Hillary Klug is famous in Nashville – but now her audience has expanded worldwide thanks to her YouTube videos.

The fiddler and buck dancer from Fayetteville, Tennessee got her start giving incredible street performances. She also served as the concertmaster of the Tennessee Fiddle Orchestra for 4 years.

But what’s most impressive is that she can play the fiddle and buck dance – a type of folk “tap” dance – at the same time! In fact, Klug was even the National Buck Dancing Champion in 2013 (and the National Old Time Buck Dancing Champion in 2019).

For those of us who can barely walk and chew at the same time, watching her performance of “Cotton-Eyed Joe” is truly something to marvel at – and people have done that over 3.7 million times since she uploaded her video in 2018.

Born to a family that wasn’t particularly musical she told Strings Magazine last year that nevertheless she felt called to dance and would even choreograph her own routines in front of a full-length mirror to whatever came on the radio.

At age eight she took up clog dancing but after hearing a fiddle performance at a music festival, she decided to branch out.

Taking lessons from some of the most renowned buck dancers and fiddle players in the South, she was soon participating in competitions and became the Kentucky State Dance Competition in 2013.

It wasn’t until she was teaching her own dance class one day that she decided to blend her fiddling and dance skills.

“I needed slower music for my students to be able to practice. But I couldn’t find any recordings of slow fiddle music. So I brought my fiddle and played it myself. The next week I played another tune. We started getting faster with each class until I was able to dance and play at the same time, out of necessity,” she told Strings.

She got into busking (street performing) in Nashville when she planned to drive into town from Fayetteville for a competition but worried about the cost of making the trip.

“Parking was, like, 20 bucks each day for two days. I didn’t know if I’d even be able to break even. But I knew that busking was a thing on Broadway, so I took my fiddle and played for 15 minutes. Nobody wanted to hear it; they just kept walking.”

Fiddler players are a dime a dozen on the streets of Nashville. But fiddle players who can dance are another story.

“Then, I started dancing. I had my cowboy boots on. And everybody stopped. It was astounding. I got a $20 tip from somebody right away. That’s how I discovered that doing both together is very entertaining.”

Her YouTube channel and the millions of views she gets are a testament to that. There are moments in her performance of “Cotton-Eyed Joe” where it’s almost impossible to believe that she’s able to do both at the same time – and she’s able to keep the music sounding great despite all that movement!

The piece of wood she dances on also adds another layer of complexity since it’s raised off the ground – she has to be careful not to fall off of it while dancing!

[imgsrc caption="Screenshot via Hillary Klug/YouTube" link="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lNkCt1CDc0"]

And if you think that’s impressive, Klug now plans to tour with her new album and perhaps even add vocals!

Talk about a triple threat!

Be sure to scroll down below to see her mesmerizing performance.

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Source: Country Music Hall of Fame, Strings Magazine, Hillary Klug via YouTube