Contemporary Mountain Dulcimers

Jerry Rockwell

by Niles Hokkanen

[From Dirty Linen #34 June/July '91]

The lap dulcimer is a very easy instrument to pick up and play a few old-time melodies on, which is why a lot of hobbyists have picked it up. It's easy to strum tunes like "Go Tell Aunt Rhody," but it's also unfortunate that this is the stereotypical aural image that the general public has of the instrument.

Rockwell has a varied background which includes other instruments. He took up guitar in 1965 at age 15, with rock 'n' roll on his mind. Later he got into jazz guitar and eventually began playing the dulcimer at age 20, first emulating Richard Fariña and later people like the retiring Englishman Roger Nicholson, who stunned everyone with Elizabethan/medieval arrangements. He began playing Celtic music after hearing Steeleye Span's early releases.

Rockwell's first two albums with Mary Ann Samuels (Mountain Dulcimer and Psaltery Instrumentals and Dulcimer Dreams, both on Traditional Records) were straightforward folk offerings, though there were some more unusual pieces on the second album. After a several year interval, he put out Little Maggie, which was a very spacey multi-tracked collection of multiple dulcimers and other instruments.

Rockwell eventually settled in Columbus, Ohio and went back to school to get his B.A. in Music from Ohio State.

Rockwell, of course, can do all the "normal" lap dulcimer type stuff, and do it well. (And he continues to play guitar, mandolin and tenor banjo. A DX-7 synthesizer is also one of his tools, programmed with compositional "parts.") It's the progress and experimental approaches which really distinguish Rockwell from the others. He's continually improving on two-handed tapping methods of playing which include cascading interlocking hammer-pulloff textures and playing on both sides of the stopped string. Every fretted string actually produces two notes instead of one. One is between the fretted string and the bridge, which is what you normally hear. There is also a second note produced on the other side of the fret going towards the nut of the instrument. Since the entire length of the instrument is body, given a certain mode of attack, these notes can be made to sound as loud as the primary ones. The next step is to chart out what all these nut-side tones are, most of them lying outside the tempered scale, so that one can incorporate them into the music.

Jerry has figured out how to get tapped notes flowing at 64th note speeds. He also does things like putting a capo strategically about halfway along the stringlength, and then plays on separate sides of the capo, essentially splitting the instrument into two instruments.

Jerry builds dulcimers commercially and also designs experimental instruments with 33 frets to the octave or with movable frets.

More conventionally, Rockwell will use the dulcimer normally played, but within new contexts. On some tracks, the instrument will be used for a more percussive chordal function, substituting for a rhythm guitar on a rock, funk, or blues tune. Here, ideas and knowledge from other instruments have been applied to dulcimer. He's even got an 8-string dulcimer (4 courses tuned in octave) used for tunes like "Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man."

You can check out some of his new approaches on two recordings: Into the Fever Rain by Rockwell & Hokkanen [$9.95 ppd from Mandocrucian's Digest/ P.O. Box 3585/ Winchester, VA 22601], and Jerry Rockwell--Home Tapes 1990. Fever Rain features dulcimer and mandolin on both straightforward and experimental material (see Dirty Linen #31, p. 65). Home Tapes [Jerry Rockwell/ 6368 Ambleside Drive #B/ Columbus, OH 43229] is a collection of multi-tracked tunes and experiments with various instruments ranging from spacey Grateful Dead-ish folk-rock to weird microtonal pieces. On this one, you can really get an earful of the new approaches Rockwell is forging on the instrument.

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