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# Festivals

# Hammers in action

by Marcy April 11, 2006 August 1, 2009

I forgot to post the one picture I got at this spring’s UPDF before my batteries gave up (I know, I should have brought some spares).

Bill Mitchell, of Peat and Barley, playing his Dusty Strings D-600.

# UPDF

by Marcy March 20, 2006

This weekend was the spring Upper Potomac Dulcimer Fest in Harpers Ferry, WV. I have been going to the fall fest for several years, but I hadn’t been to the spring one since my first festival ever in 2001. It turns out that several of us who had been in Rick Thum’s advanced beginner class that year were in the same room again for T. J. Osborne’s advanced solo technique class this year — Judith, Shelley, Rick, was it Steve? — and me.

I got a ride with Jody, one of my students, who enjoyed Sam Rizzetta’s Beyond the Melody class.

Thursday afternoon we arrived and checked in, then out with Rick to Shepherdstown for a visit to O’Hurley’s General Store and Kazu, the Thai place. Mmmm… Thai.

The festival takes place at the Hilltop Hotel, with classes on the two lower floors and across the street at the annex. Most folks stayed at the hotel, too. In exchange for some volunteer work (helping with the store and helping lead a slow jam Friday evening), I got to share a room with three other women, which was fun.

The festival really started on Friday morning, with classes running until late afternoon, with a break for lunch. Unlike the fall fest, the spring festival classes last the whole weekend — it’s a chance to explore the topic in more depth.

In our class, we looked at using paradiddles to develop ease in hitting two consecutive notes with one hand (useful for playing chromatic music or music in odd keys), separated hands using alternating or Alberti bass or Travis patterns, and tremolos with hammer flipping to add melody notes to a tremolo droning pattern.

I couldn’t play much, but it gave me the opportunity to see what the others in the class were doing and get to know some of them better, particularly Shelley’s friend Danielle and Bill Mitchell, half of the band Peat and Barley. I’m also grateful to all the folks who helped me carry things or who tuned for me.

Between classes and dinner were mini classes. Friday I sat in for part of Dave Reber’s class on rhythmic patterns for developing the weaker hand; they also seem useful for developing ease with syncopation and double strokes.

On Saturday I went to Sam Rizzetta’s class about hammers. Sam is responsible for a lot of characteristics of the modern dulcimer, including bridge markers, dampers, and extra bridges. He’s also experimented with a variety of hammer designs over the years.

Of particular interest to me were a style with angled finger grips. The grips have two cutouts to fit between the first two fingers, so no thumb action is necessary. The shafts are inserted at an angle so that the hands can be held in a neutral position. Thanks to a discussion at EverythingDulcimer.com a year or two, I briefly tried this kind of hold with regular hammers, but found it difficult to control and uncomfortable. Sam’s hammers, however, felt better, mostly because of the angled and shaped grips.

These hammers also have a flexible shaft made of some kind of fiberglass composite. I could play more cleanly than I expected to with them, but it would still require a lot of basic hammering exercises to develop control. It’s definitely a weird feeling to play with flexible hammers after being used to the regular kind.

I wonder what stiff shafts with these angled finger grips would be like, but I suspect that it would be more difficult to control them because the movement comes from the wrists or forearms instead of the fingers.

Sam and Lucille Reilly and Martha Marsey (an occupational therapist who was attending the festival) all agree that it is better to do repetitive motion with larger muscle groups. I confess that this is not at all intuitive to me. It seems to me that you should conserve motion as much as possible, so that a tiny movement should be done with tiny muscles. Perhaps the conservation principle still applies, so that even if I use wrists or forearms I shouldn’t move them more than necessary.

I am ordering a pair of these hammers. They’re quite expensive, which is daunting. But if it means being able to play without further injury, it would be worth it. On the other hand, perhaps with proper therapy I can learn to play with regular hammers without further injury either. Still, it’s worth a good try, and I’d like my physical therapist to see them.

Martha also pointed out that the first joint of my left thumb seems sort of fallen — I forget how she described it. She says I should ask my therapist about wraps I can use to support that joint in a proper position.

Anyway, after mini classes was dinner. All meals included an open mic opportunity; not very many people played, but it was cool to hear those who did.

Friday evening, after a panel discussion, Rick, Cindy, and I helped lead a slow jam downstairs. It was a full, loud room, but I think we all managed to have a good time anyway.

