Local musicians and educators Sean Hoffman and Ellen Coplin, known on the performance circuit as Bobcat Opossum, are on a full-time crusade to preserve and promote bluegrass traditions across the heartland.
Their multi genre, multi-instrumentalist passions have led them to accumulate a network of platforms from which to share the core communal elements of the music they love.
Meanwhile, Sean and Ellen are legendary for their continued work with The Goat's Beards, Debutants and Soltre as well as a monthly gig as J.K. O'Donnell's Trad night jam anchor band, the Hard Cases.
Here, WBOI’s Julia Meek discusses their mission and motivation with the couple, what fresh shapes these visions are taking and how this new, freelance lifestyle is suiting them.
Event Information:
Bobcat Opossum's Big (and little) Fiddle Fun @ Ambrosia Orchards, Hoagland, Indiana
Three-Day Kid's After School Music Camp
Wednesday-Friday, October 2-4
Grades 4-12
Find more information and register at the Bobcat Opossum Facebook Event page.
The music at the end of our conversation is Sean & Ellen's 12/31/23 Waltz, from their new album, Look What the Bobcat Dragged In.
Learn more and get connected at their Bobcat Opossum website.
Here's a transcript of our conversation:
Julia Meek: Sean Hoffman, Ellen Coplin, welcome.
Sean Hoffman: Hi.
Ellen Coplin: Hi.
Julia Meek: So, you two continue on your crusade to preserve and build momentum for bluegrass traditions. Why is that important?
Sean Hoffman: This is a style of music that's very near and dear to our hearts, and we just love to be able to share it with, you know the students that we come in contact with and that we teach.
It's not in the mainstream. It's a little bit outside the mainstream, but it's, I don't know. I think folk music in general, really crosses cultural boundaries. And so many different cultures have their own versions of things, you know.
And you can take an instrument like the violin and it can be very diverse in its approach and what you do with it.
Julia Meek: You are both multi genre, multi instrumentalists. What is it about bluegrass and strings that's so compelling? What hooked you?
Ellen Coplin: I got hooked on the social aspect first, because I've done different genres, but I hadn't experienced anything quite as compelling as sitting around in a circle, playing tunes and singing songs together.
That was what inspired me to dive into the genre and all of the music that's there, and there's an incredible amount of music in the Bluegrass genre, you know, like just generations of this. So, then I took a deep dive into the music and really fell in love with the music.
But I don't think I would have known to even do that until I sat down in a jam circle and was just blown away by that sense of community.
Julia Meek: And that's kind of the point of having that kind of music traditionally.
Ellen Coplin: Absolutely.
Sean Hoffman: Yeah, 100%.
Julia Meek: Okay. Then taking it into the school system, Sean, this has been your labor of love at Fairfield Elementary 10 years now, we've heard the fruits of your labor on the Meet the Music end of the radio station here.
So how is this arm of the mission ramping up for you there at Fairfield?
Sean Hoffman: So, this year, we got a grant from the Indiana Arts Commission to continue the fiddle club. So that's really exciting. In the past, you know, as a teacher, I was there at Fairfield and teaching full time. And so it was easy for me to just be a volunteer and volunteer my time.
Julia Meek: Which it was a labor of love for the first quite a few years that you worked there.
Sean Hoffman: Yeah, and I think I ended up a few years in getting a little bit of a stipend for that. You know, there was a very, very small stipend that the music teacher and I split for her after school club.
She was doing a rock band, and I was doing the fiddle club. And so it was, you know, still a labor of love, for sure.
Julia Meek: Of course, it was. And Ellen, you are sharing the music and teaching the music and loving it. What did you think of Sean's endeavors there in such quantity as well as quality?
Ellen Coplin: I was very impressed. I wanted to just volunteer right away. So I volunteered for, you know, the past two years.
As soon as I get there, after my own teaching job, drive over, and just the students were having so much fun together. And Sean, the way he teaches, is a very hands on, collaborative, everybody is just working together to figure things out.
And that informed my own teaching. I took some of the ideas I saw him using, and took him into my classroom and tried them out.
