Home Again

Angie and I had a great time on our working vacation but it's great to be back home. Thanks again to Sharon Skaryd, Joan Fitzpatrick and everyone else who made us feel welcome in Evart, Michigan. Several members of the ODPC (Original Dulcimer Players Club) have posted Funfest pictures. They do a great job of capturing the spirit of this one-of-a-kind gathering. Sharon has organized a list of links to pictures which you can view by clicking here.

We visited two of my favorite luthiers on our way back home - James Jones in Bedford, WV, and Jerry Read Smith in Black Mountain, NC. I have tremendous respect for these guys and their passion for improving hammer dulcimer design. The hammer dulcimer, unlike more common instruments like guitar, violin or piano is still in the infancy of its renaissance in this country. I've spent many hours playing and contemplating its strengths and weaknesses and enjoy bouncing ideas off of James and Jerry as well as Ray Mooers at Dusty Strings in Seattle.

Lately I've spent quite a bit of time getting to know the Linear Chromatic hammer dulcimer. Read more about it by clicking this link. I have actually lost sleep thinking about the possibilities created by this tuning scheme. I am playing musical passages I never dreamed possible. The design still needs a few tweaks, both tonally and ergonomically, but with a few minor adjustments, I think it is the future of hammer dulcimers. Of course I could be wrong - I also think all hammer dulcimers should have dampers but that hasn't happened yet either. If you're a player, you owe it to yourself to read about the linear chromatic. Drop me an email and let me know what you think.

Sunday morning my friend Malcolm Childers and I took a pleasant hike on the Rainbow Lake trail which is just a couple of miles from my home. It was a beautiful morning and I was lucky to get a few really good pictures of a butterfly, after following it around a bit waiting for a landing. Check out the pics in today's posting on my pictures page. Be sure to scroll to the bottom of the page for the most recent shots.

I plan to spend the rest of this week working on CD projects. If I get enough accomplished I'll post some samples of my progress. - Dan ¶ 6:33 PM

Charleston, WV

We are taking our time and doing a little sight-seeing on the return trip from Evart. Everything we've seen so far has been wet as it seems the storm system that hit northern Michigan on Sunday is determined to follow us back home to Chattanooga.

The Evart Funfest was absolutely worth the long drive to Michigan. I will highly recommend it to anyone interested in hammer dulcimer music at any level. I felt like a 10 year old at Disneyland with so much going on that I couldn't possibly take it all in. If you found shade and shelter, then you also found an impromptu jam session. The instruments weren't always perfectly in tune, but the hearts were.

There was one particular jam session every night that seem to draw the oldest participants at the festival. I stopped by a few times just to breathe it all in. It included just about every instrument you can imagine from autoharps to spoons and a not so recently tuned piano. There was singing and a little dancing ('not too fast mind you'). Some of those who didn't play or sing just closed their eyes and gently clapped wrinkled, sunspotted hands to the metallic thump of the wash tub bass. I believe one of the purposes of music is to bring joy and perspective to our sometimes harried and confused existence. There was joy.

I got to jam with some incredible players and I'll introduce them more formally when I have a chance to get their web site links in place. I'll post more about the trip when I get back to Chattanooga. You can see my pictures from Evart by clicking on the Photographs link. Be sure to scroll to the bottom of the page. ¶ 6:34 PM

Evart, MI

This is just a quick update to let everyone know we made it safely to the largest gathering of hammer dulcimer players in the country. We're at the Fun Fest in Evart, Michigan. It is organized and run by members of the Original Dulcimer Players Club, or ODPC. I have a booth selling Dusty Strings hammer dulcimers and taught my first workshop Thursday afternoon. I had no idea how many people would show up and when the workshop organizer told me to be have sheet music for 70, I though - "no way". WAY! There were close to a hundred people there and we successfully learned our tune in under an hour. I'm told that many of people enjoyed the class so much that they're planning on coming back to my next one - with friends.

The weather Wednesday was upper 70's and partly cloudy. We did not bring enough warm bedding for our tent and were very cold and uncomfortable camping Wednesday night. This is aggravated by our inflatable mattress losing most of its air overnight. We decided to stay in a hotel last night and had to drive 45 miles to find an available room. The trek out of camp gave me a chance to check email and do this quick update. It is now Friday morning and we're going to buy more bedding for the tent and head back to the festival in just a few minutes. We're camped near a creek and the temp will likely fall into the upper 40's tonight. The forecast for today is low humidity with highs in the 70's.

I'll have some good pictures to post when we get back home. Gotta run - Dan. ¶ 6:38 PM

CD Progress and Local Performances

Alfreda in the House - I'm making progress on several cd projects. Alfreda Gerald was in the studio a few days ago recording tracks for my Christmas cd. We had a blast. It was the first time I'd seen her since the Ethnicity Tour. We had to remind ourselves to stop talking and get a little work done too! Click on my pictures link to the left, then scroll to the bottom of the page to see photos of Alfreda in the studio, as well as shots from other stories in today's journal.

Hymns with Her - I'm also working on a cd of hymns with one of my students, Hannah Pratt. She's going to be a senior music major this fall at Bryan College, and this cd is her senior project. I want it to showcase her talent and hopefully make her a little money as she heads out into the working world. Even though all the tracks on this recording are familiar tunes to us, we are spending a lot of time on new arrangements that feature the hammer dulcimer as the lead instrument accompanied by mountain dulcimer, bowed psaltery, acoustic guitar and bass. I plan to have samples from this cd as well as from my Christmas project, posted by mid-August.

Visions of Nature - Anne Frank wrote in her diary: "The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely, or unhappy, is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quiet, alone with the heavens, nature...Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be, amidst the simple beauty of nature.  As long as this exists, and it certainly always will, I know that then there will always be comfort for every sorrow, whatever the circumstances may be.  And I firmly believe that nature brings solace in all troubles."

When circumstances don't allow you to get out and be alone in nature, why not bring nature into your living room? I mentioned a couple of months ago that I was working with video producer/photographer Pat Cory on a nature video set to my music. The finished product is called Visions of Nature and we expect the VHS tapes and DVD's to be in stock later this week. They are $24.95 and can be ordered by emailing me. I should have my "Order CD" page set up for accepting credit card purchases of the new video later today. I'm just waiting on some graphic files.

Fun on the Fourth! - My Pops in the Park concert with the Chattanooga Symphony was a dream come true. The weather was perfect for the largest Independence Day crowd ever at Coolidge Park. I've posted 30 seconds of video from the concert that you can see by clicking the following link. It is 1.2 megabytes so I wouldn't recommend it for those of you using a dial-up connection. Video Clip. There are also photos of the concert accessible on my Pictures Page.

Character Development - I was honored to perform for the Southeast Regional Character Education Conference in Chattanooga. It was great to meet quite a few Yanni fans there who'd seen the Ethnicity show, as well as use Yanni's music often in the classroom.



R&R - My schedule has been hectic but I haven't forgotten to get out and enjoy a little play time as well. I've included a few pictures of a water skiing adventure with friends from last week. There are also some pictures taken from the woods behind my house where a 20 minute hike yields views of beautiful rock formations.

Summer Travels- Angie and I are getting ready to head to Michigan for the Evart Fun Fest. My daughter, Missy, leaves for Germany the same day. She's participating in a sister city exchange program that Chattanooga has with Hamm, Germany. She'll be staying with the family of a girl that lived with us last summer. My son, Jeremy, returns home from his traveling summer job to take care of the house and animals while we're away.

We want to line up some house concerts while we're away so I'll post our tentative travel plans tommorrow. Until then - Dan ¶ 6:39 PM