This Saturday and Sunday we’ll be enjoying performances, presentations, workshops, and even an art show from our Kentucky friends, Rich and the Po’ Folk.  Great old time music, a chance to learn some ballads, find out about the musical side of the coal industry, and even more than that!  The full run-down is on our events page: http://chattanoogafolk.com/events

The opportunity to build finally presented itself when Lynn and his wife Amy were married in 1987. It seems Amy wanted a dulcimer, and that was just the open door Lynn needed to take over part of the basement, acquire tools, and start building. After four dulcimers were complete, Lynn still wanted to build mandolins, but felt that it would be wise to build a guitar or two as an intermediate step to the more complicated F-5 he really wanted to build. So, in 1989 the first guitar was finished and Dudenbostel Stringed Instruments was born. He was not prepared for the success he was about to have with the guitars, and it was another 7 years before the first F-5 came from his shop.

Inspired by the vintage Martin guitars and Gibson mandolins of the 1920’s and 1930’s, Lynn became a full-time luthier in 1997 and continues to build traditional style guitars and mandolins in his shop in Maryville, Tennessee.

Visit Lynn’s website here: http://www.lynndudenbostel.com/

On southbound I-75, on the way back from Clifftop.

Listening to: Soundwagon, tunes from Mississippi.

One thing I’ve observed about old time music, or fiddling in particular, is the way that it never sounds as good when played by one person alone as it does when played in a group.  No wait, let me clarify.  When someone like Joseph Decosimo picks up the fiddle or banjo and plays a tune solo, it still sounds like a little slice of paradise.  I suppose I can only speak for myself (but old time players, wouldn’t you back me up on this?): something about the unity of a group elevates my playing to a place I simply can’t get it to when I’m playing alone.  Ok, so take that handy socio-musical phenomenon and multiply it by 5000.  And that’s Clifftop.

Last Monday afternoon, I arrived at the George Washington Carver State Park in Clifftop, WV for a festival officially titled, but never ever called by its name, “Appalachian String Band Music Festival”.  To all these players who come from nearly all, if not all, 50 states, and from many foreign countries, the festival is Clifftop.  The official dates of the festival also don’t matter.  If the start date is Wednesday, August 4, a small village of tents and RVs is already developing down in the wooded holes and up on the flatlands by the Thursday prior.  This means that the person walking in on the official first day of the festival sees, hears, and smells a population of players who literally have kept music going nonstop for seven days. There’s no paid entertainment at this festival.  The participants are their own entertainment, in the form of jams, contests, dinner parties, Swedish toasts, conversations, strolls through the maze of tents to hear the walking tour of old time music…

Fiddlers, clawhammer banjo players, and guitarists all sitting knee-to-knee in tight clusters under a canopy with the bass player tucked in close behind, playing the most hypnotic groovy music you’ve ever heard—the Oomp, Oomp of the bass’s one/five alternation, and the oomp-chack oomp-chack of the guitar, the ticka ticka ticka ticka of the banjo and the sea-like rises and falls of the melody coming from the fiddle.  The whole band falling into deep stealth mode with the tune, and then reemerging with a great crescendo that literally makes dancers leap to their feet.  And you might think this great crescendo, like a fireworks show, would indicate that the end of the tune is near.  But you’d be wrong.  Come back 15 minutes later, and they’re still reveling in the same tune.

Regarding my observation about the unity of a group of players elevating any one of those players’ own music making, and my simple equation of multiplying this by 5000 to equal Clifftop… Well, it’s a loose calculation to begin with, and to quantify Clifftop means nothing as of Sunday when all these musicians will travel back to their homes (or to the next festival) to bring their old and new favorite tunes to old and new groups of players.  We were bees working inside the hive this week.  Some essence of the experience will travel with us as we go.  And once again, speaking only for myself, I know that my own musicianship has been kicked up a notch, if only from what my senses took in this week.  Certainly, the callouses on my fingers have never been thicker—even typing feels funny in my left hand now.  I don’t think I’ve ever played with such open abandon and been swept up so helplessly in the current of a festival full of players.  And the best part about this is that the elements of this experience were there in abundance, maybe even the loaves and fishes trick, where no matter how much we played, we never ran out of tunes, friends and strangers to play them with, and energy to make that bow move across the strings a few more thousand times before laying it down for a rest.  Players at any point along their learning path participating in this week of total old time immersion could not possibly walk away unchanged.  I got the sense that we’re all working on our music year-round, and coming together to celebrate that work and that learning.  I still struggle sometimes to fiddle a flawless “Half Past Four”, among thousands of other tunes and styles I have yet to practice and perfect.  But maybe it’s not about perfection.  Maybe it’s about being there in the cacophonous woods as that second (or third, or tenth) fiddler who’s going to help elevate the group’s experience.  It’s a pot luck where all the guests bring their own special dish of tunes, passion, and then some more passion.  And just a few more tunes.

-Christie Burns