Meeting Fiddlin' John Ace
#616/ Video Extra!
When Floodster Emeritus Dave "Bub" Ball traveled up from Florida and had a reunion with his old band mates, he brought with him a remarkable fiddler named John Ace, who left some beautiful memories in the band room.
At last night's rehearsal, band manager Pamela Bowen shot the video above to highlight a few tunes featuring Johnny's sweet fiddling.
Cap’n John
Bub met John one winter day in Florida after the 76-year-old fiddler sailed in from his Alexandria, Va., home.
And, yes, sailed.
Since 2005, John Ace has lived full-time aboard a sailboat, his 36-foot figerglass Cabo Rico yacht named “Four Aces,” traveling wherever he wishes, from the chilly waters of the Chesapeake Bay to the warm waters off the Bahamas, Jamaica, the Cayman Islands, Honduras, Guatemala, Belize and Mexico.
When in South Florida near Dave and Yvonne Ball’s home in Jupiter, John could often be found busking on the streets of West Palm Beach, “a snowbird-on-water,” as award-winning journalist Joe Capozzi called him in a feature story he wrote in 2022, “arriving every fall.”
“Aside from giving him plenty of pocket money for the week,” Capozzi wrote in ByJoeCapozzi.com, “the Saturday morning gigs help keep his chops up for his regular summer job in Virginia with The King Street Bluegrass Band,” which lists Ace on its roster as “Cap’n John.”
West Virginia Roots
Born in Manhattan and reared in Pennsylvania, John played trumpet and guitar in high school. In the 1960s, he got the urge to learn fiddle, but life got in the way. From 1968 to ’71, he served in the Navy, stationed near Da Nang, working up and down Vietnam’s Mekong Delta.
In the mid-1970s after his discharge, Ace took a job as caretaker on a farm in West Virginia, “the center of mountain music,’’ he told Capozzi, and, wanting to learn, sought out fiddlers for jam sessions.
“A lot of them got together on Saturdays … porch picking.” A year later, a neighbor whose mom had just passed away gave Ace a fiddle that had been stored in her attic.
“I bought a bow and I spent the winter teaching myself to play fiddle,’’ he said. “I was fortunate that I lived alone on a farm way back in the hills seven miles down a dirt road. Because I lived alone, I could practice all day long, and there’s nothing worse than listening to somebody learn to play the fiddle.”
John Today
As you hear in the above video, all that woodshedding certainly paid off. John has been a professional musician for nearly 50 years now, touring with major bands, both country and bluegrass, and spending summers back home in Alexandria, gigging with the King Street guys.
Last month, he came to the Mountain State to help out Bub on gigs at last weekend’s West Virginia Renaissance Fair in Lewisburg. During a stay in Huntington he jammed twice with The Flood and will be guesting on several upcoming editions of the weekly podcast.
Meanwhile, another change is coming. After more than 20 years of living on the water, John says he is selling the “Four Aces” and moving to New Hampshire to be near his daughter.
We hope he stays in touch. Whenever he rambles back this way, he has a seat waiting for him at The Flood’s table.