Chip Cohen has been fiddling for audiences across the United States since the 1970s. After studying classical violin as a youth in Maryland, he traveled to the Great Smokey Mountains, where he immersed himself in bluegrass and old-time fiddling. He's been fiddling ever since, working with such artists as the Holy Modal Rounders, the Johnson Mountain Boys, Ferlin Huskey, and Michelle Shocked. Along his musical journey, he has added Celtic, Cajun, and klezmer fiddle, classical guitar, and original compositions to his repertoire.

Since arriving in Oregon in 1984, Chip has played with a number of popular Northwest bands playing bluegrass, western swing, folk-rock, and more. He currently performs with klezmer band The Klezmonauts and with various other groups playing a variety of musical styles. He also works as a soloist and teaches fiddle lessons and workshops.

Chip has published two volumes of Tall Tales and Twin Fiddles, and has recorded on numerous CDs, including his solo album Horsehair, which the Eugene Weekly hailed as a "musical masterpiece".

 

 

The Unauthorized Biography

Chip Cohen was born at a very young age in a log cabin that he helped his father build. He first broke into show business as a ventriloquist. A child prodigy, he appeared on both the the Tonight Show and the Ed Sullivan Show before his sixth birthday. At age nine, disillusioned with ventriloquism and its accompanying lifestyle, he quit to pursue his first love, roller derby. Twelve years later, at the peak of a brilliant career, he lost three toes to frostbite while panning for gold in the Yukon, never to skate again. He reluctantly returned to ventriloquism and began touring with Milli Vanilli. Between shows he taught himself to play the fiddle. He earned his doctorate in fiddlology from Wassamatta U., and soon afterwards joined Jim and Van Morrison's short-lived band the Van Doors. He went on to record with George Strait and Marvin Gaye on their classic album "Strait and Gaye". That's Chip's fiddle you hear playing the familiar opening strains of the hit single "I Gave Her the Ring, She Gave Me the Finger".

After working for years as a sideman, Cohen finally realized his true musical vision when he struck out with his own band, Barney Rubble and the Cosmic Cavemen. The Cavemen, later to achieve intergalactic prominence under the more commercially viable name Philip Space and the Celestial Meatballs, pioneered the sound that has come to be known as neo-classic post-modern old-time new age klezmer-cajun-surf-punk-grass.

Chip lives in Burrhus, Oregon with his wives Amanda Lynn, Claire Annette, and Viola, and their eleven mediocre children. In his spare time he collects celebrities' fingernail clippings and raises weasels.