When Marcy Cochran decided to take up fiddling nearly 6 years ago, she couldn't find a teacher in the DC area, so she packed up her great grandfather's fiddle and headed for the woods of Tennessee. There she got a total immersion at Mark O'Connor's Nashville fiddle camp, and she returned 3 more summers subsequently. She gravitated towards the instruction of Bruce Molsky, Daniel Carwile, Casey Driessen, Buddy Spicher, Johnny Frigo, Aubrey Haynie, Mark Wood, Christian Howes and Victor Lin, and had the additional good fortune of hanging out with John Hartford, fiddling on the front porch.

She fell in love with multiple styles of fiddling, but especially Appalachian, and her camp experiences put her on the trail of more old-time. She met the incredibly nice folks in the Nashville Old-time String Band Association (NOTSBA), and she jams with them as often as her day job, travel time and money allow. She has, with fiddling friend Sheila Nichols and the NOTSBA folks, gotten to play with and learn from Alan Jabbour, Bob Townsend, Clyde Davenport, Bruce Greene, Don Pedi, Leroy Troy, and the marvelous left-handed fiddler Charlie Acuff. She's played in pick-up bands for contra dances in Louisville and Nashville, and for Barbara Harding's English dance classes in nearby Herndon, VA. Her summers now include the annual pilgrimage to Clifftop, WV, and any other festivals her schedule allows.

She has had the pleasure of jamming regularly with local legends Ralph Lee Smith and Lea Coryell, both extensive scholars of traditional instruments and Appalachian music. (A number of instruments from Ralph's collection are presently in an exhibition at the brand new Museum of the Shenandoah Valley). Marcy sometimes plays old-time tunes on a cigar-box fiddle of Ralph's. Marcy has found warm welcome at jams with local musicians Howard Jones, Bob Dagostaro, Howard Zane and all the wonderful folks who jam with them, and additionally with Sally Carroll, Lisa Kay Howard, Kip Martin, Lisa Collins, Frank Vispo, Andrew and Beth McGinley, Banjer Dan Mazer, and Ron Goad (incomplete list!).

Marcy's membership in the DC Bluegrass Union and participation in the DCAB list led her and the rest of Dead Men's Hollow to find each other, and she joined the band in late December of 2002. The collaboration since has been an exciting and ongoing melding of sounds and influences as the group has gotten to know each other musically, creatively and personally, and the best is yet to come!

Marcy's day job is as a freelance graphic designer and motion graphics animator, and in her "spare time" she is currently co-producing a documentary on the music of John Hartford with Louisville fiddler and photographer Sheila Nichols, with production beginning in February of 2006.

Marcy loves all styles of folk and improvisational fiddling, and is right at home in blues, oldtime, bluegrass, rock, jazz, and mixed jams. In addition to her acoustic axes, she plays a viola, a 6-string custom electric Mark Wood violin, and a 16-string Swedish Nyckelharpa. Her motivators continue to be a deep love of music and of FUN, and her never-ending quests are to create her own sound, and to attempt to draw the music in her mind and soul out through her fiddle.