When I was in Austin recently I visited Hill Country Guitars to look at some walking dulcimers created by Kevin Jones.
Here’s some information from his site about himself
“Twenty plus years of instrument building, from general gopher to business owner, I am still building and still enjoying it. It was in 1989, while working for another guitar builder, that I built my first mountain dulcimer. While it was the dulcimer type music that I was after, the lap style approach seemed upside down to me. After moving to Olympia, WA I decided to start building on my own. With an extremely meager beginning, I built the first Walkabout Dulcimer out of wood from the dumpster of Dusty Strings Dulcimer Co in Seattle. I finished it, took it in to them and they bought it. Fortunately I no longer dumpster dive for supplies.”
I bought a bass dulcimer after hearing a clip of Kevin playing it online. The walking dulcimer has a fascinating sound, different to anything I had heard before. Kevin worked for Bill Collings for nine years and its clear to me that Kevin has the same philosophy about producing instruments with the best possible quality that Bill has. The bass dulcimer sounds terrific when combined with a ukulele and I already have a few tunes in mind from the first few weeks of playing this instrument.
My good friend and teacher Martin Simpson once commented that every instrument demands that you play in a particular way and this is certainly the case with this instrument. Take a look at Kevin’s site here – http://www.walkaboutdulcimer.com/index.htm
