Dulcimerica 160 - "Key West Dulcimer Fest Pt. 2"

Dulcimerica 159 - "Key West Dulcimer Fest Pt. 1"

Catching Up With Myself (and the rest of the world)

Dulcimers On The Green in Central City, Kentucky was the very next stop after a rowdy night of "The Pub Thang" in Orlando. I whisked up Interstate 75 and stopped overnight in Signal Mountain, Tennessee at the home of Dan Landrum, editor of Dulcimer Players News. We then set out in the afternoon of the next day and got into Central City with enough time to have some Mexican food at El Bracero and get checked into our rooms.

This first-year festival was quite a joy - great music and jams, lots to see and do. But what made this different was the entire teaching staff was given a key to the city during an opening night welcome party. Here, Mayor Jerry Mitchell is pictured presenting me with the first key. It's never happened before and who knows if it will happen again? All I know is, it was pretty darn cool.



(pictured above l-r, Stephen Seifert, me and Dan Landrum) After Saturday workshops, we had a break for dinner and then the concert at the Merle Travis Music Center.

All in all it was a lovely time - Dan and I headed back to Tennessee right after the concert and then I switched horses in Signal Mountain and continued on home to Orlando where I was greeted by my lovely wife, Jae. We then headed out to meet our dear friends from McWell's over at Epcot and proceeded to zip around, having fun as you do.

Finally, a week later, we met those very same friends on board the Royal Caribbean Monarch of the Seas to help celebrate Andy Weller's birthday (it had been a surprise cruise in the making for a number of months - hard to keep this secret!) We set sail for Nassau in the Bahamas and disappeared off the radar for the weekend. It was my first cruise and I'm still sort of in denial that we're back in Orlando, getting back to the grind of things.



Knowing that I was going to be caught up in the cruise afterglow this week, I took the liberty of already shooting the second installment of "Dulcimerica" dealing with blues on the mountain dulcimer - it will be posted on YouTube tomorrow morning as well as at Dulcimerica.com. Thanks for all of the kind words - glad you enjoyed part one!

It's a busy week here - lots to do. Hope you have a great one - watch this space for more soon!

Dulcimerica 152 - "Winter In Bardstown Pt. 3

Dulcimerica 151 - "Winter In Bardstown Pt. 2"

Festival Action - Low Action - High Action

It's been awhile since I've posted here, mainly due to keeping up information on the Key West Dulcimer Fest website.

What a blast and what a joy! The festival ran smoothly, the weather was amazing and we're looking at 2011 for our next time around.

There are lots of little details that have been floating in and out of focus since the final day; moments of music, leaps forward in ability, all of the minute things that combine to create a wonderfully eye-opening experience.

Huge thanks to Folkcraft Instruments for their sponsorship of the festival and the hard work of Richard Ash on-site, connecting with instructors and working on dulcimers. Stephen Seifert and I have been talking about low action vs. high action (we've both been huge fans of low action) and finally decided that a higher action was necessary for the styles of playing that we both employ. Richard raised the action on three of our instruments and the difference is incredible. Sure, you have to work a little harder, not much, but enough to win great results. The dynamic range of the instruments have opened up and, dare I say it, has made them just a touch louder. We went with low action to make fretting easier - but I offer that anything totally easy won't yield the best results. It's like working out - the harder it is, the greater the reward (or something like that.)

There will be video coming along in a little while, some more recollections and announcements of dates and instructors for the next festival - soon!

Here we go....

I landed back in Florida today after a whirlwind trip to Anaheim, California for the NAMM Show and then a stopover in Stroudsburg, Pennsyvlvania for the Winter Dulcimer Fest. Now, the runway is pointing towards the next big event, which is The Key West Dulcimer Fest (but not before a quick couple of nights at Dicey Reilly's Irish Pub in St. Cloud, Florida.)

NAMM was amazing as usual - spent time at Downtown Disney on Wednesday, shopping and meeting up with a dear friend from my post-high school life, then a nice meal with Richard and Nick from Folkcraft Instruments before launching into the first full day on the convention floor on Thursday. When standing in the booth, playing dulcimer, the time seems to fly and during that time, a few breaks were taken to catch some of the sights and sounds, which included lots of new gear, a sighting of Bootsy Collins and Cowboy Troy, many visitations and encounters at the booth and a meet-up with the V-Picks gang, who laid yet another amazing pick on me.

Stephen Seifert was handling booth demos for the rest of the show and he came out about midday. After a dinner at El Torito, we repaired back to the hotel and jammed in the lobby, much to the delight of staff and some other folks who were staying there.

Friday morning came way too early (about 4 am PT) as I headed off to John Wayne airport and began the long journey to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania for the Winter Dulcimer Fest in the Poconos. Christie Burns picked me up from the airport along with her niece, Devin, and we enjoyed some teppanyaki before joining others for a jam at the festival site. Saturday brought a full day of workshops and an evening concert, where Christie and I jammed together for the first time. Afterwards, I hung out with my friend Kristy Sproul and stayed at the house she shares with her husband, Kevin and their two children Kyle and Katie. I awoke this morning to the smell of breakfast and had a lovely visit before heading out, once more, to the airport for the return trip home.

