Hold On To Your Herdims!
Good Morning, Y'all - Happy Friday!
I have some sad news for you. The company that makes our beloved Herdim dulcimer picks? They declared bankruptcy a couple of months ago. The picks (pictured below)
have been discontinued, and are no longer available. The company has run out of inventory before, and I've checked their wholesale website every few days, and ordered again when they were in stock, and available for purchasing. But not this time.
Gone, Gone, Gone
They've taken these three picks off of their website entirely. My representative says that (instead of the usual "expected in 6 - 8 weeks") there's no immediate plan to make more of these. With the bankruptcy/reorganization, it looks like they're trimming down their product line. And the good dulcimer picks are a casualty of that reorganization.
Which is too bad. I've totally gotten comfortable with the medium (red) picks for my own playing, and I know that a lot of you have a favorite, too. So my warning to you all? Don't lose your Herdim picks! Once they're lost, they're lost forever.
Unless you find them stuck inside your clothes dryer's tumbling vanes. (Tumbling vanes are the plastic or metal fins attached to the inside of your dryer's drum.) You might also find a few inside your dulcimers, and maybe a few underneath your sofa cushions?
What's your favorite pick, other than the Herdim picks? I like the sound of a nylon pick material. Nylon doesn't click so much as I strum across my strings as a hard plastic or celluloid pick does. I'm going to try this pick next:
It is also made by the Herdim folks, and is very popular among some guitar players, but this pick has not had such a good following with dulcimer players as the triangular pick has.
I have all three gauges of this (nylon!) pick on order, but getting them from Germany isn't particularly quick. I'll let you know when they're in stock (in a future newsletter), so you can try them out.
What Our Neighbors Are Up To
On a "what's happening at the shop today" note, here's another photo of some of our woodland neighbors. Wolves, this time.
This is from the turnaround area next to our cabin. (Ignore the black blob at the upper right. That's a small excavator with a black rain cover on it, not an alien from another planet.) The road to the left is the one that goes to the wood shop, which was shown in last week's newsletter.
We've seen plenty of trail camera photos that show "a wolf." But this is our first "pack of wolves" experience. We counted nine wolves in a single photo. Here's part of our driveway, leading to the workshop:
Looking at our other trail cameras? Our pet wolves (ha!) wandered around the cabins and workshop for about an hour, before heading back the way they came. If you hear on the news about a "dulcimer luthier devoured by wolves, name withheld until family is notified," you'll know who it was.
I'll keep you updated on the Herdim picks, and let you know when we get some of the single-point Herdims into inventory again.
Thanks for reading, Y'all - have a great weekend!
Richard Ash - luthier-who's-glad-he's-not-a-deer-right-now
FOLKCRAFT® DULCIMER PLAYER OF THE WEEK: WENDY HOLLOWAY
Folkcraft: How long have you been playing the dulcimer?
Wendy: I fell in love with the dulcimer in the summer of 2007 at a music teacher workshop. Somehow, I had lived my entire life (25 years at that time) in the Appalachian mountains of North Carolina and never seen one, much less played one. There are even people near me who build them, and I had no idea! Our instructor at the workshop let me take a dulcimer home over the weekend to try it out and show my family, and I knew I needed one of my own.
Folkcraft: When did you get your first Folkcraft dulcimer?
Wendy: That same year, my husband bought me a Folkcraft dulcimer for Christmas, and it is still the one I play almost all the time. It’s all cherry, and has a super sweet mountain twang. On Christmas Day, my new dulcimer travelled with me to every family gathering, and by the end of the day, I had a few carols sounding pretty good!
Folkcraft: Where do you enjoy playing your dulcimer?
Wendy: I play my dulcimer everywhere! I love having an instrument that is so very portable (unlike my piano). I play at home, of course, and enjoy just messing around, figuring out my favorite songs by ear. And I have learned a lot from books, YouTube and online workshops. I play at church sometimes, accompanying songs that I sing with chords. I love how easy the dulcimer is to sing with and how it allows my not-so-loud voice to still be heard (also unlike the piano). I take my dulcimer camping (because it fits in our little camper), and if I play in public, someone is usually going to ask what in the world I am playing.
I also get to play my dulcimer at work! I am...
CLICK HERE TO READ THE REST OF WENDY'S INTERVIEW AND READ ABOUT OTHER FOLKCRAFT PLAYERS LIKE WENDY & YOU
FOLKCRAFT® PLAYERS - WE LOVE HEARING FROM YOU!