Saturday evening featured a Civil War themed concert, with Sheila Kay Adams telling stories and singing a few songs, playing one medley on banjo with husband Jim Taylor on the hammered dulcimer, and reading from her novel with guitar and vocal accompaniment from Jim. I think they plan to record the whole book with music, and it sounds like it will be really lovely. However, I was disappointed to hear dulcimer on only one medley! Sparky and Rhonda Rucker took the stage in the second half, with Sparky’s historical commentary and both of them singing songs with guitar and harmonica. It was a very entertaining concert.

The festival came to a close with brunch on Sunday, and we got home in the evening.

# Fall 2005

by Marcy December 10, 2005 August 1, 2009

### Upper Potomac Dulcimer Fest

I love going to the UPDF each September.

This year the highlight of the festival for me was having a whole day of interesting classes with Dan Landrum (which has its own blog entry).

I also enjoyed seeing friends and meeting new folks, jamming, and the hospitality of my gracious and fun hosts.

Dan and I in this first picture. Below are my hosts Fred and Sarah on the left, and on the right are Don, Joanie, Butch, Christine, Nick, and Christie standing, with me and Kitty seated. Unfortunately I don’t remember all the names of the folks in the final picture.

(Can you tell I forgot to scan these until after I’d already cropped them and stuck them in my scrapbook? Guess which one overlaps Dan on the album page…)

### A few other things

Also in September, our pastor hired The Hanshaw Trio to play at a presbytery dinner featuring a lecture on arts and the church.

In October, I celebrated five years of dulcimer with an anniversary concert at Cornell’s Johnson Museum. (See the concert flyer in another blog entry.)

The show began with the duo Pas de Deux, and closed with The Hanshaw Trio.

Then there was a surprisingly gorgeous day in November when a bunch of us got together to jam at the farmers’ market.

Here’s Rick Biesanz who books for the Peaceful Gatherings Coffeehouse in Corning and singer-songwriter Joe Crookston.

In the second picture, that’s Debra Chesman, who runs a jam and house concert series near Corning, Rick, Joe, and Gary Kline, a fellow Rick plays with in the Seneca Moon String Band.

# Rudiments and rhythm

by Marcy September 20, 2005

Yesterday I tried some percussion rudiments practice on my hammered dulcimer. Last weekend I had a workshop on the topic at the Upper Potomac Dulcimer Fest; I’d done some visiting afterwards and got home Thursday, and recovering from the trip and other things kept me busy over the weekend.

The first thing I worked on was the single stroke roll, RLRLRLRLR, increasing tempo to find the point of control.

Then I tried a few paradiddles (RLRR / LRLL), but my left hand was so uneven I decided to work on some partial paradiddle exercises instead. The right-handed ones — like RLRLRLRL / RLRRL — were easy enough but not likely to develop my left hand. (Duh.) So I did a bunch of left-handed ones. It’s difficult to keep my left hand relaxed, especially when it sometimes bounced too many times or just stuck to the string. I was tempted to try funny angles or do weird things with my thumb or fingers to try to control a nice double bounce. The other thing is that when I use left hand lead, I usually flick the back of the hammer with my middle or ring finger, which has generally helped me keep the hammer straight and get a clean, consistent, strong sound. Perhaps the combination of tension, weird movements, and the flicking are responsible for the fact that I had to quit because my left wrist hurt. I don’t think I was actually moving the wrist all that much.

I noticed that there’s a different timing principle for paradiddles than for another exercise we’d done in the workshop. This exercise is an alternation between a bar of single hits: R L R L R L R L, and a bar of double bounces: RRLLRRLLRRLLRRLL. In this exercise, the hands move with the same timing, so that the individual bounces are twice as fast as the singles. The partial paradiddles, though, involve the hands moving more quickly with singles, so that each individual bounce takes up the same time as a single.

This morning I played a bit more with the 7/8 pattern I’d learned in a workshop on odd-time tunes: R L R L R L R / L R L R L R L. I started out playing the pattern with my right hand on a note on the right side of the treble bridge, and my left on the left-side note opposite. Then I experimented with letting the accents fall on other notes, which was fun and actually a bit easier, because the left hand accents felt more purposeful. I could see a simple tune come out of this if I keep playing with it.

# A day with Dan Landrum

by Marcy September 13, 2005

The highlight of this year’s Upper Potomac Dulcimer Fest was having classes with Dan Landrum all day Saturday: “Odd-Time Tunes” in the morning, and “Percussion Rudiments” in the afternoon.

