Special Reports

By MEGAN MIDDLETON
Staff Writer

PALESTINE — “Old time” music, brought back to the present through fiddles, dulcimers, guitars, mandolins and song, filled an old museum in Palestine on Friday.

For the performers, the music is often their livelihood.

For some listeners, who tap their toes, whoop and holler and nod their heads to the beat, the music takes them to a simpler time and place.

“It’s a real connection to the past,” Mary Marks said of the sounds. “It’s music that I remember hearing at my grandparents’ house. It’s nostalgic.”

Ms. Marks was one of many participants at this weekend’s Palestine Old Time Music and Dulcimer Festival at the Museum for East Texas Culture.

The festival features workshops, jam sessions and concerts full of not only hammer and mountain dulcimers, but guitars, banjos, concertinas and other “old time” instruments as well as singing. This is the seventh year for the event, organized by Jerry and Margaret Wright.

Ms. Marks, who came to the festival from a city near Houston, has attended for about six years. She’s been playing the hammer dulcimer for about seven.

“It’s the best festival that I’ve been to. This one just has the best atmosphere,” she said. “The people are just warm and friendly. It’s a lot of fun.”

During lunchtime on Friday, Ms. Marks played the hammer dulcimer in an impromptu jam session, where songs like “I’ll Fly Away” were played and sang. She said jamming is her favorite part.

“It’s a lot of fun,” Ms. Marks said. “You sometimes get to learn new songs, and there’s always new people that join in, so you make new friends that way.”

Festival participants get to jam, receive instruction and hear top-notch professionals at their best, Jerry Wright said.

“You can expect to learn something. You can expect to share something,” Wright said. “You can expect to meet new friends.”

Wright said about a dozen musicians are featured at the festival from around the United States.

“In their fields, they are some of the best,” he said. “I love these people. I travel to North Carolina to see these people, so now I’m bringing them out here. I’m just glad to be around each and every one of them.”
MUSICIANS

Rick Thum, a hammer dulcimer player from St. Louis, Mo., played on stage with a group of other musicians in the first of the afternoon concerts Friday.

“The music … there’s so much energy. There’s no higher high than being on that stage,” Thum said after the concert, noting that he and the musicians he played with Friday afternoon had never all played together before.

“That’s the fun of it — to get on stage and have magic like that happen between four and five people who have never worked together. That’s what I love. We could tell the audience was having fun, but, I’m sorry, they don’t know what fun they’re missing,” Thum said laughing.

The professional musician seemed awed by the performance he and the others delivered to a roaring crowd.

“I know what heaven is for me when I die — it’s going to be that that just happened. That doesn’t happen every time we walk on stage — that was one of those magic moments. And you live for those.”

Thum had high praise for the 17-year-old guitar player, Josh Bailey, who wowed the crowd in that short concert with him Friday afternoon.

He said the teenager has a “rare gift.”

Thum said he started out in rock ‘n’ roll but stumbled across a hammer dulcimer one day and got hooked.

The music, he said, is like “jazz in the old time world.”

“Nobody’s playing a straight melody, and yet, it comes out bigger than the sum of the pieces,” he said.

While he plays the guitar, banjo, mandolin and others, the “most freeing” is the hammer dulcimer, he said.

“It’s very magical in that just a ton of music comes out of a very little box,” he said of the hammer dulcimer. “It can be like sugar — it’s great, but it’s so much that too much of it can really be overpowering. But yet done right, it is magic.”

Thum said he’s fortunate that he makes a living performing around the country.

“I get to call this work. … I live for this,” he said. “I feel very fortunate I get to make my living playing.”

Another professional musician, Carl Jones, from Raleigh, N.C., who also performed at a concert Friday afternoon, played the mandolin and sang songs about simple ideas — one about home and another about cheering yourself up.

“The old time groups always wrote about simple things — home sweet home or what they knew,” Jones said. “I think you can write a song about anything.”

Alice Gerrard, a singer and songwriter who lives in Durham, N.C., led a workshop Friday morning related to country music.

“This music is really accessible,” she said. “You can take it to any level you want. You don’t have to be an expert or a technical wizard to do this kind of music. … Because it’s music that comes out of people’s lives, it holds meaning for a lot of people.”

Ms. Gerrard may be best known for her collaboration with Appalachian singer Hazel Dickens during the 1960s and ’70s. They have been said to have influenced young women singers, including The Judds.

Ms. Gerrard, who now plays with the group, Tom, Brad and Alice, which is performing at the Palestine festival, said, “This has been my life.”

FESTIVAL CONTINUES

The Palestine Old Time Music and Dulcimer Festival will continue Saturday at the Museum for East Texas Culture, 400 Micheaux Ave.

Workshops and jam sessions begin at 9 a.m. Afternoon concerts begin at 1:30 p.m. There are also evening concerts starting at 7 p.m. Saturday. The event lasts until about 10 p.m., although the schedule allows for “jamming” afterward.

Wright expects possibly about 250 people to attend the dulcimer festival, which ends Saturday.

The cost for people to attend the entire event, including all workshops and concerts, is $60. To just attend concerts is $10.

Anyone can attend the event —from the novice to the expert or just someone who enjoys listening.

For more information, call the museum at 903-723-1914 or visit the festival’s Web site, www.geocities.com/palestinefestival.

Al Parsons plays the auto harp and his wife Shirley Parsons plays the mountain dulcimer during a jam session at the Old Time Music and Dulcimer Festival at the Museum for East Texas Culture in Palestine on Friday.
((Staff Photo By Tom Turner))