First of all, it’s Lap-EED-us.

When I said I wanted to examine the confluence of traditional art & music, it was suggested I look to Joellen Lapidus for both sides of the dulcimer – she plays and she builds them. Joellen is no stranger to FolkWorks – she’s been on both sides of interviews, too. If you’re catching that earworm, please know that Joellen sold a dulcimer she’d made to Joni Mitchell.

Dulcimer Jazz was the format Joellen used to explore a new generation of dulcimer aficionados here at FolkWorks: Sarah Kate Morgan, Kevin Roth, Tull Glazener, and more. She was interviewed herself by Art Podell, and conversed with Susie Glaze about legacy.

The dulcimer is a forgiving instrument, she told me twice. Joellen is likewise patient, a natural educator. We met on Zoom in January 2024.

JL: the question is: How is playing music and writing music different than building an instrument?

me: yeah, that’s the question.

JL: …so think about the people who build an airplane. What they’re paying attention to is very different from the pilot who flies the airplane. You require attention to detail in both. I think it gives you an advantage if you’re also a musician playing on those instruments you’re building, but not necessarily. Some of the greatest builders are not great players. They’re kind of mutually exclusive. Most of the great violin builders weren’t great violin players. The sensitivity to wood, and what it sounds like, the balance between the curves and the thickness of the wood…

I like to tell this story: my main teacher of building is a guy named Freddy Mejia (he lives in Santa Cruz.) He’s an amazing flamenco guitar maker and player. I started visiting him in the late 60s – he lived in Carmel Valley; I lived in Big Sur. They had a little flamenco troupe that used to play at Renaissance Fairs. They all lived together on this farm. Male and female dancers; dancers that were married, and Freddie, and I think he had a girlfriend. They had a big barn, and Freddie’s shop was in the barn.

He took me into the barn and said, “Hold this guitar.” Then he went to the opposite end of this pretty big barn, and he started talking. I could feel the instrument vibrating, and that was the greatest lesson – that you have to make the instrument – alive, that it vibrates with its environment and with its player. It comes alive.

The instrument needs a certain capacity for aliveness. The musician has to connect with the instrument and bring that out. It’s kind of like the instrument is your servant, your means of self-expression, but the instrument also – it’s really like a relationship. You have to let the instrument teach you how to bring out the best in it. You have to learn how to bring out the best in each other.

The one behind me – the Pelican – is a heavier instrument than most dulcimer players are used to. But for me, for strumming, I’ve never played anything like it. It’s like a racehorse – it just GOES. A lot of other instruments are too heavy, or too light, and they can’t take a fullness of sound very fast.

me: When you were describing the relationship, I was thinking of horses. The horse is not exactly a servant. They will, with their own agreement, do your bidding.

JL: Well, you have to form a relationship with the horse. Some horses, you can give them a command and they won’t do it. They have to let you in to their corral, so to speak!

me: And I’ve had other people explain instruments to me like that, too. People who don’t think about it may laugh at musicians owning 20 guitars, but they are all different, every last one of them, and every one of them has something different to say.

JL: Yeah, it’s like most musicians are not monogamous with their instruments.

me: I want to talk about the Pelican – did you bend the wood?

JL: Yeah, that’s bent wood. When I first started, way back in 1967, I didn’t know how to bend wood and I didn’t have the means. I was living in a very small trailer in Big Sur. I just bought 2-inch wood, and I cut it out, the shape, with a jigsaw. I don’t recommend that, because your hand is numb for about six weeks!

me: So that answers my question – I was gonna ask if there’s a tonal difference; I’m guessing it doesn’t matter. Is there a tonal difference?

JL: You’re asking a question that maybe I’m not the best person to ask. I don’t make a lot of instruments. But a good friend of mine has one of the instruments that I made cut out of a single piece of wood, and it’s a nice dulcimer. But it’s too heavy. It doesn’t have the aliveness of one with thinner sides. When you’re cutting a 2-inch piece of wood with a jigsaw, you’re not cutting it down to an eighth of an inch. But the thing is: dulcimers are very forgiving. You could do almost anything – there are cardboard dulcimers that sound really good. I have one – it’s a kit, you can get it from Backyard Music – you can put it together in a couple hours, and it plays wonderfully.

me: This is gonna wreck my long-term plan of refusing to play an instrument.