At the time I was looking over the festival brochure, I didn’t really know much about Dan, except that he was touring with Yanni and that he played a Dusty Strings D-600, like my former teacher, Tim Seaman; it was mainly the class titles that caught my interest.

I mentioned in February how I admire Malcolm Dalglish‘s playing and can’t figure out what all he’s doing a lot of the time. I’ve noticed similar rhythmic stuff in others, like Cliff Cole or Rick Davis, or this fellow Nate that I met at the Farmers Market. T. J. Osborne, who I met through EverythingDulcimer.com, helped me out a bit over the phone with some ideas, and Sam Edelston also had some interesting exercises at the Cranberry Gathering this July. Both were helpful, but I didn’t seem to be making much progress.

Part of it is a matter of learning styles. I don’t do very well learning on my own. This is partly about external motivation being easier than internal, which is a fault; it’s another symptom of how I don’t often enough locate myself within myself, but in what other folks do for me or say about me and so on. It’s partly about relationship, though; music is just more fun and more interesting with other people.

Part of it is a matter of time. As exciting as it was to meet Malcolm after his concert, it’s not the best time to learn about his techniques. Likewise, a phone call with T. J. or a ten minute workshop segment with Sam is not much time to understand and develop a technique.

So, a total of five and a half hours of percussion and rhythm workshops sounded very appealing. Even better, when Dan introduced himself Friday evening, I felt immediately comfortable with him.

The first two hours was “Odd-Time Tunes.” I was the only person who had signed up, perhaps because Joanie had included it in the page of workshop descriptions, but not in the page of workshop times and titles — oops. Fortunately, we were able to have the class anyway.

I played a few things for him — my “Variations on a Three-Year-Old Theme,” as part of answering his question about my musical background, and my arrangement of “What Child Is This? / Menuet,” because he asked me to play my most rhythmically challenging piece and I couldn’t think of anything, and a bit of a Bach prelude to demonstrate how convenient it is to have my extra bass notes on both sides so I can hit them with either hand.

He taught some patterns and exercises to develop a feel for 7/8 and 5/4 rhythms, and played bits and pieces of tunes to demonstrate how the patterns work. Much to my surprise, I found that I could do some of the exercises. The ones that I particularly stumbled over, he was able to break down into something easier to catch. This was very exciting and relieving — it was exactly the kind of thing I’d been wanting to learn, and here I was actually learning some of it. I might have even learned enough to try composing some stuff that would use some of these patterns.

He also showed me his Linear Chromatic, an interesting dulcimer developed by James Jones. Most dulcimers lay out the notes in diatonic scale boxes. A diatonic box has four notes on one side, like D, E, F#, and G, and four on the other side, like A, B, C#, and D. Some dulcimers, like mine, put the extra notes on additional bridges, which requires big reaches and unusual hammering patterns. The linear chromatic puts them into the box, so that the notes on one side would be D, D#, E, F, F#, G, and I guess G#, then on the other side you’d have A, A#, B, C, C#, D. What this means is that, with a bit of a stretch, you can still use the hammering patterns you learn on a regular dulcimer, but it’s much easier to use the chromatic notes. It was interesting to see some of the ways Dan’s found to take advantage of this layout.

In the afternoon, there were several of us in the “Percussion Rudiments” class, which involved learning single stroke rolls, paradiddles, double stroke rolls, and a host of little exercises that could help us master various aspects of each rudiment.

Dan’s teaching method in this class involved two particularly useful concepts.

One is the point of control. First of all, he had us play a single stroke roll faster and faster, until we felt we were starting to lose control, signalled by sloppy rhythm and by muscle tension. We could then determine an optimum practicing tempo by backing off slightly to the point of control. Secondly, he had us work on an exercise with a double hit by one hammer. You can either strike twice, at least at slower tempos, or let the hammer bounce twice with one stroke. We started slowly, striking twice, and gradually increased the tempo and started letting the hammer bounce instead of tightly controlling it with two strokes. In this case, we were sort of blurring the point of control.

The other concept is the burst. A single stroke roll, for example, is continuous: Right Left R L R L, etc. But you can generally play just three notes — RLR — much faster than you can play a continuous roll. So you can practice this or other small bits of an exercise in short repeated bursts. One I particularly liked involves single hits RLRLRLRL followed by double bounces RRLLRRLLRRLLRRLL; the idea is that the motion and timing (both phrases should be the same length) should stay the same, allowing one to get into and out of bounces cleanly.

