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Cajun Music for the Mountain Dulcimer | Ron Ewing: Maker and Player of Dulcimers
Hammered Dulcimer: So you've learned tunes…now what?

Ron Ewing, of Columbus, Ohio, is one of the most inventive of mountain dulcimer makers. He was first with a professional quality dulcimer capo some 30 years ago, and his design is still widely regarded as the gold standard today. He also developed the "dulcimette," an accurately fretted soprano dulcimer tuned an octave higher in DAD. His development of the baritone dulcimer (low G and A), and its relative, the "baritone dulcimette," (high G and A), enabled dulcimer players to easily play in various other keys, both open and capoed. As a musician he is especially known for his spirited playing of Irish dance tunes. Here's Ron's story...

Like so many others I know, it all started for me with the music of Richard and Mimi Farina. 1970 found me in Dayton, Ohio studying engineering and English Lit - and fingerstyle guitar on the side - when I chanced upon that wonderful Vanguard "twofer" comprising their albums, "Celebrations for a Grey Day" and "Reflections in a Crystal Wind." Suddenly, my world had shifted. I knew Richard Farina as an author (check out his book Been Down So Long, Looks Like Up To Me), but had no idea about his music. The first few silvery notes of "Reflections ..." changed all that and I was hooked. I spent the next few hours listening intently to that joyful and haunting sound, and staring at the photos inside the record jacket of that beautiful young couple and that strange, exotic-looking instrument I later came to know as the mountain dulcimer. The next day I ran down to my guitar teacher full of excitement to share my find and asked, "Where are they now, and where can I get a dulcimer?" I was crushed to learn that Richard died in 1966, soon after those records were made, but I was even more determined to get a dulcimer and learn how to play it.

Easier said than done back in those days. My teacher allowed as how he thought there was a builder over in Indiana somewhere, but he didn't know how to contact him or where he lived exactly. Remember, if you can, this was before the advent of the internet and search engines. Time passed - if my interest didn't - and 6 months later there was an article in a local paper on a dulcimer maker and his wife, and the Appalachian craft shop they ran in nearby Centerville, Ohio. I couldn't believe my luck!

Anxious to check it out, I went down to "The Frontiersman" that evening. As I walked in the door I heard the beautiful sound I came looking for, coming from an older gentleman seated in the corner of the shop, strumming away at "Wildwood Flower" with a thumbpick and a whistling noter. I little knew that sitting before me in his typical 3-cornered hat and fringed leather jacket was none other than Chet Hines, a builder and player of some renown in the region, with a 45 rpm record to his credit, featuring "Wildwood Flower," "Listen to the Mockingbird," and "Silver Bells" among others, in his clear and distinctive style.

Chet was a retired civilian engineer by trade, and quite inventive. He grew up in the Appalachian foothills of southern Ohio and learned the craft from his grandfather, building his first dulcimer from an orange crate. When I first met him he was working on How to Make and Play the Dulcimore - one of the first books on the subject. He referred to dulcimore as the "Elizabethan" spelling, which I learned helping to proof the book - one of my first jobs. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

What's that saying about good luck being "preparation meets opportunity"? I was totally enthralled at that point, and after a bit of conversation I jumped in with both feet, ordering a walnut 4-string dulcimer after the style of Uncle Will Singleton - a relative of Jean Ritchie, who traveled the hills and hollows of Kentucky peddling his dulcimers in the early 1900's. Furthermore, my engineer's curiosity overcoming my usual shyness, I talked Chet into taking me on as an apprentice. He started me out sanding and finishing dulcimers in a room over the shop, but within a year the shop was sold. So I commuted the 25 miles out to his home in New Carlisle, Ohio - often by bicycle when the weather was good. He had his workshop set up in his crowded garage, with its door open, summer, winter, rain or shine. Good ventilation anyway! We built teardrops, hourglasses, and what he called his "masterpiece dulcimer" - a large, violin-shaped instrument - all with scroll heads and wooden violin pegs, in walnut or cherry mostly. The one exception I remember was a courting dulcimer in walnut and spruce with a beautiful, big voice he made for "Fat City" - the Danoff duo who backed John Denver. Think, "Take Me Home, Country Roads." They insisted on a spruce top, and I took note of that.

