LEWISTON — When Erica Brown was just a tot, she would sit on her grandfather's knee and listen to him play French Canadian tunes on the harmonica. When he stopped, she'd push his hand back toward his mouth to keep him playing.

That love of French Canadian music has been with Brown from the time she picked up the violin at age 6 and into her career as a fiddler.

At age 22, Brown has 13 years of professional performances to her credit, three CDs released under her name and her own band, Erica Brown and the Bluegrass Connection. Considered a master of a traditional art by the Maine Arts Commission, Brown also finds joy in passing her musical heritage on to a number of students.

She does all this while juggling a couple of office jobs, working on a fourth CD and attending school full time at the University of Maine at Augusta, where she's pursuing a degree in jazz and contemporary music, with a concentration in audio recording.

Her accomplishments are unusual for someone her age, said Greg Boardman, Brown's first teacher who is the orchestra director for the Lewiston public schools and a fiddle instructor at Bates College.

"She had love, she had talent and the drive," Boardman said.

Brown's first performances were with Maine French Fiddlers, a group that has since disbanded. Don Roy, a fiddler and another of Brown's former teachers, introduced her to that group and watched her performance up close.

Roy said Brown brings a liveliness and creativity to her music.

"For the music of her heritage and her age, there's no one any better," Roy said.

Brown doesn't remember just how she decided as a child to pursue the fiddle, but she's loved the instrument as long as she can remember.

"I never wanted to take a break from it. I never tired of it," she said.

Brown has 13 years of classical violin training under her belt but prefers fiddle music with its improvisation and sense of fun. She plays the same jigs, reels, hornpipes and waltzes played on the harmonica and button accordion by her maternal grandfather, Edmond Parent, who lived in Grand Isle, by the New Brunswick border, before moving his family to Lewiston.

For Parent, music was about entertainment, not performance, something he'd do with buddies after a long week of work. He'd learn new songs in these sessions, as he never learned to read sheet music.

It's a different world for Brown, who makes a conscious effort to keep the tradition vibrant. It makes her a bit sad that the bands at Franco festivals are often from Canada and that after performances, someone may tell her it's been so long since he heard such music.

So Brown is excited when young people get hooked on the music.

On a recent day, in the basement office of the house Brown lives in with her parents and three brothers, Brown was giving a lesson to 13-year-old Christie Michaud of Greene.

Brown was a patient and pleasant teacher as she showed Christie how to press in on the strings to get the desired choppy sound in a dotted hornpipe. Brown also identified why Christie's bowing was awkward in the triplets of one song and explained the remedy – playing more than one note in a stroke to get the bow moving in the right direction.

Brown was encouraging as she played a new song, smiling as she told Christie it was easier than it sounded. Brown played and explained the components before they played together. They then worked a bit on improving Christie's rhythm.

"See, you fixed it just by hearing me play it. It's fixed," Brown said. "Cool!"

Christie receives her lessons through a traditional arts apprenticeship run by the Maine Arts Commission.

Brown, who had been an apprentice under Roy, is one of the youngest masters in the program, which includes a range of traditional arts, from quilting and basketweaving to step dancing and Cambodian music, said Keith Ludden, a community arts and traditional arts associate with the commission.

Christie had wanted to play fiddle since she was little and eventually her parents got her an instrument on eBay. The family approached Brown about lessons after a performance.

Brown saw a little bit of herself in Christie.

"Her interest and excitement in this music reminds me of myself," Brown said. "She would play all day if she could."

Staff Writer Ann Kim can be contacted at 791-6383 or at: akim@pressherald.com