Bowed Psaltery in Spring!

The winter has been hard. We have driven through some of the worst weather with our big truck. There was a full week of terrible weather in the East / Midwest, during which time we never got over 45 mph. We put chains on our tires three times in one day, which is more than some of our trucking friends have done in their lifetime. In February we had two minor accidents, which messed up the truck a little, but did not disable it. Glad this winter is behind us. The weather has been lovely the past several weeks. We hit one last snow storm south of Denver – the only patch of snow in the whole nation, and we were in it. Since then we've started to get longer loads out west. It was seeming like we'd never get out West again, but now we've had trips to Southern CA, Montana, and heading to Stockton, CA right now. The longest trips allow us to actually function as a driving team – keep the wheels rolling round the clock. However at the moment we are in a motel due to slushy snow in the mountains of Wyoming, not willing to risk bad weather at night. It should be better during daytime. The real highlight of our travels in the past few weeks was last weekend in Beckley, WV where we attended a bowed psaltery workshop. There were 20 psaltery players from Pittsburgh (a couple;) Ohio (another couple;) New Hampshire (1;) Cape Cod, MA (1;) Roanoke, VA (1;) Charleston, WV (1;) Illinois (4;) and the rest from Beckley & surrounding parts. Besides us from Illinois, there was a woman from Chicago area and a man from Decatur. Basically, we worked on tunes all day Fri, Sat and Sun. under the guidance of Tish Westman, artist in residence. Sunday morning we met at 8:00, opened with prayer and played & sang hymns. The venue for the whole event was 'TAMARACK' – a fabulous facility built and run by the state of WV to promote the best of West Virginia folk arts and crafts. The grounds are beautifully manicured in several gardens with many lovely sculptures. The building is circular with a court yard in the middle and looks like a crown on top of the hill. There are artisan studios around the outside perimeter. The floor space is filled with the finest products of wood, glass, metal, ceramics, fabric... – bowls, furniture, stained glass, pottery, art...including the psalteries which we are playing on, made at Tamarack by Tish and Greg Westman. One of the local musicians, Hunter, is a junior in high school and a very talented dulcimer player – state champion. The guy from Roanoke is a general surgeon who discovered psaltery on a visit to Tamarack, just as we did. Dr. Jim takes it seriously and has played his psaltery on stage in Roanoke theatrical productions. During an any-instrument jam session I played violin, and Jim heard Ragtime Annie, a song he knows and joined in, with Hunter on dulcimer. Donna recorded it and put it on You-tube. Everything culminated in our concert in the theater on Sunday afternoon. We played a one-hour bowed psaltery program of tunes with melody, harmony and drone parts. It was all positive! Peggy was inspired to work on psaltery. We did not prepare ahead of time as most of the participants did. We had music available by internet to print, but didn't actually work on it until a couple days before arrival. I did okay, being an experienced note reader, but Peggy had a rough time all the way through, which only made her want to be well prepared next time. She is not afraid to jump in, no matter how unpolished the result. But we need to be prepared to present a fine performance whenever the opportunity arises, as happened this morning in Omaha. We had breakfast with my mom, and Peggy wanted to demonstrate the psalteries. It was fine, but we could really only do justice to a couple of the songs – Amazing Grace, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and “Arron Boat Song.” Some of the other songs still need a lot of work, but we will have them ready for YOU next time we see you. We had to rush off right after the concert to make it to a pick-up by closing time 2 hours away. We slept in our truck for the weekend, showering at the truck stop nearby. We always have our two pups with us, so they were left alone a lot for 3 days. Peggy or I would go out to the truck frequently to let them out. Now we are in Laramie, WY – via Beckley, WV; southern VA; NJ near NYC; Philadelphia; Chicago; Stoughton, WI; back to Montgomery, PA; and then all the way across I-80 to northern CA. We should make it there tomorrow if the weather is okay. Thanks for your prayers! And we'll be thinking of you – prayerfully.
Ken