Amand Savoie
Kith Folk
Amand Savoie was born in St. Wilfred on June 18th, 1933. He and his brother Simon, as well as his father were musicians and lumberjacks. Amand started playing fiddle when he was 12 years old and quickly took to playing for parties and competitions. When not busy fiddling, Amand worked as a heavy equipment operator, a mechanic, and a welder. He won more than 50 trophies during his lifetime and made an LP called "A New Brunswick Lumberjack", Musk Mel-85-1-1985, recorded at Musk Sound Studios, Bathurst N.B. March 1985.
Amand's brother Simon tells a great story that really shows what life was like for these early Acadian fiddlers: " My father, Germaine, was a foreman at a logging camp with a crew of 15 to 20 men. Father would work all week in the woods and come out on Saturday. He had two teams of horses the he used in the woods operation. When I was 11 or 12 years old, I decided that I wanted to play the fiddle. I went into my father's bedroom, and locked the door. It would really bother my mother because she could not get in but she could hear what I was up to. After two weeks of this my mother looked at the bow and there were only four or five horsehairs left on it. My mother said, "Your father's going to kill you when he comes home on Saturday". I decided I had better make another bow. I went to the barn with a pair of scissors and cut some horsehair as big as my little finger. I made a knot at the end and then I took some rabbit wire and I tied that up. I did the same thing at the other end. I tied it really tight and it looked like an Indian's bow. The horsehair was black and since I didn't have any rosin I took my father's snowshoes and went into the woods and got a piece of spruce wood gum as big as an egg. I rubbed that on the horsehair. My mother looked at it and said "Your father will not be happy". My father came home on Saturday, ate supper, showered, and shaved. The suspense grew. Finally he headed for his bedroom and took his violin out of the pillowcase. My father was a man that very seldom laughed but we heard a booming laugh coming from the bedroom. He came out of the bedroom and still laughing, pointed his finger at me and said, "You, my son, will never be stuck in life". Today, anyone that knows me will tell you the exact same thing."
