The first time I visited the Schnaufer archive at Vanderbilt University was several years before I ever had an inkling I would plunge...

Once upon a time, the scruffy, west coast hippies who called themselves the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band broached the subject of collaborating...

Jan Pulsford was one of the biggest surprises of all the people who informed the research for Pluck. She is Welsh-born, but lives and...

Toward the end of Pluck, you'll read about David and Butch Baldassari's interview and performance on the 2005 radio program, "Wood Songs...

Writing on this project has enabled me to get to know and learn from a whole host of remarkable and talented people, some from within the...

In a recent blog post on a different topic, I shared a video of two of David's young students/collaborators performing "Hey Little...

"Harris Picking" was David's first submission to Dulcimer Players News.* It appeared in 1979, and he was twenty-six years old. Allow me...

When I started the Pluck Blog, I envisioned putting up posts that followed the chronology of Pluck, but I've made an executive decision...

I am struck as I type this how easy it is to fall into the trap of thinking everything is awful after reading the news. How easy it would...

Emmylou Harris and David Schnaufer perform Hank Williams's "May You Never Be Alone".

Why him? Why did David Schnaufer spend years writing to Chet Atkins during the seventies--out of all the important music movers and...

A few days ago, David Beede posted a clip of Cyndi Lauper on Everything Dulcimer. The video is from her 2008 appearance on the Howard...

I know how this is going to sound. I just want you to know that I swear it happened. I was in the middle of some serious burnout. So,...

As previously described here, David's song "Brush Arbor" was one of those "signs" that kept popping up during the research for Pluck that...

A story behind the song: During work on Pluck--especially with respect to the years between 1953 and 2006--I would glimpse here and there...

I mentioned earlier that there have been all kinds of events related to this project that I call "good-spooky" kinds of stuff. I usually...

If you're visiting this site to learn about David Schnaufer or the dulcimer for the first time, then I hope this and the two previous...

If the dulcimer and/or its music is new to you, then this post is for you. It is the second of three posts where I will make the case...

1960: Folk Revival begins. Jean Ritchie introduces Richard Fariña to the dulcimer./Nancy Johnson (later, Nancy Barker) gets her first...

I'm sorry to say this didn't occur to me to include in Pluck prior to publication, but a couple of people suggested I should have...