After a year of me bugging Chet to let me build as well as finish, arthritis and an allergic reaction to some mahogany he picked up got the best of his hands, and I took over most of the production while he went out and played at festivals and malls around the area, generating orders. I built about 200 dulcimers for Chet before heading off on my own to study guitar building and develop my own mix of traditional and modern building methods. In particular, as my playing skills increased and my ear improved, I realized that Chet's fret pattern was a little off, especially when playing chords, which I was getting more and more into. I believe the pattern was a 28" scale tuned by ear, without the 61/2 fret, handed down from his grandfather, which was often the custom with Appalachian builders at the time, and still is in some areas. Grandpa's ear just needed a little tuning....

I mimicked Richard Farina's style when I first started playing, and especially loved instrumentals like "Dandelion River Run" and "Hamish." A couple of years later though, I met a wonderful girl named Alexa, who was a wonderful clawhammer banjo player, and I started learning more and more "old-timey" tunes. I especially liked dark modal tunes such as "Little Sadie" and "Run Boy Run." I used a noter on some tunes, fingers on others, but all mostly single string stuff, using the traditional modal tunings. Somewhere around there I also got my first taste of traditional Irish music upon hearing the inimitable Kevin Burke fiddling away at "Sailor on the Rock" - a great reel stuck in the middle of an early Arlo Guthrie album. Another surge of learning followed. Alexa and I ended up doing a traditional folk show together on a local public radio station - WYSO on the Antioch college campus in Yellow Springs, Ohio - sharing a turntable spinning out traditional Appalachian and Celtic tunes amongst the ballads.

All this led to a job and a move to Connecticut, in the fall of 1975, to live with Sandy and Caroline Paton, and Lee Haggerty, who ran Folk Legacy Records out of a great old refurbished farmhouse at the top of Sharon Mountain. A musical commune of sorts, and a heavenly home to me for several years after. Like a lot of small labels, they set up a record booth at wonderful little festivals throughout New England, like Fox Hollow and the Eisteddfod, where the great Irish supergroup The Bothy Band played on their first US tour.

In his early days, Sandy toured the Appalachians, collecting songs and recording traditional singers such as Jean Ritchie's sister Edna. He loved handmade instruments, and sought out traditional builders like Leonard and Clifford Glenn from North Carolina, and sold their dulcimers and fretless banjos at the booth as well. I had just started to build dulcimers of my own, but Sandy liked them and my playing, and invited me to put some of my dulcimers out on the table when they did festivals. I built the first dulcimettes there, and they were an immediate hit. Talk about validation! The Patons really helped me on the business end of things, and pushed my development as a musician and person as well.

It was a real hotbed of traditional music up there at Folk Legacy. I was learning so much so fast that it was hard to keep up with all the tuning/tunings required - not to mention the speed and volume of a fiddle - but practice and improved design evened that race. Around this time I built my first 6 string/3 course dulcimer, seeking the volume and sound of the Irish bouzouki - or octave mandolin - and was not disappointed. I'd earlier given up on wooden tuning pegs in favor of zither pins or steel friction pegs on scroll heads for a traditional look, and then guitar and mandolin machines on flat heads. So much easier and accurate, if not historically "PC." I had also been playing, writing music, and performing with a jazz and classical guitar player back home, and it seemed like every new tune required another new tuning, set of chords, and positions - often on a 4 string equidistant dulcimer. "Black Magic Woman" left them screaming for more. Sometimes, just screaming...

I still played a bit of fingerstyle guitar using open tunings and a capo, and I thought to myself, "Why not do this on the dulcimer? Gotta be easier." DAD was my standard tuning by this time, as it was much better for fiddle tunes played across the fingerboard. I'd previously come up with the idea of adding a 11/2 fret to my dulcimer, to enable the playing of minor and Mixolydian tunes, as well as some interesting and useful chords. In fact, I thought I had "invented" the 11/2 fret until I saw an old Frank Proffitt dulcimer with one, hanging on Sandy Paton's wall. As they say, "everything old is new again." Later, I also added the 1/2 fret so I could play Aeolian tunes sans capo, as well as some cool chords like B flat major.

