This KGNU interview features California-based mandolinist, composer, and teacher Marla Fibish, who shares stories about discovering Irish music, playing her grandfather’s Gibson mandolin, and creating her new album Play Date with Rebecca Richman during the pandemic. She discusses her creative process, including how tunes often emerge quickly and organically, and the playful way beats were added and lost in her compositions Spring Forward and Fallback. Fibish also talks about teaching pulse and jig-picking techniques, her work at music camps, and her unique tuning approaches. The conversation is interspersed with selections from her recordings, highlighting her artistry, humor, and dedication to Irish music. (Studio Session: 9/10/25)
Annie Sirotniak: [00:00:00] All the way from California. Marla, welcome.
Marla Fibish: Thank you, Annie.
Annie Sirotniak: How are you doing today?
Marla Fibish: I’m good. I’ve been up since five, but I gained an hour, so we’re good.
Annie Sirotniak: Excellent. Well, first of all, thank you for changing your flight to come here today.
Marla Fibish: So sweet to invite me.
Annie Sirotniak: Absolutely. Well, if you didn’t listen at the top of the set, I wanna just share a couple notes about Marla as you’re listening. She is one of the premier mandolin players in Irish music today. I would say she’s somewhat a pioneer in the music, and she’s a composer. She is a multi-instrumentalist, a singer.
I’m a huge fan just getting ready for this.
Marla Fibish: Turning red. All right.
Annie Sirotniak: And Marla is also a teacher for Peghead Nation and Swannanoa Gathering and lots of other music camps around the country and around the world. So thanks for being here. Marla, I got a question for you.
You have this beautiful mandolin with you. Could you tell us what inspired you to pick up the instrument of the [00:01:00] mandolin?
Marla Fibish: It’s a bit of a longer story than you probably have time for right now, but in short, I got exposed to Irish music when I was in college. I had a roommate who had just brought some albums back; she’d just been on a trip to Ireland and she brought back Planxty and Andy Irvine and Paul Brady.
Both of those groups featured the mandolin in Irish music. I had no idea at the time that that was novel—that that was not widespread throughout the music. I was hearing something new and different, and I was like, “I wanna do that.” And there’s a mandolin in my family.
So I did. And this mandolin that I still play today is the one that my grandfather played.
Annie Sirotniak: Wow. That must be so special. Do you know where it was made?
Marla Fibish: Oh yeah, it was made in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
Annie Sirotniak: No.
Marla Fibish: A Gibson.
Annie Sirotniak: Oh, right, of course. What am I thinking? Okay, wonderful.
Marla Fibish: Yeah, they’re no longer made in Kalamazoo, but I think that’s unfortunate because what a great place name.
Annie Sirotniak: Yeah.
Marla Fibish: Fantastic.
Annie Sirotniak: Well, we have a bunch of your music that I would like [00:02:00] to feature tonight. I wanna share some of your older songs and a couple older tunes, and then we’re gonna move into your new record.
Great. I’d like to treat our audience now to a classic song, Heather on the Moor. And Marla played it with Aaron Schrader and Richard Mandel with their band Three Mile Stone about 15 years ago, but it sounds as fresh as ever right here in our studio. So let’s hear that now.
A church to roll some miles from home among the beautiful.
I out of a bright name,
chance the beautiful bloom, the over [00:03:00]
thero, the beautiful,
along with my. Ing song in my heart, feather I’m to her. When she was tripping the down from the over the heather, over the—
Where are you going? To Overdale? Come tell me why. Quite modestly, she answered me.
We shook hands down. We sat for it being the finest day. In summer, we sat to the Red City beam and the sun came sparkling down.
And I King, night maker, queen, the last time met among the head on the moor, over the heather, over the—among the Heather. And King, night maker, Queen, the [00:04:00] last time man among the head tether on the moor, over the heather, over the. [00:05:00] [00:06:00] [00:07:00]
You are listening to KGNU here in Boulder, [00:08:00] Colorado. Live in the studio. We have a special guest, and we just featured a mini set of two of her songs. The tunes again: the first was Heather on the Moor with her band, Three Mile Stone. That came out in 2010. Then we heard—if I could pronounce it correctly—Veioisín.