Sean Hoffman: What I was always so impressed with, with the students is that, you know, you just sort of treat them like they can do it and they can do it. (all chuckle)
You know, it's the old saying, if you think you can do it, you can. And that's what we're trying to, like, live into with this mission, a little bit like, Well, I think we can do that. (chuckles)
Julia Meek: And believing, everybody's believing in each other, obviously.
Sean Hoffman: Yeah, yeah, you believe in each other, you support each other, and you try and reach out and create as much community around the things you're trying to do.
Julia Meek: Great, especially if it's working for you. What might this mean for the future, more students and instruments and opportunities?
Sean Hoffman: Yeah, that's kind of what we're hoping. We're hoping to generate some more community involvement, I think, is the big thing.
With the grant that we got, they're very interested in how we kind of liaise with the community, so we're trying to do more of that, even just with sending out questionnaires and taking input from community members on what sort of songs, you know, it's always interesting what people--I'm interested in, what people think folk music is.
And, like, Hispanic culture has a very rich set of traditions around this stuff, as well as American music. And so it's hoping to expand the material that we're covering, and trying to teach just music from more places around the world.
Julia Meek: Cross cultural.
Sean Hoffman: Mmhhhmm. Exactly.
Julia Meek: And by the way, you have a wonderful batch of students. They're quite ethnically diverse. It's also one of the poorest, hard hit schools in the public school system here. So are you seeing some big changes by bringing that underserved population into the spotlight?
Sean Hoffman: Yeah, I think that was part of why I got the grant. Fairfield fits all those criteria of that kind of school and that kind of neighborhood.
But, I don't know, it's inspiring. The families from Fairfield are just wonderful. They're so hard working, and they are really getting through life in the best way they can, you know?
Yeah, I really love the families there, and then the amount of energy that they put into their students and family lives and just making it work.
Julia Meek: They do put the community. Into community spirit, it's really something. And those children are all really precious. Everyone you've brought in onto our stage, wonderful experience.
And now meanwhile, you have had a busy summer at Red Wing Music Festival and camps. This has been your sixth or seventh year there. Are you amplifying and adding to that as well?
Ellen Coplin: There are more students every year that want to attend that camp and show up to attend it, and they've expanded it.
Now it is little kids, six year olds, to high schoolers graduating from high school. So all ages.
Julia Meek: Remind us where that is, Ellen.
Ellen Coplin: That's in the Shenandoah Valley in Harrisonburg, Virginia.
Julia Meek: Well, quite a scenic wonder, beautiful place to have it. And what kind of a draw do you have there?
Ellen Coplin: How many students do we have this year? About 130?
Sean Hoffman: Yeah so that was 10 more from the previous year, I think. And the big change that I noticed this year was the number of cello students.
I mean, it went from like one small class of cello students to two classes. It was like an army of cellos. (laughs) and yeah, Ellen was being the cello teacher,
Julia Meek: The cellist's teacher this year! (chuckles)
Ellen Coplin: I was so thrilled. The cello can do so much. (chuckles)It's the big fiddle.
Julia Meek: That's a good way to look at it and the way you play it certainly proves that point as well. But what a wonderful feeling to know that there's so much more interest.
Also the diversity within the stringed instruments, because cellos often are staying right there on the classical concert stage, and you've got them right there, and a barn dance.
And that Festival and the whole camp that you go to is really getting a reputation throughout the Midwest and the South and the whole Heartland as a draw for that kind of music. How does that make you guys feel you've been in this for a while now?
Sean Hoffman: Yeah, it's really exciting. It is one of the coolest festivals that I get to go to, and that I've been consistently going to for a while now.
The Academy, the string camp part of it leads right into the festival, and the students perform at the festival with the host band of the festival, the Steel Wheels. So it's a performance opportunity like I haven't ever seen anywhere else, so.
Julia Meek: That's another wonderful part of this whole experience, yes. And now on the immediate horizon, then, within a day or two, you've got your Bobcat Opossum, Big and Little Fiddle Fun event coming up, and then you've got an adult thing going on. What can you tell us about those?