It was great to have time to try things and get feedback. And I felt that I was learning techniques in a context — rhythmic patterns — that seemed likely to translate somewhat naturally into my playing. Before, for example, I might try to just practice isolated double bounces with my left hand, but even if I could do a few in a drill like that, they weren’t showing up when I played tunes.

I wonder if I’ll have the discipline to actually practice these things on my own…

I miss having a teacher, and I think Dan’s teaching style would be a good match for my learning style. Plus I just like him. Too bad he’s in Chattanooga.

# Recording, wedding, festival, crosswalks?

by Marcy September 5, 2005

For a few months, a few streets downtown have been closed. Yesterday, on route to church, we found them open. And what marvelous work has been done? No, not repairing the cracks and potholes due to our heavy winters, but fancy new red cement crosswalks with decorative white paint arrows! Oh, thank you, Ithaca!

Last Thursday The Hanshaw Trio met to record again after a haitus of two months. I’m still working on mixing and editing the track, a medley of O’Keefe’s Slide, Derrane’s, and Trip to Durrow. We recorded six takes, and two of them are possibilities for the first two tunes, and three of them for the final tune.

Right now I’m working on edits using take 4 for the first half, edited with take 3, 4, or 5 for the final tune. Yeah, even using take 4 for both parts requires editing, because we missed our entrance for Durrow and just waited for the previous chord to fade out, then took it from there — so I have to edit out that gap.

Yesterday I played for an afternoon wedding. It was lovely — nice weather, a nice setting (we played from a balcony overlooking a yard edged with trees), and a nice mix of Celtic and classical music on harp and hammered dulcimer. We used my new pa, and found out that, as I suspected, better mics (borrowed from one of my trio partners) do work better with it, so now I know what my business’ next purchase will be.

This Thursday I am headed to West Virginia for the Upper Potomac Dulcimer Fest. It’s my favorite dulcimer festival (even though I’ve only been to one other). I was supposed to teach a class on modes, but only one person signed up so we canceled it. The good news is I get to go to a class on percussion techniques that was scheduled at the same time.

Things I’m especially looking forward to are:

1. Playing my tune “Fallen” in Friday’s open mic, with my friend Rick Davis on psaltery and musician extraordinaire Paul Oorts on guitar. I think Paul is awesome, and I’m so excited that he agreed to accompany us.
2. Eating at Shepherdstown’s Thai restaurant. Mmmm.
3. Visiting friends for a few days afterwards — including a couple I haven’t seen since last year, who have a new baby, and some girls from the youth group I used to work with, whom I haven’t seen for two years.

Anyway, I doubt I’ll be blogging again until I get back.

# Tuning reminds me

by Marcy July 27, 2005

Today I need to tune again for a gig at the local Alterra nursing home, and that reminds me of my earlier post about my fears for the Cranberry Dulcimer Gathering, which I ought to report about.

I tuned without any big problems last Wednesday, and the dulcimer sounded fine at that evening’s jam and while we were practicing on Thursday. Later Thursday, though, I was starting to worry about our plan to play on the Commons Friday, because I wouldn’t have time to retune between playing there and leaving for the festival. We decided to stay home instead, which reduced my worry.

It came back the next day, when we started to practice and Rick said the difference between our dulcimers was significant enough to require retuning. I went at it with a sinking heart but trying to think “good enough.” I had a fairly difficult time of it, but I managed not to completely break down and cry until I was done and safely hidden in my bathroom. While Rick tuned his in an easy twenty minutes (how I wish I could do that), I got lunch together, and then we left for Binghamton.

I am not very flexible or adaptable. It’s hard for me to recover from something like a terrible tuning time, plus there was the stupidity with the car the previous day*, plus I was tired because we’d stayed up talking too late the last two nights. Nothing like going to a festival already overtired, feeling stupid, and psychologically worn out from a bad tuning session.

I was determined to avoid tuning for the duration of the festival, but had that underlying fear that it would become necessary, and along with that, an underlying fierce defensiveness lest anyone challenge me about it. No one said anything to me, and as far as I could tell it sounded okay for the rest of the weekend (it’s hard to tell, in a room full of dulcimers, whether mine or someone else’s is wrong).

Today I hope I can tune with less stress, even if I am increasingly certain that I’ll never be able to tune any faster.

*Instead of having Rick back his truck out into the road, then having me drive my car out, then replacing his truck, I tried to drive around his truck. I missed the truck but ran over the porch step, splintering a bit off the railing and putting a nice crumpled dent in the fender. Fortunately I didn’t break the light.

