s violin, which had just been collecting dust for decades.

“It was in terrible condition,” he said of the instrument his grandmother had taken lessons on in high school. He had it refurbished after she died, but then it sat in the case “untouched for almost 30 years until we saw the Facebook ad.”

Johnston dug out the violin, had it restrung and headed off to Drunken Fiddles, not knowing what to expect exactly.

“I found that first class to be much easier than I thought it would be,” he says, which is the reaction Parks is going for — and one that, happily, she hears often.

The class “has a way of putting people at ease and breaking it down into small pieces so that you can get your head around it,” Johnston says.

photo by: Contributed

Chris Johnston poses with his violin — handed down from his late grandma — at a Drunken Fiddles class in Kansas City. Johnston started taking the classes before the coronavirus pandemic hit and hopes to eventually learn enough to jam with a band. Although he likes Celtic music, his kilt is actually an unrelated part of his uniform at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, where he works.

Some of Parks’ favorite students are those with no musical experience at all. Fiddle music is “traditionally passed down by ear,” so the inability to read music is not a barrier to learning.

“Some of them just have a burning passion,” even with no training, and their delight in playing a simple tune like “Boil ’em Cabbage Down” after just one class is touching, Parks says.

No one is expecting to leave the class an Itzhak Perlman or a Hilary Hahn. The point isn’t mastery, but just to be musical and have fun, which is within anyone’s reach.

“Perfection is not the goal,” Parks says, “especially in folk music,” though she’s quick to point out that the class explores many kinds of violin music, such as Celtic, Nordic, Cajun and Klezmer, which originated with the Jews of Central and Eastern Europe.

For Johnston, that world tour of the violin — an instrument that originated about 500 years ago in Italy and spread across the globe — has been part of the fun.

“I love old-time and bluegrass, but Laurel is winning me over to Celtic,” he says.

Before he thought of genres, though, he thought of simple sounds.

His initial goal in taking the class was simply “to make a pretty tone instead of a screeching.”

That goal met, he’s now progressing toward his ultimate goal, which “is to be able to go to jam sessions and kind of hold my own.”

“We have a band at the Nelson, where I work,” he says, referring to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri. “And, I don’t know if I’m ever going to get quite good enough to play the fiddle with them, but I’d like to try once or twice.”

Parks wouldn’t be surprised if that happened, given Johnston’s devotion to the music and what she has observed in other students.

“I really encourage people to try to practice every day” after they learn the basics, she says, “because that’s the key. The idea that adults can’t learn an instrument or sound good or have fun doing it or make progress is just a limiting belief. I’ve seen several of my students go on to become very serious.”

Beginning Drunken Fiddles costs around $150 for a four-week class, which is offered multiple times a year. If students don’t own a violin, they can rent one. For more information, see www.fiddlelife.com/drunken-fiddles.