Needless to say, I'm flat sick of airports already for the year 2010 and am glad to be home and focused for the upcoming festival in Key West. There will be pics and videos from the past weekend, but right now, I'm just checking in, sitting in the backyard hammock, trying not to launch directly into frenzied work mode.

Life is good. Busy, hectic, crazy, but definitely good.

Dulcimerica 122 - "KMW: 'John B Sails'"

Recorded June 23rd, 2009 at Kentucky Music Week in Bardstown, Kentucky. Bing Futch joins Robert Force, Butch Ross and Guy George in two variations on "John B Sails."

Dulcimerica 121 - "Gebhard Woods Pt. 2"

A look around the Gebhard Woods Dulcimer Festival in Morris, Illinois including music by String Fever ("Margaritaville"), Cara, Annette and David Lindsey ("Flowers of Edinburgh") and Bing Futch ("Pancho and Lefty")

Dulcimerica 120 - "Gebhard Woods Pt. 1"

Here's the first of a series from Gebhard Woods Dulcimer Festival in Morris, Illinois. First up - I perform a medley of "Booth Shot Lincoln/Old Yellow Dog/Old Joe Clark" during my Saturday concert. Yes, it's a tad underlit, but applying the backlight filter would've gotten rid of all that wonderful scenery in the background.

2 Online Dulcimer Thing-a-majobbers

One's a podcast and one's a real-time forum; both of which you should check out on a regular basis if you're a player of or are interested in mountain dulcimers.

First is Stephen Seifert's "Mountain Dulcimer Folk" podcast which is going into its third year. I'll be talking with Stephen live on Monday, February 2, 2009. The show starts at 8 PM CST / 9 PM EST.

Second is Jeff Hames' New and Young Dulcimer Players Forum, which is going into its second year - a discussion group that meets monthly in real-time with a panel of instructors where folks can post questions and get responses immediately. The topic for the next session is "Intro To Music Theory" and I'm one of the forum hosts - you know how much I love the music theory. That's on February 10th at 8 pm central time.

Both of these, you should frequent on a regular basis to get and stay plugged-in to the mountain dulcimer world.

Adventures both expected and non

I've known Denny and Rose Brouse for a good long time, since 1995 when we were all members of the Prodigy community. We literally ushered in the internet, chat and instant messaging and had a real good time doing it through the magic of Disney. Starting on the Hobbies bulletin board, we lobbied for a Disney Fans board and got it, which resulted in skyrocketing attendance for Prodigy. I later became a special contributor and, finally, a full-fledged board leader and content provider for Prodigy Services, making $2000 a month at one point when the web was still new.

The Brouses live in Gilford Township in Ohio, somewhere between Medina and Seville. I got to know them pretty well back in the days, pre-internet, and over the years, we've gotten to know each other real well. Early on, I'd head up to visit them and they had a standing engagement to come down and visit Walt Disney World each year. We've had some very good times, both in Ohio and in Florida! Denny was with me for some legs of the Coast-2-Coast Coaster Tour, which has been copied by everyone from Jefferson Graham at USA Today to the Discovery Channel.

In between Yellowbanks Dulcimer Festival and Gebhard Woods, I've been hanging out with the Brouses here - and we went up to Cedar Point, a theme park that has 17 COASTERS! I love this place and it's been since 2000 that I've visited; Denny and were there for the opening of Millennium Force in 2000 and 1996 for the opening of Mantis. They've got some new rollercoasters there this year, Top Thrill Dragster and Maverick, so there was some catching up to do. Had a great time riding and walking around - then got out to the van afterwards and, nothing, dead, battery or alternator. After being assisted by the helpful Cedar Point parking control, we were shuttled by Triple A to the Quality Inn on the causeway, where there just happened to be a restaurant, water park and bowling alley (!). It was an unplanned stop, but we made the most of it. It could've been a lot worse.
Rose came up and got me and Blake, Denny hung around and waited for the van to be fixed. We reconvened in the evening together and had a good laugh about it all. They are some of my dearest friends - and what a joy to spend time with them!

Got back today and began preparations for Gephard Woods, which I'm looking forward to. I've got to say that the prevailing conversations on the road have been about the gas crunch and how tough life is becoming, it's hard not to think about these changes that we're going through. At the same time, I'm continuously stoking a fire under myself to bring the positive to the surface. We need to believe and hope in order to move forward - and I hope we can continue to band together and do that. Life can be fun - life can be rough - and life is what we make of it, which means there is a lot more control in our hands than we realize.

Reason number four that I love my lovely wife - she is right dead sexy. I won't go into details here, but the woman is a spitfire and you can just call me a happy man where that is concerned. Whoo! Okay, enough of that - she's far away and that just ain't fair.

Hitting the road in the morning - what a beautiful time spent with The Brouse Family - and hopefully it won't be too long before we do it all again, north or south.

Hope you all are having a great week - aloha! There are new pictures in the gallery.