Chadwell’s Station

Chadwell’s Station is a traditional Old Time reel in G major from southwestern Virginia, preserved in the A. Porter Hamblen manuscript collection and headed there as a Virginia violin melody played by David Russell Hamblen in the 1840s. Hamblen (1809–1893) was a fiddler from the Cumberland Gap area of Lee County, Virginia. His grandson Armeanous Porter Hamblen transcribed the family repertoire in the early twentieth century. The title refers to a small village on Highway 58, near Lee County. The village was established around 1778 by Captain David Chadwell. This crooked tune has a short A part (five bars) against a much longer B part. Modern recordings include Christian Wig’s album Chadwell’s Station, the Foghorn Stringband’s Devil in the Seat (2015), and Nikos Pappas’s Old Virginia: Fiddle Tunes of David Russell Hamblen (2022). Tricia Spencer and Howard Rains have also recorded and taught it.