Old Shoe 

Acadian music and old time standards

Featuring Leo LeBlanc, eighty year old fiddler

Leo LeBlanc grew up in Shediac , New Brunswick . He's been playing guitar since age seven. When he was nine or ten, he remembers, fiddlers would take him to "kitchen dances" where he'd provide chord accompaniment in the style that he still plays today, seventy years later. Leo's been playing fiddle since he was twenty. He learned the rudiments from his father who learned them from his father.  Leo's father-in-law was also a fiddler. "That's how I met my wife Janet," he says.

Leo has come in first in at least ten fiddle contests and placed in many others. He feels that he plays better than ever because, as he puts it, "I listen and learn.  I'm always learning."

For the past 58 years, Leo has lived and played music in and around Fitchburg , Massachusetts . He plays in the French Canadian style of Don Messer, Ivan Hicks and Ned Landry. This style evolved from the Scot-Irish tradition going back over 200 years, from before the time the French were expelled from Acadia and deported to Louisiana .

Some stayed in hiding and from there we have the fiddling style of New Brunswick and the other Canadian provinces. Leo's sound and style are, however, uniquely his own; a blend of half a century's influence from bluegrass to Texas Swing to jazz. He's a treasure and a pleasure to hear.

Old Shoe:

Leo LeBlanc          fiddle 

Den Poitras            street bass and spoons  

Paul Luria               guitar banjo, harmonica, vocals and percussion.

Joys of Quebec