August 2021

From Wikipedia: The Appalachian dulcimer is a fretted string instrument of the zither family, typically with three or four strings, originally played in the Appalachian region of the United States. The body extends the length of the fingerboard, and its fretting is generally diatonic.

What is diatonic you ask?

Also from Wikipedia: In music theory, a diatonic scale is any heptatonic scale that includes five whole steps and two half steps in each octave, in which the two half steps are separated from each other by either two or three whole steps, depending on their position in the scale.

Now this is getting a bit complicated for a simple music lover like myself. The question now gets asked, what is heptatonic?

Simple answer to that question is that it is a seven note scale made up of seven different tones. Okay now we know. I don’t know how important it is to know all that stuff. I do know I love the sound of a well played (and well made) mountain dulcimer. I live with a person who plays very well on an extremely well built instrument.

That is what this story is about, one special dulcimer and the person who plays it.

Let’s start at the beginning, that is the customary thing to do.

Diane became interested in dulcimers many years ago. The interest was created by a combination of things. One, Diane is (or was) a guitar player. She led the music in our church. We were avid tent campers and visited the Blue Ridge Mountains on many occasions. On one of those trips, many years ago, we were on the Blue Ridge Parkway having lunch at a place named the Bluffs, not far from Galax. Sitting outside the resturaunt was a park ranger, an interpreter, and she was playing a mountain dulcimer. Diane said “now that is a great job, sit in the mountain air and make music.” That sounded nice but I didn’t give it a lot of thought, but at that moment a seed was planted in Diane’s musical heart.

Fast forward a lot of years. Diane and I are now motorhomers. We were staying in a campground in Marion, North Carolina, not far from Black Mountain. We went into a music shop there, called Song of the Wood. They make and sell dulcimers, both hammer and mountain. There were a number of mountain dulcimers on display, some on stands, some on the wall. There was one in particular, made of dark walnut with hummingbirds shaped sound holes. Diane stood and looked at it for a long time. One of the ladies who worked in the shop asked Diane if she would like to play it.

“I don’t know, I have never tried to play one before.” She said.

“Do you play any stringed instrument?”

“I play guitar” was her response.

“Well you should be able to pick up the dulcimer and play it without too much trouble...let’s give it a try.”

She took it down from the wall, pulled up an armless chair. Diane sat down and the dulcimer was handed to her. The lady also handed her a small short dowel.

“This is a noter, and you use it to press down on the strings, like this.”

She explained a bit about how to play it, in musical terms. Diane understood, not me.

“Now try something simple, like Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.”

Diane gave it a try and it sounded perfect to me. She then played something on her own, I think it was Amazing Grace. I didn’t think it sounded very good but her face lit up with a big smile. That was all it took for me to make a decision.

“Diane, you need to get this” I said.

We bought a Walnut Creek lap dulcimer made by the T.K. O’Brien handcrafted dulcimer company.

We also purchased some pics, a noter, a music book, and a nice case.

This was the beginning of Diane’s love affair for dulcimer music that has only gotten more intense over the years.

She took it home to our house in Portsmouth, spent many hours plucking away at it, and my nerves, until that pretty wooden box started to sound good.

Diane and our somewhat distracted Teddy Bear.

A year or so later we were in Galax for the summer. We went to the Fiddler’s Convention. It was Wednesday night, the night of the Dulcimer competition. The program said there were some sixty five folks signed up to play, but only half of those actually made an appearance on stage. Only half of those were any good. I looked over at Diane after hearing “Bile That Cabbage Down” for the sixth or seventh time. We both had the same thought at the same time.

“I think I am as good as half of them” she said. I had to agree of course.

At the end of the competition she said “I think I am as good as the top third”

“You should compete next year” was my response.

She did.

A few things happened first. Diane kept practicing. She attended a wonderful dulcimer “convention” at Ferrum College in Virginia, where she met and was instructed by some very good, nationally recognized, dulcimer players. She attended jams in Galax and played with other folks. After a lot of consideration she choose the song to compete with and she also choose a guitar player to accompany her. His name is Ed, and he will be playing with her this year also.

Just a few weeks before the 2017 Old Fiddler’s convention Diane woke up one morning with a bad fever and body aches. She felt awful and then she discovered the cause of her illness. A small white tick had her by the back of the knee. I looked and saw the target rash. We left immediately for the Galax Urgent Care. Our fears were confirmed. Diane had Lyme Disease.

Not good, not good at all. This meant a big antibiotic shot followed by a course of antibiotic pills, ten days worth. It took a couple of days for her fever to go down, and when that happened she felt much better. For awhile anyway.

About a week to go to the convention she started to have a back ache, right between her shoulder blades. This worried me, because she has had very bad back problems before. I sent her to a chiropractor for a deep massage. It didn’t help. Then one morning, we discovered why. She had a blistering rash on her back that went all the way around her.

Now she had a painful case of Shingles. Her immune system had been so compromised by the Lyme Disease that the Shingles rash (caused by the same virus that causes Chicken Pox) was able to make an appearance. The doctors prescribed pain killers for this outbreak. Strong pain killers they were too. They barely helped.

Diane was miserable, but was determined to still perform at the Fiddler’s convention. Music and some pills would help her.

The night before the dulcimer competition Ed called us. He was in the hospital with Cellulitis. It was caused by grass flea bites that Ed got while mowing his grass. Seems the Dulcimer team of Diane and Ed was having some very bad luck. Fortunately for Diane, Ed’s brother Dave was in town and he too was a good guitar player. He gladly stepped into Ed’s shoes and played along with Diane.