Sean Hoffman: These are a couple of ideas that we got started. The Big and Little Fiddle Fun, I'm sorry that's such a mouthful. We couldn't think of a shorter name.
But we wanted to include the big fiddle, the cello and the bass, you know, not just violins, in that. So that's the "big and little;" it's not an age designation, it's just the instruments.
So the Big and Little Fiddle Fun, that October, 2-3-4 one, is just for kids. It's a kids three-day camp. Day Camp. It's an after school kind of thing. It's 6 to 8pm on a Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.
We're going to have a performance on Friday. This is going to be out at Ambrosia Orchards, in Hoagland. They've been a willing partner and just very encouraging, giving us the space to use.
So that's exciting. Kelsi Cote is going to be performing on Friday night, and the students are going to be performing, I think Bobcat Opossum might have a couple of songs to sing too.
We're trying to make it into a fun, food-trucky music event kind of thing, and give the kids an opportunity to have a performance space that's not in a classroom somewhere.
Julia Meek: How exciting; that happens to be a lovely area of the county, and lovely venue. And then more fiddle fun?
Sean Hoffman: Right, we do have one scheduled for an adult class on October 13 called Fiddles in the Orchard, same venue.
And information for both the workshops is on our website, bobcattopossum.com, and there's a workshops tab that you can find all the registration links for that. Both of those registrations are still open.
We still have room available in the workshops, and it's just gonna be, we're just gonna have fun. The adult class is gonna be a little more, maybe unbuttoned, yeah, more laid back. (all chuckle)
Julia Meek: That's fantastic all the way around. And then in the spring, you have the Folky Fish Fest music camp.
Sean Hoffman: Yeah, yeah. So the folky fish Fest was originally started up in Angola by a friend of ours, and he's since moved to a to St Louis, and the festival didn't happen for quite a few years, 10 years, maybe.
Then there's a spot, some friends of ours down in Missouri were wanting to start a festival, and it sort of grew out of the weekend of the John Hartford Memorial festival that was happening at Bean Blossom, and has since moved venues, and it's not happening there anymore.
So the weekend was open, and a lot of those folks from Missouri were involved with the Hartford Fest, and so they kind of wanted to start their own event the same time. And so they've managed to maintain a connection with John Hartford's daughter and some of the Hartford Fiddle Project folks from Nashville, Tennessee that came out last year.
So last year was kind of the first year for Folky Fish Fest, again in its new location in Missouri. We had a great festival. Debutants went down and played and our friends, the Matchsellers, played down there. We are slated to do the third and final tiebreaker Bluegrass Death Match this year at that festival.
So, we're really excited about that. But, in addition, we were trying to start a music camp to go along with the festival, you know, not quite on the model of the Red Wing Academy, but it's, you know, it's inspired by that, you know.
And we're doing a lot of research and discussing with the folks down in Missouri about what needs to happen, and they've started a whole Scholarship Fund for high school and college age students.
And so part of this is we're gonna go down and do some outreach to promote the scholarship fund and to promote awareness of this Fiddle Camp that we're planning, so.
Julia Meek: Wonderful. Now I am curious, how much time are you able to set aside for making your own music when you're not teaching other people how to make theirs?
Ellen Coplin: Not enough. (all chuckle) But we squeeze it in wherever and whenever we can. You know, even if it's just while we drive down to the next location, we're learning new stuff and I'm practicing in the passenger seat.
Sean Hoffman: The concertina she's been playing the concertina, in the car.
Julia Meek: Concertina, that's right. You're branching out Oh, and that beats FM or AM radio. And you are actually going to be on a little bit of a tour?
Sean Hoffman: We are, yeah, we have about a week long tour down in Missouri that's independent of our outreach work that we're doing down there for the camp.
But yeah, we're gonna be going down through Nashville, Indiana. We're playing the Brown County Inn in November, and then onward out to St Louis for a night, and then Steelville, Missouri, Springfield, and then out to Kansas City.
So we have, we have a good little a good little run.
Julia Meek: Never a dull moment, and Ellen, we can't wait 'til you return, and you'll have a concertina concert, no doubt, with all your new tunes, that you've learned.