No new player (Deep, deep sigh.) to add to our online dulcimer community today, but we are happy to re-feature music teacher, Wendy Holloway, who first joined the Folkcraft family in December of 2024. Hey Wendy. Hope you and your students have a fabulous new school year!
There's still plenty of room for more of you, folks! Maybe we could feature you and your Folkcraft dulcimer(s) next week?
Who's Going To Write In Next? Keep The Family Growing?
It really is super-easy to join our online dulcimer community. Just three easy steps:
1) Send an email to: newsletter@folkcraft.com
2) With the answers to the four questions below
3) Attach a photo of yourself with your Folkcraft dulcimer(s)
We look forward to receiving your submission & featuring you in our newsletter real soon!
1. How long have you been playing the dulcimer?
2. When did you get your first Folkcraft dulcimer?
3. Where do you enjoy playing your dulcimer?
4. What other hobbies, or interests, do you have besides playing dulcimer?
WE'RE OFFERING A $25 FOLKCRAFT GIFT CARD TO ANYONE WHO ANSWERS THE FOUR EASY QUESTIONS LISTED ABOVE, AND SENDS IN A PHOTO (OF YOU WITH YOUR FOLKCRAFT DULCIMER). IT'S REALLY SO EASY TO DO!
WE JUST LOVE HEARING FROM Y'ALL!
This Week's Featured YouTube Video:
Let’s revisit "London Bridges" and add-in some notes! Mandy will show you an easy-to-follow process of how to add some notes to any melody. Have fun! Click on the image below to listen & learn.
We have a slew (that's a fancy luthier word for "bunch") of videos for you to watch on our YouTube channel. Click here to see the full list. Be sure to comment on a video, and subscribe to the channel - either action helps us a LOT with YouTube's suggestion algorithms.
Just in time for "Play Music on the Porch Day" - coming up next Saturday, August 29 - we have a book, aptly titled, "Pickin' Porch" and another one full of sing-along songs. What could be more fun than playing and singing out on the porch? Or your backyard? Or out on the sidewalk? (Just click on either cover to download.)
PICKIN' PORCH
by Dana Gruber
Pick and strum to perfection with Dana Gruber's "The Pickin' Porch." This collection of arrangements includes both standard notation and dulcimer tablature, plus guitar chords for versatile jamming. Classic porch-picking fun awaits! (No porch required.) (Several tunes are in alternate tunings, and a few require a capo - 56 pages)
This book is published by Fingers Of Steel, and is made available here as an authorized, licensed download.
FAVORITE SING-ALONG SONGS
by Judy House
Favorite sing-along songs? For mountain dulcimer? Available as a low-cost, immediate-right-now-no-waiting download? Wow!
Judy House has done it again. This is an amazing book, full of songs that you probably know. The kind of songs that are fun, easy, and relaxing. Songs you can really enjoy.
We all love the traditional old-time tunes, the fiddle tunes, the beautiful Irish melodies. But... Sometimes we want something more familiar, and this book fits the bill. The arrangements aren't too complicated - they strike a happy medium between "this is so simple it sounds awful" and "how can anyone possibly play this." Seriously - this is a great book. You'll love it!
This book is published by Judy House, and is made available here as an authorized, licensed download.
SOME OF THE SONGS INCLUDED:
Arkansas Traveler
Black Cat In A Briar Patch
Camp Meeting On The Fourth Of July
Chicken Reel
Dubuque
Fisher's Hornpipe
Folding Down The Sheets
Hangman's Reel
John Stinson #2
Liberty
Nail That Catfish To The Tree
Red-Haired Boy
Red Hills Polka - DAD Tuning
Shove That Pig's Foot A Little Further In The Fire
The Girl I Left Behind Me
The Irish Washer Woman
Turkey In The Straw
Under The Double Eagle
SOME OF THE SONGS INCLUDED:
Beautiful Dreamer
By The Light Of The Silvery Moon
Careless Love
Carolina In The Morning
Daisy Bell
Down By The Riverside
Down In The Valley
Down To The River To Pray
Fair And Tender Ladies
For He's A Jolly Good Fellow
Froggie Went A-Courting
Grandfather's Clock
Joshua Fought The Battle Of Jericho
Lil' Liza Jane
Shew! Fly, Don't Bother Me
Streets Of Laredo
The Bear Went Over The Mountain
This Land Is Your Land
You Are My Sunshine