# Cranberry Dulcimer Gathering

by Marcy July 25, 2005

Wednesday evening my friend Rick Davis arrived from North Carolina, in order to teach at the Cranberry Dulcimer Gathering in Binghamton this weekend. After a quick dinner, we attended a local “slow jam,” a group of musicians learning tunes together, often playing them first at a slower tempo and then again at the usual speed. Thursday we practiced a bit for the piece we planned to play in the Friday coffeehouse concert at the festival, had lunch at the Moosewood, and visited the Farmers Market. Friday morning I had to tune again, which was very annoying and discouraging. We had just enough time to eat a little lunch before we left for Binghamton.

Things began with Cliff Cole‘s workshop on mapping the dulcimer. He went over various ways to play major and modal scales and some chords. Then I taught a class on Carolan tunes. I’m not an expert on 18th Century blind Irish harper Turlough O’Carolan, but I do play a handful of his tunes, which are popular among dulcimer folks. We learned Blind Mary and Captain O’Kane, and I also handed out Hewlett and Planxty Irwin. I included chords and harmonies for each tune, so folks will have some additional options to work on at home.

The coffeehouse concert started after dinner. In the middle was a set by the featured autoharpist, and before and after were sets by other instructors, who each got to perform one song or tune. In fact, if someone was accompanying someone else, that counted as their turn. So I ended up doing a solo version of my piece so that Rick and Cliff could do their own pieces and not lose their turns by accompanying me.

Tip: Don’t commute an hour and a half to a dulcimer festival. Even though we left right after the concert, we still didn’t get home until a little after 1 am, and had to get up at 6am to get back in time for the morning meeting. It’s no fun to get so little sleep without even getting to jam.

Saturday morning I went to a mountain carols class by Donna Missigman. We learned three carols, including a G major version of Star in the East, which I’d previously learned in A minor. The next class was about arranging, by the featured hammered dulcimist, Mark Wade. He talked about arranging in terms of overall structure, like intros and conclusions, transitions, building up to a peak, and that sort of thing.

After lunch, Sam Edelston did a class reviving a variety of his favorite lessons from past festival classes, including a useful and fun exercise for learning to control hammer bounces and developing greater facility with fast reaches. Next I attended a singing jam, which was fun even though I didn’t sing much. My other class was the last one of the day; I taught four simple separated hands techniques, including octaves, sixths and fifths, three-note right-hand chords, and right-hand root-fifth accompaniment.

Rick, Cliff, Elliott, Nancy and I had dinner at a charming little place called The Copper Cricket. The dessert made up for the dinner. Cream cheese filling wrapped up in pastry with raspberries, raspberry sauce, and ice cream. Mmmm.

Saturday night’s concert began with the featured mountain dulcimer player, then Mark Wade. He started with some classical pieces, then went into some traditional things played in untraditional ways, and some other stuff like blues. Rick and I did stay late this night in order to jam a bit with Cliff, A. J. Bashore, and Sam.

Yesterday we tried to play at the Farmers Market but there wasn’t room for us, so we played out on the Commons instead. It was a lovely day with low humidity and a nice breeze, and we had a good time playing together. When we got home, we collapsed for a nap, woke up to go eat at Ralph’s Ribs, and returned to go to bed again.

Rick left about a half hour ago. Today, I think I’ll tune, go to Home Depot and Agway to get materials for a chicken wire fence for the gardens, since the groundhogs got through my stick fences over the weekend (grumble grumble grumble), practice for our next trio recording session this Thursday, and listen to the CDs I got from swapping with Cliff — one is something his band recorded in a cavern, and one is his daughter Emily’s.

Unless I get overtaken by a nap.

# Not safe, but good

by Marcy July 14, 2005

I love C. S. Lewis’ Narnia Chronicles. I think they’re not only good literature, but full of fruitful ideas. One is the idea that Aslan, the Christ-figure, is not safe, but good. God is not in the business of wish-fulfillment or comfort or convenience. Not that all wishes, comforts, and conveniences are bad, but that sometimes there is something more important. God’s purposes and ways are higher than ours, and can be quite dangerous to us in an earthly sense, but we can have confidence that whatever he brings our way, he will carry us through it, and all things will work together for our ultimate good (Romans 8:28).