JL: Dulcimers are not as high-maintenance as guitars or violins or cellos…I’ve rarely played a dulcimer that didn’t have some good qualities. The Jellyfish dulcimer- that’s a completely different sound. That is not a racehorse. It’s extremely sweet, and has a lot of overtones and resonance; the sustain is just amazing. I play some songs on that instrument, and some songs on the Pelican, and the repertoire is really different. I have another dulcimer by Rick Probst that’s one of the sweetest dulcimers I’ve ever played in my life. He does all things in building opposite to what I do. Lots of builders hollow out the fingerboard. He doesn’t hollow out the fretboard; in fact he extends it like a half-inch into the body of the dulcimer. But the shape of his dulcimer – they’re really big – the bottom is kind of like a guitar, so he has like a guitar bridge, and he does fan-bracing like guitars. He made the dulcimer for me; he just made it for me, I did the inlay. It’s one of my favorite woods, which is Padauk. It’s a mahogany-like wood which comes from South America and Africa, and it’s bright orange when you cut it. When it oxidizes, it tones down a little bit. The Pelican is made of Padauk, but the Jellyfish is made of East Indian Rosewood.

me: I’m looking at pictures on his website right now – Rick Probst.

JL: You see how big that bottom bout is. It kind of ruins one thing which is great about a dulcimer, that they’re small and they’re easier to carry around than a hammer dulcimer or a piano. But until I bought a McCafferty dulcimer…

So I’d heard of these Terry McCafferty dulcimers for the last four or five years. I was staying somebody’s house before a festival in Kentucky. And they had this dulcimer – I would have bought it from them, but they said they weren’t selling it. The sound, the treble, I had never heard anything like it. I finally bought one for myself in the maybe last eight months. I don’t know how he gets that sound. I don’t know how he gets it. It doesn’t have the racehorse quality; I can’t play it hard and heavy. It won’t go there.

me: I saw you the first time at the FAR-West Campfire. I said it was “heavy metal.”

JL: (laughs) I played The Pelican. I can really push that dulcimer. It has never disappointed me. It has a nice balance, but if I’m playing a soft Irish tune, I’d rather use a different dulcimer. Other dulcimers have a sweeter tone. I’m starting to question whether that shape prevents me from getting a really sweet tone.

me: That’s a really interesting question. Somebody referred to that as your trademark shape.

JL: Yeah, it is. Now, the Jellyfish is a very narrow-waisted hourglass. The reason is:  That shape went with the fluidity of movement of a jellyfish. I wasn’t thinking acoustics. I was thinking to express how jellyfish move, just very sensually.

me: Basically, the whole instrument is the story. That’s what I’m hearing.

JL: That’s a good way to put it. I don’t manufacture dulcimers. That’s not what I do. I just have this weird relationship. I don’t want to make guitars. I don’t want to make ukuleles. I just want to make dulcimers, to put it in your phrase, to tell a story. Because they all tell a story. Not one of them is storyless.

me: I think this story is gonna end up – the through-line with all the different interviews I’m doing – it seems like whatever we’re doing, it’s because there’s a story we’re trying to give shape so that the rest of the world can experience it, too.

JL: and the word story – it’s a good word, but it’s not adequate. There’s a certain sensuality that gets expressed in my instruments. Is it a story if we say how jellyfish move? I’m trying to express the jellyfish move; I’m not trying to teach you about jellyfish. I want you to experience the feeling of the tentacles.

me: I don’t know the right word, either.

JL: The feeling of a jellyfish. It’s not so much cognitive as sensual. Even with the peghead of The Pelican, I wanted to express the power of the pelican in flight. I’m not telling you a story: “Oh, pelicans are so powerful.” I want you to experience it. Like with music, you want to experience something.

me: I feel like we’ll have to invent a word for this. So you’re building, or writing the music, or playing the instrument, you get down to fine detail but you’re paying attention to different fine details in each case.

JL: The details all serve a feeling. I work from feeling.

Continue to the rest of the interview with Joellen Lapidus on FolkWorks:

• on Legacy
• on Hitch-hiking (you don’t want to miss this story!)
• on Inlay and artistry

debora Ewing writes, paints, and screams at the stars because the world is still screwed up. She improves what she can with music collaboration, peer review for Consilience Science-Based Poetry Journal, and book design at Igneus Press. Find her art and word everywhere, including Jerry Jazz Musician, Shot Glass Journal, Beyond Words Literary Magazine, Cholla Needles, and Dodging the Rain. Follow her on “X” and Instagram @DebsValidation, and into seedy pool halls but probably not dark alleys.