I had three students, Vince, Judith and Geoff.  Here is a picture of the workshop in progress.

New Beginner HD Workshop (Picture by Jenny Coxon.)

Vince is from Sligo, and had found the dulcimer of his grandfather, John Casey, in an outhouse (an outbuilding, not what we call an outhouse here in the States) on his brother's farm, and has been restoring it.  He brought that, so in addition to him learning how to play, we took a look at tuning his dulcimer.  He still has a bit more work to do on it, and we're not sure it will hold its tuning on all strings, but if it does, it has a very nice tone to it, and the work on it is beautiful.  Dick has a picture of it in its condition when found here.  Not realizing we didn't have pictures of it restored by Vince, I didn't take any of it that day.  Hopefully, Vince will take some and send them to Dick for his Dulcimer Photos pages.

Geoff is Nat Magee's son, and he isn't what I would call a New Beginner by any means, but he came to the workshop.  We did get to tune his up to pitch since it had not been tuned in a while, and I wrote down the tuning scheme for him.

Judith, from Co. Antrim, was the one who had heard the dulcimer the night before and changed her holiday plans to attend the workshop, having made arrangemetns with Dick to borrow one of his dulcimers.  Judith is quite talented, playing both the piano and harp already, and was quick to pick up the playing of the dulcimer.  In addition, she has been able to borrow a dulcimer from a lady in Scotland who attended the festival to use for a while until she gets one of her own, so things worked out quite nicely for her.

Immediately after my workshop ended, Nat Magee gave his talk on "John Rea - The Man & His Music".  There was good attendance, and I got the whole thing on video.  Nat talked about the family and how he and William were related to John, let us hear some of John's own playing from a CD, played a tune or two himself, and some with William Rea, John's third cousin.  William and Nat both have dulcimers that are exact copies of John Rea's, both built by Nat's father.  John was the main influence on William playing the dulcimer.  William heard John playing on BBC Radio, and knew he wanted to play dulcimer.  He and his father asked John's uncle, who built John's, if he would build one for William, but he wouldn't, so they asked Nat's father, also a joiner, and he said yes.  They made drawings of John's, and Nat's father built William's, and when Nat expressed a desire for one, built his next.  Brandy took a picture of Nat and William Rea playing together.

William Rea and Nat Magee at the Nat's Talk on John Rea.

After supper, I dressed and tuned my dulcimer for the concert that night at the New Mill Pub, then went to Charlie Gillen's talk on "North Antrim Rhymes & Rhymers".  I missed a lot of it while tuning, and was so tired, I slept through some (Sorry, Charlie.  Next year I'll be awake for it.).  Brandy, thankfully, heard the whole thing, and talked with Charlie some afterwards.

The concert in the New Mill Pub was on a tight schedule, and due to that and some of the performers running over their alotted time, I did not perform that night.  Some of the performers would not be performing again, and hadn't yet, so it made sense to give them the time they needed, since I would perform again later on in the weekend anyway.  Brandy and I got to the concert late due to having to lock up the Ed. Centre after Charlie's talk, but those we heard perform were Barry Carroll on HD and his son, Niall O Cearbhaill on fiddle, JCB (Colin Ross, Julia and Barry Say) on Northumbrian Pipes, Lisa & Heather Malyuk on HD and Guitar, and Christie Burns & Butch Ross on HD & Mountain Dulcimer, Guitar, and Vocals.  A fine performance they all gave!

Then we adjourned to the Ed. Centre where we had a session until early.  We went to bed about 3AM, but others stayed up playing until 4AM.  Or what's a dulcimer festival for?  Some mighty nice tunes and songs were had that night!

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