Correctly—and The Hunter’s Purse. And that was from Marla Fibish and Steve Baughman’s The Bright Hollow Fog record that came out in 2020. Canadian—would guess what that instrument he was playing was. It’s a banjo of some sort, right? In our listening audience—that was a fretless gourd banjo that accompanied Marla Fibish’s mandolin playing.
We are so excited to have Marla here. So Marla, you’ve got a brand-new album coming out now, Play Date?
Marla Fibish: Yes.
Annie Sirotniak: Could you tell us how this came to be, this album?
Marla Fibish: I sure will. Yeah. So my dear friend Rebecca Richman, during the [00:09:00] pandemic—it’s hard to remember now how we couldn’t play any music together with our friends. But she lived about 45 minutes away from me, and we got into the routine of traveling to each other’s homes to play in each other’s gardens, between COVID exposures and everything else.
We came to think of those very special times as a play date. So we would text each other: “Can we do a play date?” You know? And during that time, I was writing a lot of tunes, because, you know—the pandemic. And she was interested in the tunes that I was writing. And that was a whole new experience for me. I can’t say that nobody’s ever been interested in them, but not in the way that somebody was really eager to learn them and develop them.
And anyway, it just started gaining momentum, and the album that resulted from this time wound up being about half of my tunes that I’d written, which was very—I felt very exposed in doing it. But also I felt so supported by Rebecca in particular and all the lovely people that also contributed stuff to the album as well. It was a really exciting time.
Annie Sirotniak: So you made something out of such a challenging time for so many, and out of it came beautiful music, opening of the heart, just the creative process.
Marla Fibish: I think there was a lot of that happening.
Annie Sirotniak: Yeah.
Well, I would like to treat our listening audience to one of the songs from that recording. Cool. So this tune that you’re gonna hear is Spring Forward. And so let’s hear [00:11:00] [00:12:00] [00:13:00] [00:14:00] it.
That was Spring Forward. I think that’s my new favorite song.
Marla Fibish: Glad you like it.
Annie Sirotniak: Oh wow. So beautiful. So Marla, I have a question about your creative process. You mentioned during the pandemic you had a lot of creativity coming out and a lot of heart, a lot of things happening.
As a composer, how does it work for you?
Marla Fibish: You said you were gonna ask me easy questions.
Annie Sirotniak: What comes to the top of your mind?
Marla Fibish: The thing that I always keep coming back to is that when things come quickly or come easily, it’s usually the best stuff. Right. And then you can spin yourself into knots trying to put more in it, or a clever second part or something. Yeah. But the part that came [00:15:00] whole is usually the best. Learning to capture them when they happen, making the space for that to happen. Trying to find quiet, private time to let yourself do that kind of experimentation and just play a phrase and see what happens.
And it doesn’t always happen for me. At least I can’t sit down and have a disciplined process that’s always gonna produce a good result.
Annie Sirotniak: Of course. It’s just not gonna happen. It’s not like a factory, you know? Like turn on creation, turn off, you are done. Right. You’re right. Do you ever—do you like carry a phone and do a voice memo of a phrase? Or do you noodle and then record it?
Marla Fibish: I just turn on—if I pick up an instrument and something feels like it’s coming, I turn on the voice recorder and then I listen back, record stuff, just see what’s there.
Annie Sirotniak: I’m so curious about that.
Marla Fibish: Yeah.
Annie Sirotniak: Do any other sources—thinking about it, hearing it in your head, does poetry or art or nature evoke musicality in you as well?
Marla Fibish: Yes. Poetry, very [00:16:00] much so. There’s a whole body of work that we’re not—that what you’ve selected to play today isn’t covering, which is, I have set a lot of poetry to music with my husband Bruce Victor under the name Noctambule. And we’ve got four albums out of mostly poetry set to music. Poetry will suggest melodic lines to me.
