Julia Belle: The John Hartford Fiddle Tune Project Volume 2

John Hartford’s legacy, at the time of his death, would have been cemented in music history if he had written only “Gentle on My Mind,” but he made a huge mark playing fiddle and banjo, his tapping feet always moving. Hartford’s songwriting, singing, and playing, even his fascination with steamboats influenced scores of musicians and music lovers.       

After his death in 2001, however, his daughter Katie Harford Hogue discovered a treasure trove her father left behind. In an effort to master standard notation, Hartford had produced thousands of original fiddle tunes, captured in his calligraphic hand. Partnering with Matt Combs and Greg Reisch, Hogue collected 176 of these tunes into John Hartford’s Mammoth Collection of Fiddle Tunes. In the book, they incorporated narrative, photographs, and drawings, as well as these tunes, that gave a glimpse into his storied life.      

Fittingly, through this legacy, Hartford extended his impact to musicians, some unborn at the time of his death. To bring some of these tunes to life, bluegrass greats collaborated with Hogue and Combs to record The John Hartford Fiddle Tune Project with the promising subtitle, Volume 1. The project earned a Grammy nomination, and songs from the project, particularly “Tennessee Politics,” have found their way into jams.       

The next volume of the project Julia Belle: The John Hartford Fiddle Tune Project Volume 2 was released to great anticipation on February 28, 2025. For this second album, all the major participants are female. Hogue was joined by co-producers Megan Lynch Chowning and Sharon Gilchrist, who played on the album as well. As the press release noted, they assembled “a lineup of some of the most respected and accomplished musicians of their time—all of whom credit Hartford as an iconic influence in their musical lives.”       

Included with thirteen new tunes on the new album are five covers of some of Hartford’s well-known songs as well, including the title song “The Julia Belle Swain, an appropriate choice, since, as the lyrics note:

…the Julia Belle Swain is a women’s lib boat,

The first I ever knew

Got girls in the pilothouse and girls on deck

and a lady in the engine room

       Playing with Lynch Chowning on fiddle and Gilchrist on mandolin on the track are Rachel Bainman, Kristin Andreassen, and Vickie Vaughn, all sharing vocals.

The first single released in advance of the project was “Steam Powered Aereo Plane,” another of Hartford’s best-known songs. Alison Brown produced and played banjo on the track with Kathy Mattea on lead vocals, joined by Brittany Hass on fiddle, Sierra Hull on guitar, Megan Lovel (of Larkin Poe) on resonator guitar, and Missy Raines on bass.       

Brittany Haas and her sister Natalie Haas, both playing on multiple tracks on the project, gave a live preview one evening in Nashville last fall, the Hartford Fiddle Marathon, where they, and a host of bluegrass musicians, many of who appear on this album or the previous volume, played through all 176 songs in the Mammoth Collection.      

Hartford fans are aware that, along with his fiddle or banjo, he also used his own feet as rhythm instruments. To that end, on “Merry Christmas,” April Verch is credited for playing “feet and fiddle.”     

For each of the new tracks, with only Hartford’s fiddle notations to go on, the musicians involved gave the songs life. Members of Sister Sadie, Deanie Richardson, Rainy Miatke, Gena Britt, Mary Meyer, and Maddie Dalton, recorded the instrumental “Availability.” The video of the single, the second release preceding the album, showed their chord charts with the final note: “Jam as long as humanly possible.”      

The album credits for Julie Belle Swain read like a Who’s Who of Bluegrass Greats across generations; Laurie Lewis and Kathy Kallick play together on “Champagne Blues” with Suzy Thompson, Daisy Kerr, and Meredith Axelrod. Sisters Leanne Price and Lauren Price Napier play, as do Rayna Gellert, Abigail Washburn, and Allison de Groot. One perk to owning rather than streaming the album is access to the extensive list of bluegrass instrumental greats.      

One highlight of the project is “No End of Love,” performed by three generations—Katie Hogue, her daughter Natalie, and her mother Betty, for whom the song was written. The track serves as a reminder that bringing this music of Hartford to life will ensure that generations will continue to be steeped in his singular music.