I have been thinking about the upcoming Cranberry Gathering, a festival for mountain and hammered dulcimer and for autoharp. I will be teaching two classes, and my friend Rick Davis from North Carolina will also be teaching. He’s arriving next Wednesday evening, so that we’ll have some time to practice for a piece we’ll do at the Friday night coffeehouse concert, and we’ll also spend Friday morning playing out on the Commons before heading to Binghamton for the festival.

That means that I’ll have to tune on Wednesday, and hope that my dulcimer stays sufficiently in tune for the whole weekend. With the weather being somewhat various lately, especially in terms of humidity, that hope seems really thin.

So what, right? If you were me, you’d just tune it again; Friday between playing out and arriving at the festival, and maybe again Saturday or Sunday sometime. And that’s what all the other dulcimer players will be doing. At least all the ones who care about being in tune and who are not raw beginners.

I’m not like those people. I can’t seem to ever tune in less than an hour and a half, and my average lately is just over two hours. And that’s not even all in one sitting; I get stressed enough that I generally have to take at least one serious break and sometimes two. I typically set aside a day for tuning, and work on it in bits throughout that day.

My reputation is at stake. I’m a professional performer. And I’m actually teaching some of these workshops. If my dulcimer doesn’t stay in tune, what will I do? I could leave it alone, or I could try to adjust it and hope that it doesn’t take too long, or I could try to adjust it and burst into a crying fit if it’s not cooperative. What will people think?

I’m dreading this.

Yesterday afternoon I was thinking about it. I was reminding myself that generally my dulcimer sounds pretty good to other people even when it sounds off to me. And that in the past my dulcimer has indeed stayed quite reasonably in tune for weekend festivals. There was one time when I did some visiting in Virginia before heading over to the Upper Potomac Fest in WV, and I had to retune in WV, and had a terrible time of it, but then the rest of the weekend it was fine.

Still worried, I tried the opposite approach, instead of trying to dismiss the fear, facing it head-on: what’s the worst that can happen? My dulcimer will sound awful, and I won’t be able to use it to demonstrate the things I’m teaching. I’ll try to tune it, wasting the entire class time, and having a panic attack, maybe even going into a rage and hitting someone or smashing my dulcimer. Everyone will think I’m absolutely crazy, or a fool, and that I have no right to be there at all, participant or teacher. I’ll never be able to go back. In fact, I’ll be blacklisted from all the other festivals, too, and wherever we go once the husband has finished here at Cornell, I’ll never again be able to play or teach dulcimer in public.

That’s pretty dire. But not the end of the world. Do I really care more what the dulcimer community thinks of me than what God thinks of me? Isn’t God big enough to provide for me even if I lose this career? I’m not saying it’ll be easy or that it won’t hurt a lot. But surely I can trust that God is good even when I’m a fool and humiliated?

# Summer 2004

by Marcy September 10, 2004 August 1, 2009

### Chenango Summer Music Festival

This weekend festival in Hamilton, NY, features mostly classical music but also a variety of other musical acts plus a dessert contest. My official performance was a morning show at the Barge Canal coffeehouse; after lunch I also played some on the Village Green. In the afternoon I headed over to Susan Nolen’s home for dinner and a jam session — we had a fiddle and three hammered dulcimers (including a new Nick Blanton… mmmm) and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

### The Cranberry Dulcimer Gathering

In July, I attended the Cranberry Dulcimer Gathering in Binghamton. This festival features workshops, concerts, jams, and sales for hammered dulcimer, mountain dulcimer, and autoharp. I taught two classes, one on modes and one on weddings, and I also got to take classes, including Cliff Cole’s “Special Effects” and “Singing With Dulcimer,” Bob Wey’s “Playing With Your Blocks,” Deb Justice’s “Irish Tunes,” Rick Fogel’s “Playing From The Heart,” and Donna Missigman’s “Waltzes,” shown in the picture. This was a great festival. It was so cool to meet various people: Curt Osgood, who also recorded at Wilburland; Cliff Cole, who reminds me of Tim Seaman; Deb Justice, a fellow William and Mary alum; Bob Wey, who helped me decide to get a strobe tuner; Sam Edelston, who does some really interesting things on the dulcimer; Marya Katz, who also plays a Jerry Read Smith dulcimer…

### The Hanshaw Trio

When Trim the Velvet lost Harry Lawless, we found Craig Higgins and became The Hanshaw Trio. Here we are at the Ithaca Farmers Market on a late August Saturday. The mostly Celtic ensemble includes Jerry Drumheller (fiddle), Craig (guitar and mandolin), and myself (dulcimer).

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