Our Instruments

Shown is Roz playing her French hurdy-gurdy built by French luthier Jean-Claude Boudet. She originally learned from Arrigo D'Albert at Lark In The Morning camp, and has been studying with major players at Over The Water Hurdy Gurdy Festival every September for the last 6 years. Mitch is learning the hurdy-gurdy now too, and will be at Over The Water with Roz this year. Have a look at the following Wikipedia article for a full description of the hurdy-gurdy and its history: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurdy-gurdy.

Here is Mitch with his hammered dulcimer under the redwoods. His dulcimer was built by Dusty Strings company of Seattle, and is their standard full-size model, the D-35. Mitch has played for 10 years and learned from the wonderful Celtic player, Robin Petrie. Have a look at the following Wikipedia article for a full description of the hammered dulcimer and its history: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammered_dulcimer.

Mitch plays Irish system and European system diatonic button accordions. Typically this means he hauls around 4 button boxes (plus the piano accordion) to sessions, farmers' markets and gigs, because each is in a different tuning (and in the case of the Irish box, plays completely differently). The craziness does not end there -- a diatonic box plays a different note or chord depending on whether you're pushing or pulling on the bellows. And if you want to play Quebecois music, or Cajun, or Tex-Mex, or Slovenian Polka Music, it's another instrument for each. This is one of the most illogical instruments known to humanity. Why does Mitch play them? 1) He's crazy, 2) He loves them, 3) Traditional instruments are the appropriate choice for traditional music genres, 4) He's crazy. The Wikipedia articles for the diatonic button accordion, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diatonic_button_accordion and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accordion#Button_accordions, are a little thin, but the links in the first one are good.

Here is Jerry with his octave mandolin. He plays it primarily for Irish music, both for melody and backup. The octave mandolin, like the related citern and the Irish bouzouki, have become popular backup instruments in current Irish traditional music bands, because they give the music a much different flavor from the guitar. We don't have any good web articles on them, but we'll put something more informative here in the future.