Dave Langdon spent his formative years in Owosso, MI. He was introduced to old time music in the mid 1970s at the Ten Pound Fiddle Coffeehouse in East Lansing and started playing the fiddle in 1977 and a few years later started playing upright bass. He has long been associated with the Pretty Shaky String Band, a local weekly music jam in East Lansing and played with the Scarlet Runner String Band for many years as well as other musical groups. He lives in Okemos, MI.

Dave has been interested in researching traditional Michigan music and particularly fiddle music since about 2010. In 2012, he met Karl Byarski, who lived in Kinde, MI. Karl had a very large collection of recordings many of which he had recorded. He recorded many musical events in Huron County and the Thumb area of Michigan and also made many recordings in the basement of his home. Many of these recordings were of local musicians and fiddlers. Dave spent about 3 years traveling to Kinde to work with Karl to document and catalog his collection of recordings and to learn about Huron County and the various musicians featured on Karl’s recordings. Prior to Karl’s death in December, 2016, he acquired Karl’s collection of recordings, records, photos and various papers. He subsequently donated about 230 of the recorded tapes to the Genesee Historical Collections Center at University of Michigan-Flint. These tapes were digitized by Paul Gifford, the archivist, and over 250 selections from these recordings were made available to the public via the website:

https://digitalarchives.umflint.edu/digital/collection/p16210coll6. 

Dave has also spent much time in the Thumb area contacting surviving musicians from these recordings as well as family members of deceased musicians. He has worked with others to transcribe tunes that were not available in written form and has learned to play several of them. He has also given workshops teaching “Michigan” tunes and done presentations about the music and the musicians. Dave also has been active as a collector of similar recordings from various areas of Michigan. He has also digitized many of the tunes and songs Karl Byarski and others recorded. As president of the Michigan Folklore Society since 2015, he has been working toward developing a web site to be operated by the MFS which would serve as a vehicle for making available to all interested parties these and other collected recordings and materials.