And then tunes that exist already—sometimes you can find a little snippet in your head and realize, that’s a well-known jig. I have it in a different meter in my head. Yeah. That phrase has become a waltz and that could become a phrase.
Annie Sirotniak: I think I heard that when I was listening to We’re Not Playing the One and Only Tonight. There was a phrase in that that reminded me of another song.
I didn’t know what key it was, but I’m like, “Uh-huh.” And of course it diverged from that second part of the phrase, and it was so beautiful to hear that.
Marla Fibish: Now, that’s not my composition—that’s the composition of a lovely fiddler who lives in Santa Cruz, California named Laurie Rivin.
Annie Sirotniak: Oh, very nice.
Marla Fibish: Yeah.
Annie Sirotniak: Okay, gotta check my liner notes.
Marla Fibish: Yeah.
Annie Sirotniak: Well, [00:17:00] I love—and it’s so interesting hearing your creative process. And I would like to feature another song from your new record called We Sprang Forward, right? And so we’re gonna fall back now.
Excellent. So I’d like to play that song. So from Play Date—Marla Fibish and Rebecca Richman—Fallback.
Annie Sirotniak: Another—ah, that was Fallback. [00:22:00] So we heard Spring Forward and Fallback, and the careful listener may have heard something about the beats, the meters in those tunes. Marla, would you explain what happened in Spring Forward in the B part?
Marla Fibish: So, in the B part of Spring Forward, this actually was intentional. I was trying to play with the idea of skipping forward—skipping a beat.
Annie Sirotniak: You’re springing forward.
Marla Fibish: Exactly. I was like, oh, I’m getting cerebral, but whatever. Whereas the A part is all very straight: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6; 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. In the B part it goes: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5; 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. You know—so it goes into five for some random measures and then skips forward.
But what I hadn’t realized—it was not part of my conscious process on Fallback—was to add a few beats back in. So there’s an extra measure in Fallback, and I did not realize it until we were playing a house concert and our host, making a joke, said: “Those beats we lost in [00:23:00] Spring Forward—are we gonna get them back in Fallback?” Rebecca and I looked at each other and went, “As a matter of fact, you will.” And we hadn’t realized it until that moment.
Annie Sirotniak: Where are the beats in that second?
Marla Fibish: It’s at the very end actually. It’s like, at the turnaround, going at the end back into the tune. Going back to the A part, you gotta have an extra measure of B part.
Annie Sirotniak: There’s that creative process.
Marla Fibish: So you have to wait six months to get that hour back, right? Of course, you don’t have to wait as long to get the beat back—so there you go.
Annie Sirotniak: Wow. Well, Marla, I love the tone that you get out of your mandolin.
Marla Fibish: Oh, thank you.
Annie Sirotniak: And I do understand that you’re a teacher as well. How do you encourage mandolin players to kind of feel the pulse of the music and translate it to the mandolin?
Marla Fibish: That’s where we start. That’s absolutely where I start. We are not just feeling the pulse—we’re making pulse. So, and that’s all in the picking hand. There’s that adage that they say for fiddle: “It’s all in the bow.” And for mandolin, it’s all in the picking. [00:24:00] People sort of laugh that off, but it actually is.
It’s not the natural inclination of most people when they pick up an instrument. They’re all focused on their fingering and they’re staring at their fingering hand. I’m going, “No, we’re not even gonna do any of that at first. We’re gonna make pulse.”
Annie Sirotniak: Make pulse.
Marla Fibish: Yeah.
Annie Sirotniak: And then tell me about how the jig picking pattern fits into this. How do you get there? What do you recommend?
Marla Fibish: The subject of much arguing on the internet, yes. So, I am an advocate for the down-up-down, down-up-down jig picking. Because downstrokes quite naturally are louder than your upstrokes. So if you place your downstrokes on the two stressed beats within the jig meter, then you’ve got a better chance of making the pulse that you’re after than if your picking does not—if your ups and downs do not align with the accented beats.