In my opinion they were great, but you can judge for yourself:

Over the next year Diane kept fine tuning her playing. She learned harder songs. She competed in Sparta, again at Galax. Ed played with her, both times. She played on a handmade dulcimer that she purchased at the Asheville Southern Highland Arts Guild Expo. It was made by Mark Eubanks of Eubanks, Kentucky, It was a smaller, bookended, higher pitched dulcimer than her Hummingbird one.

Ed and Diane took ninth place at Galax out of 36 players. I think she was a bit disappointed with that result. I know I was. She needed and wanted something new, a better dulcimer than either of the two she had. She wanted a Galax style dulcimer, which is the way she plays, using a noter and all strings tuned together, bagpipe tuning its called. So what do we do to make her wish come true?

I decided to do something about it.

One day in late August 2018, on the way into town, I dropped into the luthier shop owned by Jimmy Edmonds. Jimmy is a fantastic guitar builder and a muscian himself, and that is an understatement. I introduced myself, told him I was married to a very good dulcimer player. I asked him if he would consider building a Galax style dulcimer. Jimmy told me he was in the middle of a very large order of guitars he was building for Zac Brown, and he would not have time to make anything else for awhile. Then he paused.

“You know, I could use a break, build something to challenge myself again. It will take some time, but I can do it. When do you head south?”

I could hardly believe my ears. I told him when we would be heading to Florida. We discussed the particulars and set a time to bring Diane by the shop.

It was only a couple of days later then we went there. The two of them hit it off right away. I just kept my mouth shut while they discussed everything, type of wood, stying, frets, color. It was just the beginning of a collaboration to build a very wonderful instrument. Over the next few weeks text messages went back and forth, visits to the shop. Pictures of older dulcimers from books and museums flying back and forth. Both persons were very excited about the project. We would go by and see the progress. At first there was not much to look at, just forms, samples of his guitar work that could be incorporated into this instrument. A combination of the old and the new.

In late September, Diane got to hold her new baby for the first time. It wasn’t quite grown up yet but the life it would have could be seen and felt.

She loved it.

Now let me explain what makes this dulcimer so special. It was built by one of the best guitar builders in the United States. He used many of his pre-war-built Martin Guitar inspired techniques to make this instrument a true work of art. It is made of Curly Maple with beautiful purfling, which is a narrow decorative edge inlaid into the top plate and often the back plate of a stringed instrument. A Galax-style dulcimer has a false bottom, or a second bottom, to be precise, and that is so the sound of the instrument doesn’t get muffled when on the player’s lap. Jimmy designed his own arrangement of sound holes in the first bottom in order to make the sound louder and bolder. He succeeded in doing just that.

In late October, the 27th I think, Diane got a phone call telling us that the Dulcimer should be ready to pick up late that afternoon. I was not having a very good day personally so this was a welcome relief, some good news. We drove to Jimmy’s shop, the dulcimer was sitting comfortably on the counter, but it needed to be strung and tuned. Jimmy said go grab some lunch and come back in a couple of hours. It wasn’t easy to wait longer but we managed. Off to Arby’s for a couple of gyros and then we returned. Diane was on pins and needles.

We walked into the shop. Jimmy wth a big smile on his face said;

“There it is, all done. All you need to do now is give it a try.”

Diane reverently picked it up, and sat down in a chair. We had already bought a case for it, and she had that with a pick and her noters. She began to play.

“Wow, its wonderful” she said. Then she looked at Jimmy and asked if he would play with her.

He took a vintage Yamaha off the wall (we would buy that guitar later) sat down with Diane and they chose a song, the first one Diane learned on her first dulcimer:

They played together for quite some time, one of the numbers was my favorite Old Joe Clark.

In my opinion, which is shared by others, this dulcimer is one of the best ever made. I suppose I am a bit prejudiced, but I can’t help that. I am in love with the person who plays it.

Six months later, after wintering in Florida, we were back in Galax and the music started again. Diane was at the Elk Creek Fiddler’s Convention and took a ribbon. She performed at Sparta and took a ribbon, but her nerves got the best of her at Galax and she didn’t place in the top ten. Everywhere she went, other dulcimer players flocked around her Curly Maple Wonder. Where did it come from? Who built it? How can they get one?

In late August, after the Galax Fiddler’s convention, our grandson Carson came for a visit. Carson is a very good guitar player. He did not own a very good guitar, so we decided to purchase one for him. It is the Vintage Flying Bird Yamaha seen in the videos above. Carson brought it back to our motorhome and he and Diane started playing together. They learned Wildwood Flower in two days which was good because they were registered to play at the Fries Virginia Fiddler’s convention in the dulcimer competition. Here is the result:

They took second place.

There is something almost magical about Diane’s Jimmy Edmonds’ Galax Dulcimer number 1. It is a wonderful instrument that, like Jimmy said it would, sounds better with use and with age. Diane plays better every time she picks it up. It inspires her to do so. It also gives her joy and takes her away from life’s troubles (and I can be one of those sometimes). In just a few days she and Ed will take to the stage at the Galax Fiddler’s convention. They will make good music together. I predict that Diane will add a ribbon to her collection, a color she doesn’t have yet if you know what I mean.

UPDATE: Diane and Ed took fifth place at the 2021 Galax Old Fiddlers’ Convention and First Place at the Fries Fiddler’s convention.

UPDATE: Diane and Cody McGrady of New River Line Band took 3rd place at the 2022 Galax Old Fiddler’s Convention and Second at Fries.

Derrick

Diane and Ed at the Galax Old Fiddler’s Convention.

Here is Diane jamming at the Elk Creek Fiddler’s Covention with Phyllis Gaskins, Lois Hornbostle and Ehukai Teves all playing the dulcimer.

You can find out more about Virginia Dulcimers here.