Somehow I got the idea of using a dowel and a big rubber band as a capo, and had seen someone use a modified C-clamp that only worked on the 1st fret, but neither worked very well and were a pain to put on. With a background as a part time mechanic and would-be engineer I thought, "I can do better than this." I wanted something tool-like and easy to use, and just started running ideas through my head until my dulcimer capo design popped up. I made the first one out of laminated walnut and my favorite exotic-of-the-moment zebrawood, with leather padding. It worked great the first time out, and I still use it today, some 30 years later. Sometime later I did switch to a hard rubber padding, as on guitar capos, since it was less "groovy," and my capos now have a warranty of 10 years or 100,000 notes!

So, some 1700 dulcimers and thousands of tunes later, it's been a fun ride! The best builders are the best players many say, and for me, one has always pushed the other. Thus, I can offer my customers the benefit of considerable experience as both a musician and a builder, and strive to make fine, attractive, easy to play instruments at reasonable prices, in a variety of styles. I use only solid domestic and imported woods, selected for their tonal quality, beauty, and compatibility. I shoot for a full, warm, guitar-like sound, with good volume.

As a musician, I have performed and taught throughout the country and have met a lot of nice folks, learned a lot of great tunes, and have written quite a few of my own along the way. Haven't gotten around to making that record yet, but have guested on several recordings, including Jerry Rockwell's wonderful, "The Blackbird and the Beggarman." More recently, I can be found playing the Irish slip jig "Drops of Brandy" with Jerry Rockwell and Leo Kretzner on "Dulcimer Celebrations" - a collection of live performances from Mountain Dulcimer Week at Western Carolina University.

So - on to the tune. I wrote it many years ago about a girl (aren't they all?) - a sad tale of unrequited love, in keeping with tradition. As perfect a reason there is to write a tune in the particularly haunting Phrygian mode. I'd always loved minor tunes anyway, and thought to myself late one evening, "You know, there aren't nearly enough Phrygian jigs...."

For the culturally deprived/perpetually happy set, Phrygian is much like Aeolian, in that both are minor scales with a half step between the 5th and 6th; but unlike the more common Aeolian scale or mode, it starts out half step - whole step, instead of whole step - half step. You still end up with a minor third denoting a minor scale, but it has a darker feel to it, reminding me of some Klezmer tunes I've heard. I originally wrote this in DGD open, using the 1/2 fret, but as many players have yet to jump on the 1/2 fret bandwagon, it is set here capoed up one. It makes much use of the 11/2 fret, and since I have a certain rep and obligation as unofficial high priest of the 11/2 fret, it seems only too fitting a tune. Besides, "the old gray goose is dead" - right?

So I've dusted it off, spruced it up a bit, and in a nod to Richard Farina, packed up my sorrows that inspired the tune, for your listening and playing pleasure (you're welcome). It is also a bit "bent," in that the pulse of the tune is often a bit offbeat (like me). You'll get the flavor of that as you play through it. I flatpick it, using an out-in-out, out-in-out pick pattern, as is my rhythmic custom when "getting jiggy with it" (ask the kids). I play it at a moderate pace, in the Irish style, and it isn't too difficult, if a bit busy.

For those of you who have also disdained a ride on the 11/2 fret bandwagon, a popular, if temporary solution is to tape an appropriate piece of paperclip halfway between the 1st and 2nd frets (and size DOES matter if you don't want it to buzz like the proverbial bee).

To get one installed properly, catch me at a festival where I'm often sawing away furiously, installing 1/2, 11/2, and 61/2 frets, or get thee to your local lutherie. Or be different and capo at the 2nd fret - adding one to the tab numbers - and play it in B Phrygian. In the latter case, in the midst of winter, you'd gaze mournfully at your audience and say, with a slight shiver, "I be Phrygian" (there's a slogan and a tshirt there somewhere - black, red Goth lettering). I'll stop.

Many thanks to Gail West for my website design and the computer tab - a vast improvement over my incoherent scribbles - and to Lois Hornbostel for her friendship, encouragement, and suggestions. Enjoy the tune, and I'll see you down the road somewhere!

Ron Ewing can be reached at his website, http://www.ronewingdulcimers.com.