I only know Dennis, virtually, through Geoff Black’s Nova Scotia Zoom sessions and, when I saw and heard him, was immediately fascinated by his choice of material and his song arrangements. I began this conversation by asking him for a bit of background:
DENNIS: I’m 73, living with my wife and a steady stream of nephews, currently a 10 year old. (I have been) folk musically inclined since high school during the “Great Folk Scare.” My parents acquired a wretched Kay guitar for a generic gift, that my three brothers didn’t want. I played “This Land is Your Land” once in the high school choir on it.
I have made a rather substantial collection of lp’s (300±), audiotapes, many of radio shows and live performers, and cd’s (1000?), and songbooks of folk music. And glean for songs and musical ideas that satisfy my tastes, with an eye out for things I can play that are unusual and sustain my interest. I rather admire Martin Simpson, Tom Rush, Steve Baughman, Robbin Bulloch, Neal Hellman, Kate Rusby, among many others for demonstrating how to make an interesting presentation.
About 10 years ago, I found a Korean dulcimer ($5 in a Goodwill Thrift Store) and restored it. Shortly after that I attended a San Francisco Folk Music Club: Free Folk Festival dulcimer workshop lead by DJ Hamouris and Peter Tommerup.:
STEVE: The “Great Folk Scare” - not something I’ve heard of?
DENNIS: “The Great Folk Scare” is a term I heard via the San Francisco Folk Music Club (SFFMC). Folk music spurred on by The Kingston Trio, Peter, Paul and Mary, etc. seemed like it was headed for increasing and enduring popularity. That didn’t happen.
STEVE: Can you tell me about your local music scene? Do you play in public with others or do you stick to solo playing?
DENNIS: The local folk scene is pretty lively with SFFMC leading the way. Their on-line Folknik has an extensive listing of SF bay area folk happenings. I’ve been a SFFMC member since ca. 1985, and early-on did all the campouts and even co-hosted a concert series.
STEVE: When I hear “San Francisco” I remember the hippy, flower-power era. Is any of that stuff still an influence in the area? Tell me a bit more about these campouts......
DENNIS: At that time the SFFMC campouts were held at boy-scout facilities in the Santa Cruz mountains south of San Francisco Bay. Summers, tent camping, winters (mild here) in unheated cabins. Format: workshops, dancing, concerts by those who volunteer, a couple of notables included Chuck Brodsky (solo music career) and Rick Dougherty who went on to be a replacement performer with both The Limelighters and The Kingston Trio. SF gave us office space at the Fort Mason Center from which we brought in travelling musicians. Banjoist Allison Brown was one, and she was only the opening act. More memorable for me was Bill Staines. I got to open for him, but my wife gave him a face-reddening introduction. We had seen him play at the “Arc” in Ann Arbor, MI, then we went to Grand Rapids to visit my parents who announced they were taking us to see him at the Museum that next night where, she said, “He played the exact same concert as he did the night before, song for song and joke for joke, right down to the special requests.” Faith Petric, the face/matriarchal figure of the SSFMC lived maybe 2 blocks from the corner of Haight and Ashbury. Hippies, flower power gone or at least not noticeable.
STEVE: Who made your dulcimer(s)? Many of us who get the dulcimer bug start collecting instruments. Do you have others, or do you stick to just the one?
DENNIS: I suppose I have 10+ dulcimers/woodrows (strumsticks) mostly from thrift stores, yard sales, craigslist, and shopgoodwill.com, and they all pretty much need fixing. Considering all the weird flaws in these instruments, it’s no wonder where they’ve ended up instead of being played and enjoyed.
The one from an actual music store (Starving Musicians in Berkeley), a Blue Lion, gets the most use now. I didn’t like it’s sound at first (too lively), but I learned how to control it. It can be played with 3 or 4 courses, and now I prefer 4-course (after another learning period to get used to playing with the strings closer together). Bass to treble usually tuned DAdd or DAdC and just droning the treble d, perfectly compatible with 3-course play, but brighter.
Dulcimer 2 is a Magic Mountain by Shellnut. Dulcimer 3 -maker unknown- is all walnut with mermaid sound holes – tinny sound good for French music. Dulcimer 4 Korean ‘La Primera’ strung baritone.
STEVE: I didn’t realise you were in to French music Dennis. I have a few favourite French tunes too. How did you come across it and what tunes/songs do you play.
DENNIS: Breton groups, Barde and Kornog are two favourites. Steve Baughman and Robin Bullock on a you-tube video introduced me to how cool a French tune can be, with Dañs Keff on youtube. They call another of theirs “Breton Dance” which with the help of Jim Oakden’s Breton Song catalog (joakden@gmail.com) is more specifically called: Kas a Bar, a dance style name. Others I rather like to play: Dañs Fisel and Laridé. They sound magnificent on a dulcimer.
STEVE: How do you achieve your very individual sound Dennis?
DENNIS: I normally play with fingernails in a quasi-frailing style (as per playing the banjo) where the backs of the nails are flicked out across a string(s) like a snap. It can be as percussive (loud) as using a pick but without the slapping noise. I also get plenty of tone control varying strike pressure, and even which nail does the striking (each sounds a little different). The left hand has much to do with exploring the emotional aspects of a piece with slides, hammer-ons, and not just pull-offs, but pluck-offs used liberally.
STEVE: You have played a very interesting selection of material at the Zoom sessions. How do you come across these songs - some of them are quite unusual? How do you set about arranging songs once you decide to play them?
DENNIS: The covid era began and I found ‘sendinthemusic.com’ . I am a weekly song-leader at the Saturday zoom session and was twice the special guest, thus in the ranks of William Duddy, Jan and Hamish, Geoff B., Bing Futch, and other dulcimer luminaries. I’ve been told that I’ve tabbed over 200 tunes for the cause. The average attendance is 80, and Pat Clark, who runs the site, has all of the past meetings available for view.
Many of the tunes I’ve tabbed seem to be new to the dulcimer lexicon, which is what happens when one combines a substantial experience with folk music along with some facility using TablEdit. When a tune is somehow interesting to me, I can have it tabbed in about 20 minutes; plus, TablEdit has a midi playback feature for instant feedback so I can easily adjust for my playing style.
STEVE: That’s a lot of tabbing going on – well done! I have just started tabbing in the past couple of years and it still takes me ages. I must look up the sendinthemusic site again.
DENNIS: On arranging: the lap dulcimer, a term I use for its brevity, allows for melody and chord elements and I do like to work in interesting chords, and for instance switching chord sounds behind a melody note as I do in “Shenandoah.” The chording lets me approximate the suite of overtones of a violin allowing the dulcimer to sound OK on an opera piece such as Puccini’s Nessun Dorma. With arranging, I hope to instill interest and to not get a signature sound in the process. For example, Bill Staines wrote many wonderful songs, but you can tell it’s a Bill Staines song in the first bar and a half. And on a sad note, 60’s folk groups kept popping up with many of the same songs as other groups, in an eerily similar style. I wonder if music producers were responsible for this stagnation.
STEVE: I love your tune "Taricha Creek". I have actually been playing it at our local folk clubs and it goes down very well. Have you written many tunes and/or songs?
DENNIS: I have composed ca. 30 tunes plus fragments. Whenever I have down time, my mind fills-in with tunes, and now that have cell phone and TablEdit, I can get the tunes recorded before they fade from memory.
STEVE: Thanks for sharing all this with me Dennis. I look forward to hearing more of your tunes and arrangements in the near future.