Ellen Coplin: The more road time I get, the better! (all laugh)
Julia Meek: Now you've both traded your jobs with the school systems we've been discussing for these varied and many freelance projects. I do wonder, how much getting used to is that taking?
Ellen Coplin: It's quite the change, because you don't just clock in and do your best and clock out. You're always thinking about, your life becomes, you know, part of your job and your life...they get all mixed up together.
Julia Meek: Mmhmm. Is it suiting you?
Ellen Coplin: I, I love it. I really find that I have the space to think about things that I didn't have before, and that's given me a new perspective, so I can look at things from new angles.
And, you know, you have more time to sit down and talk to people, and that's also really good. We're trying to sit down and play with music, with people.
Sean Hoffman: Yeah, it's weird, it's scary, it's all the stuff, you know? You're like, oh, I don't have a job now. I have to just make one, you know? (all chuckle)
And it, it is, it's a lot of work. You're always thinking about it. You're always on.
But, you know, it's what we love to do, and having Ellen on the team and building this thing together is very, you don't feel like you're doing it all yourself, and you're not, you know. And having a partner in that is invaluable.
Julia Meek: It's good for the whole world, too. And now, in full disclosure, part of your regular music-making includes leading the monthly Trad jams down at JK O'Donnell's.
And that's, that's a real crowd pleaser for audience and the musicians alike, all levels of musicianship as well. What does that situation do to further, well, all of your causes and desires and even to feed your own music addictions?
Sean Hoffman: Well, it certainly keeps me learning Irish tunes. (chuckles) We've, we've, you know, we did our fiddle tune-a-day last year for a good portion of the year. We didn't quite make it the whole year.
Julia Meek: And that was online there, and that was via social media platforms. You shared everything.
Sean Hoffman: Right. And those are still all on YouTube. You can go back and look at all of our fiddle tune-a-day projects. We got through 270 some, I think, days. So that was exciting.
So playing the session every month, you know, and hosting that gives me a reason to keep learning tunes. It keeps me connected to the music community here, and I really enjoy it.
Ellen Coplin: It reminds me why I love music so much. Because you sit down with people and you play together, and, you know, you can express yourself, but you also can learn about them that way.
And it's that social element of Trad music that is so compelling and fun.
Julia Meek: Also to note, you continue to post house parties for traveling musicians, and that's actually a pre-war custom, nearly forgotten, just recently revived.
Where does this fit in the big picture of roots revival and recovery for you two, do you think, or in the big picture for everybody?
Sean Hoffman: I think this is just one of those really important ways that a lot of traditional music gets shared. You know, it's doesn't always have a commercial outlet.
We were just talking to somebody yesterday, I think it was, about how their family played bluegrass and played the banjo, and it was just in the house, you know, in the home.
And I think traditionally, this is where a lot of that music happened, and it stayed, you know, until some of the Alan Lomaxes started going out and collecting it and pulling it into the public view a little bit more.
So just the idea of a house concert is very within the tradition, but it's also, hosting some of those is a way for us to support the rest of the music community in this, in this way where people are traveling through and they are looking for some kind of weeknight gig or whatever, and we can say, Oh yeah, we'll get together, and we'll find a place for you guys to come and play, and we'll collect a donation.
And it keeps musicians who are traveling with this as their livelihood, it keeps them fed and doing, and able to do what they love.
Ellen Coplin: And it's a great opportunity to be able to be up close and personal with someone who may otherwise be on the stage and you're in the audience, you know, suddenly you can, if you're performing, you can talk to your audience and share stories you wouldn't otherwise have a chance to share.
And if you're attending to watch a performer, you know, you're in the living room with them, and you get to meet them personally. This is really cool, both ways.
Julia Meek: Totally unique experience as well. And you're also protecting a very endangered species.
Sean Hoffman: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And kind of along that vein, we have a few, and JK O'Donnells has been a big supporter of these kind of concerts for traveling musicians.
It's not exactly a house party, but similar vein. And we're doing a few of those. Covid kind of shut us down. We had a whole concert series with you as the host that we had started, and we did a few of those, but we are doing a few more.
