"American Pharoah" The Triple Crown of Dulcimer Festivals

After the marvelous summer I have had touring, I feel like I should be called American Pharoah, because I, too, am a Triple Crown Winner!

My first tour of the season took me to Memphis for a day of workshops and a clinic on jamming together at the home of Betty Dawson in Memphis, TN.  Then a house concert and Nancy and Tom Adams', a workshop at Gilda's Club in Louisville and a house concert at Teri and Larry West's in the south part of town.

Then to Kentucky Music Week, where the copies of my new Playing Blues on the Mountain Dulcimer book had arrived and were waiting for me to have a wedding by adding the Demo CDs.

And what a week it was!  Jean Ritchie Tribute, organized and led by her son, Jon Pickow; stellar concert performances, a week-long class on Resonator Dulcimer, Blues on Hammered Dulcimer, a Noter Style Mountain Dulcimer class and a Dulcimer Orchestra class were highlights.

Captain's Cabin Concert S.E.a

Playing a Backporch concert to the crickets' chirp on a temperate evening in the middle of the week with my bandmates Erin Mae Lewis and Amber Rogers in our trio, S.E.A was memorable and amazing in a completely restored log cabin (Captain's Cabin) that now serves as a B and B!  Then I joined them for their concert set singing our trio arrangement of Hold On.

Steve, Karen Mueller & Heidi Muller in front of
Chief Joseph & Lake Wallowa

I am grateful to the non-playing spouse of a festival participant who gave me an on-time ride to the Louisville airport for my flight home.

The glow had not even worn off in my two-day turn-around at home before I received a "warm welcome" when I landed on the tarmac in Lewiston, ID (where it was 120°) en route to an even better Dulcimer Week in the Wallowas in Joseph, OR.  The relaxed pace and supportive community atmosphere was balm for my weary soul and the magical faculty concert with Karen Mueller, Bob Webb and Heidi Muller remains fixed in the recesses of my memory.

I had amazing classes, the Open Mic revealed talent, commitment, celebration, and laughter that left our sides aching with joy.  (There is a life goal, to be aching with joy!)

My Beginning class in their yurt classroom in Wallowa

Having had two such amazing weeks of musical and educational experiences I was a little nervous about heading east for the final festival of my summer season.

I took a red-eye from San Francisco to Charlotte, NC, had lunch with a friend, then reunited with the parents of my godchildren in Chesapeake, VA, before driving to another Soup and Song House Concert with Charlie and Marilyn Bernhardt in Maryland.

Charlie & Marilyn, Soup and Song House Concerts (10 years!)

Following a short night's sleep, I had a dawn sabbath drive through the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia and through the northeast corner of Tennessee and down through the Smoky Mountains for a late afternoon arrival at Dulcimer U in Cullowhee, NC.  There is was revealed that my anxiety had nowhere to lay its head!  Larry and Elaine Conger run a fantastic festival in this verdant setting, I was very excited to be invited to return to teach here.  And my time with my classes and two different mountain dulcimer ensembles were marvelous celebrations of people playing beyond their fears to experience the delight that comes when they relax and do this together!

My classes this week were as enthusiastic, attentive and adventurous as the others had been.  The fun and mischief that arises when people create a Brigadoon-like community together bubbled with joy.

Soundcheck view, through Lorinda Jones' harp

I have been part of many faculty concerts which can be a crazy quilt of performances, but this time something of the veil between the worlds of the mundane and the spectacular opened up and everyone's tune choices, transitional stories and the overall flow of both sets let us have a little taste of heaven...and it was a tasty nectar, too.

So..I believe I won the triple crown this summer and am glad to wear the name American Pharoah!

Dulcimers on high in the Wallowas!

Gut-String Gourd Banjo

While looking for something else in storage this week, I was able to find the documentation of this fun adventure in patience, support and partnership in musical instrument construction that I want to share here!

It was after hearing Mike Seeger play a fretless, gut-string banjo at Winfield several years ago that I feel in love with that warm sound and thus began a hankering.

It was only natural to purchase the banjo neck from the Deering cast-off bin just inside the vending space at Winfield the following year.  And, as the story below attests, that neck lived in two cities in two different states for a few years before meeting its life-partner, a gourd from Kentucky.

(You can click here to see this page full-size)

The finding of that gourd was interesting.  

Colorado is not known for its many gourds, but when I inquired on a mountain dulcimer listserv about a source for acquiring a suitable gourd, Lorinda Jones from Kentucky replied, "I've got an attic full of them!"

So we bartered.  I agreed to swap a complete set of my Dulcimer-Friendly Evening Prayer Service for a gourd that she would send me.

However, first we had to determine the size I needed.  My research thus far had suggested that gourd banjos in the 1800s were usually tuned to an open D tuning, rather than the open G tuning that is in common use today with instruments that have a steel tone ring.  My sources also suggested that I would need a goatskin head 8"-9" in diameter.  I found the head from a nearby drum maker who purchased his goatskins from Pakistan and I communicated my size needs to Lorinda.

But she responded, "Diameter?  I can only measure circumference!"

Uh oh.  I swore to Mr. Gerke, my high school geometry teacher that, not only was I NEVER going to need what I learned in his class EVER in my life, but that I wasn't going to REMEMBER it, either.

is what came into my head!

"Where did that come from?" I demanded from my disobedient brain!  "I promised I wasn't going to remember any of that stuff."

Then I realized I was going to need to find what

is. 

 I wonder how to find that?

"3.1417" pops into my head.

"Well, I'll be doggoned!" I think in amazement, everything is up in this noggin to help me accomplish the deal.  I did the math using the equation and the constant and Lorinda shipped me a mottled-looking gourd with specific, detailed instructions on how to clean it.

After soaking it in the kitchen sink in a dish soap and bleach solution and turning it every 30 minutes, I took a paring knife and scraped off the detritus to find this beautiful, butternut colored gourd.

Charley Gannon, of what used to be Osprey Music in Fort Collins, helped me with some binding and fret-position filler on the neck and then it was time for the final construction.

(You can click here to see this page full-size)

With the cooperation of all of us, including the required investment made by a school teacher with an unwilling student,  this project was completed!