Simply the best fiddler around

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Last weekend, a South Dakota musician added to an already record list of accomplishments.
Todd Goehring, 49, lives in Aberdeen with his wife Shelly, where he moonlights as an accountant. This past weekend, he added his 26th and 27th state titles at the S.D. Old Time Fiddler’s Jamboree in Yankton.
Goehring won his titles in the Adult and Open divisions this year, but his first title came in a division that may have been created for him.
“I was competing in the Junior Division that year,” Goehring said via telephone from his home in Aberdeen this week. “It was just I and another boy named Royce Merritt, who was from Wessington. I think he probably beat me, but there were only two of us, so I kinda think they created a Junior-Junior Division so that I wouldn’t feel bad.”
Goehring, who grew up in Hitchcock, said that he and Merritt competed for years after that, but it was a friendly competition.
He said he began playing in 1974 or 75, when he was five or six years old.
“My older sister had started taking piano lessons and I thought that I would like to do something as well,” he said. “So I picked the violin.” Goehring said he began taking some lessons in Huron and then his father, and a future band mate, got him involved.
“My dad was friends with Denny Mahowald,” Goehring recalled, “and Denny told dad that I should enter a fiddle competition in St. Cloud, Minn. So we went to Minnesota.”
It was at that competition that Goehring met a man named Wilbur Foss.

“Wilbur talked to me and told me that there was a group called the South Dakota Old Time Fiddlers and that they held  a competition each fall. He said I should come down. So I did.”
1975 was his first year of competition and he came home with his Junior-Junior title. Since then, there have only been a couple years that he has not made the trip to the jamboree. Which leaves him in a class by himself, at least as far as titles are concerned.
“Oh, I would guess that there are some who have close to 20 titles,” Goehring said, “but they are mostly gone now. I have only missed a couple years, and while I certainly didn’t win every year I went, I have been at it a long time. I stayed with it.”
Goehring continues to stay with it, playing fiddle in the James River Bluegrass Band with Mahowald, who plays banjo,  guitarist Steve Besch and bass player Mark Rounds. He said that he does some solo work and has played with most any band who needs a fiddle player, if schedules allow.
“Oh sure,” he said, “I still really enjoy playing. I will always go back to Yankton. Living in the Huron area and now in Aberdeen, I don’t get down to that area very often, so it’s kind of like a reunion when I do get back there. There are fewer of us all the time though.”
Goehring is a 27-time state champion, but he is a fan of fiddler Mark O’Connor. “He’s as good as it gets,” he said. “He’s the one fiddler who I can watch and I can see what he is doing, but cannot figure out how he does it.” Goehring said that he can figure out how most people do things, but O’Connor is head and shoulders above the others.
“He started at about the same age as I did, and he’s probably a bit older. But he is a consistent winner at the national level in Idaho.” Goehring said that he himself competed at nationals about 10 years ago.
“I was in the adult division and I was about 15th out of probably 40 fiddle players,” he said. “I was happy with how I did. It was a great experience. There are some very talented people there.”
Goehring said that O’Connor played a concert in Brookings and was in Aberdeen to perform. “While he was here he worked with the violin students at the school.
A fiddle player talking to violin students?
“There really isn’t any difference in playing the fiddle and the violin,” Goehring chuckled. “It’s all the type of music that you play on the instrument. I played for many years with the Huron Symphony when I was in the Huron area.”
For competition, Goehring said he was required to play a variety of music this year.
“In one of the divisions I had to play a waltz, and then anything but a waltz. In the other division, they require a waltz, what they call a hoe-down, and then something else.”
Until Yankton calls again, with the possibility of adding to the Goehring trophy case, he said that he will continue to play with the bluegrass group. On the schedule for this fall is another appearance at the annual “Pickin’ and Pluckin,” fundraiser and the group will also perform on the Salvation Army Christmas Basket program in late November.

Photo courtesy of the S.D. Old Fiddlers
Todd Goehring, left, plays in the Adult portion at the S.D. Old Time Fiddlers Festival in Yankton last weekend. Goehring won his 26th and 27th state title during the festival.