We're gonna do one in October with our friends, the Hammer and the Hatchet, from Bloomington, They're a full time husband and wife musician duo, fantastic people and great musicians, and so they're gonna join us for a concert on the ninth of October.
It's a Wednesday, I think. And then we have one planned for December and February, so it's like every other month.
Julia Meek: Great, so you really are bringing new things and new ways to share the old traditions to an obvious spot for it. Good for you, and good for Fort Wayne.
Sean Hoffman: Yeah, yeah!
Julia Meek: And the area. So medium to long term, what's next for Bobcat Opossums outreach and engagement programs, beyond what we're talking about? You have a busy winter and spring, it sounds like ahead.
Sean Hoffman: Yeah, we do. We're going to be trying to get back on the regular rotation of creating more music and keeping our, I think we decided maybe a fiddle tune every day was a lot to bite off.
So, we we're gonna hopefully start putting out like a fiddle tune a week, and that would be more of an instructional, you know, ties in with our mission to inspire and educate young string players with traditional music.
So, if we can do more of an instructional kind of video, I think that might be a project that we're starting to work on. And we have the Fairfield Fiddle Club coming up, and that will be running through the winter and spring into March.
Julia Meek: And that kind of culminates with the performance at the Fame Festival.
Sean Hoffman: Yeah we usually play at the Fame Festival. And, yeah, the arts project grant from the Indiana Arts Commission was really instrumental in allowing us to keep doing that now that we're not teaching in the school system. So that was really exciting.
Ellen Coplin: We're always looking for new ways to expand both performing and teaching and helping our students find performance opportunities.
So it's, it's exciting to have the time now to be able to talk to other community organizations about the potential of starting a fiddle club in that location. So we've got some things we're looking at to expand in the next year,
Julia Meek: And it sounds like there's really a market for it.
Ellen Coplin: I think there is. It ties in really well with all of the other excellent string programs in town and music education programs, because it is so complimentary to any genre.
You know, that's the ear training, the musicality, the culture of it. It really pairs well with almost anything you're pursuing musically.
Julia Meek: And the ethnic diversity in the school systems, or just in life that you've got a ready and crazy eager market for it.
Ellen Coplin: Yeah, it is the universal language. I really believe music is the universal language, and it can bridge divides that nothing else can.
Julia Meek: Amen.
Sean Hoffman: Yeah, absolutely.
Julia Meek: So, your dedication is exemplary, and your energy, obviously amazing. Bottom Line and last question, what does all of this, sometimes, maybe all the time, over activity, do for the two of you?
Sean Hoffman: Well, I love to be busy, first of all, and it makes me feel like I'm doing things with my life. So I just, I love this whole, all of it, you know, just being able to teach and play and share this music.
It's fun. I love to do it. So it's always a labor of love. You know, even if we manage to make a successful career of feeding ourselves, you know, we're not gonna get rich doing this. (chuckles)
So if you're not having fun, if you're not loving the music and what you're doing and interacting with people in that way, why bother? I hope we're doing it for the right reasons, and mostly that means for the love of it.
Julia Meek: Ellen?
Ellen Coplin: I'm certainly being challenged every day by something new, you know? And whether that's talking to a musician I've never met before, but that I get to play a gig with and talk to and learn from.
Or talking to a student that I've never met before, and seeing them try something new, and I think, oh, shoot, I should try something new myself. They were just brave enough to do it (all chuckle)
So. it can be tough and frustrating. And you never feel like you're doing enough, you know, it's, you always have ideas about what you could do better, what you want to do differently.
So you lay awake at night thinking about, well, what if I did this instead? You know? (chuckles) And so there's, there's so many ways to, to pursue music once you open up all the doors, Oh, boy!
So, like we just opened up all these doors, and we get to see all these different paths. And it's exciting, but it's it's overwhelming too.
Sean Hoffman: Mmhhmm.
Julia Meek: Sean Hoffman and Ellen Coplin are roots music musicians and educators here in northeast Indiana. Thank you so much for the music you share and the story you have told. Good luck on your journey. Carry the gift.
Ellen Coplin: Thank you.
Sean Hoffman: Thank you for having us so much.