The accented beats in a jig are 1, 2, 3; 2, 2, 3. So it’s not just the first one—it’s the first and the third. Da—right? So having both of those on your downstrokes is a really good way to start to make that pulse. As far as getting there, it’s a process where you build the skill until it becomes invisible to you—until your body does it without you having to think about it.
I use a whole series of exercises to build that.
Annie Sirotniak: How can people learn those exercises?
Marla Fibish: You gotta contact me.
Annie Sirotniak: So where—yeah, I know a guy. Do you have a website? Do you teach?
Marla Fibish: I do, yeah. I teach mostly online, but I also teach outta my home in California. I’m in the Bay Area. I also teach over Zoom—both individual work and classes. And my website’s marlafibish.com. F-I-B-I-S-H is how that’s spelled. There’s not a lot of people with my name, fortunately for me. It should be pretty easy to find my website. That tells you how to get in touch with me.
Annie Sirotniak: That’s excellent.
Marla Fibish: Schedule set.
Annie Sirotniak: So one more mandolin question—and also coming to camps.
Marla Fibish: Oh yes, camps. Next week I’ll be at Portal Irish Music Week. Now, that is [00:26:00] full up at the moment. But there’s another camp coming up in New Mexico at the end of October—Halloween weekend actually—called Southwest Mandolin Camp.
All mandolin. Multiple styles, multiple genres, all mandolin-family instruments, and it’s a great camp.
Annie Sirotniak: People—come join us.
Marla Fibish: It’s fun.
Annie Sirotniak: That’s exciting. And we can find that on your website as well?
Marla Fibish: Absolutely.
Annie Sirotniak: Okay. Well, great. I have one more mandolin geek question. How do you tune your mandolin? Do you keep it in GDAE?
Marla Fibish: I do, I do.
Annie Sirotniak: Okay. And how about your mandola?
Marla Fibish: I do not. Ah, the plot thickens. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I keep my mandola in DGDA.
Annie Sirotniak: Oh, cool.
Marla Fibish: Yeah. So standard—for the uninitiated—is CGDA, which is simply a fifth down from the mandolin. Same intervals, but I just tune my low C up to a D. That gives me a double D drone, sort of like DADGAD for the mandola.
Annie Sirotniak: Oh, I love DADGAD.
Marla Fibish: Yeah. So it’s a droney, open tuning so I don’t have to use a lot of fingers when I’m trying to also sing at the [00:27:00] same time.
Annie Sirotniak: That makes a lot of sense. Thank you for answering these technical and fun, creative questions. I’d love to play one more track from your new recording. We talked about jigs earlier—we heard beautiful Spring Forward. Now we’re gonna hit some polkas. What do you think?
Marla Fibish: There’s always time for polkas.
Annie Sirotniak: All right. Support comes from Creative Music Works, presenting an evening of guitar mastery and exploration featuring Fred Frith and Janet Feder on Tuesday, September 16th at the Bug Theater in Denver. Doors open at 7:00 PM. Tickets available at creativemusicworks.org.
You’re here in the studio at KGNU with Marla Fibish. She joined us for a wonderful interview. We just wanna thank you once again, Marla, for changing your flight, for coming here.
Marla Fibish: My absolute pleasure.
Annie Sirotniak: We wish you the best on your tour.
Marla Fibish: Thank you.
Annie Sirotniak: I understand tomorrow’s show in Lyons is sold out.
Marla Fibish: It is.
Annie Sirotniak: Okay. And how about Fort Collins?
Marla Fibish: There’s a couple of seats available for Fort Collins.
Annie Sirotniak: Perfect. And then Colorado Springs—there should still be seats, right?
Marla Fibish: I think it might be full.
Annie Sirotniak: Okay. So go to marlafibish.com—M-A-R-L-A-F-I-B-I-S-H dot com—for more. Thanks so much, Marla, for joining us.
Marla Fibish: You betcha. Thank you, friend.
Annie Sirotniak: Wish you the very best. So it is time for a ticket giveaway. We have tickets—we’re gonna do an email giveaway—for Kingfisher today.
