Bruce Molsky was born and raised in the Bronx, but you wouldn’t guess that if you heard his music. The 57-year-old artist is one of the leading Appalachian fiddlers and singers, certainly the best-known internationally.

Like his peers in New York City, Molsky spent his early teens listening to blues, R & B, and ’60s pop. Then he heard the high lonesome sound from the mountains and valleys, and he was gone.

“I fell head over heels not just for the music but for a kind of romantic notion of a culture I didn’t know anything about,” Molsky recalls, reached at his hometown of Beacon, 100 kilometres north of New York City. “I don’t have any personal connections with southern roots—I’m a second-generation American.”

Molsky moved to Virginia in the early ’70s, and marinated himself in the music and the lives of the last of the old-time traditional players. “I’m one of those people called a revivalist, and fair enough, because I didn’t grow up with this stuff, I came to it from outside. In the ’70s there was a whole bunch of people my age going to conventions and festivals and playing this stuff, and it became just as important a part of our lives and our interactions as it had been for the traditional musicians. It continues to do that—even for the young people I teach. They get together at big parties and play—it’s the same.”

In the years when Molsky was, in his own words, “trying to be a mountain man”, his interest in other music traditions wasn’t active—though it grew through meetings at festivals in particular. His decision at the age of 40 to turn professional was in large part due to encouragement from Celtic fiddlers Alasdair Fraser and Kevin Burke. Molsky’s interests have reached beyond the English-speaking world, too. The day before the interview, he returned from a Scandinavian tour with viola player Mikael Marin from premier Swedish folk group Väsen, and Norwegian Hardanger-fiddle virtuoso Anon Egeland. He’s already part of another trio—with Swedish multi-instrumentalist Ale Möller and Shetland fiddler Aly Bain.

On Molsky’s latest album, If It Ain’t Here When I Get Back, he’s the only musician, playing fiddle, banjo, and guitar. Though all the songs and tunes are traditional, it’s very much a self-portrait.

“The music is by and large American old-time, but there’s a few other things. I meant it to be a project that’s up close and personal in how it’s recorded and sounds. I want the listener to be in a room with me and not in a concert hall, and I went to a lot of effort and expense to get a really great studio. I’m thrilled with the audio quality. The whole focus ended up being not only people I learned much from but people who’d been in my musical life—so there’s a certain amount of optimistic nostalgia,” says Molsky with a quiet laugh.