In the fall of 1976, a junior high school art teacher named Gil Anderson happened to wander into a coffee house in Syracuse, NY, and heard someone playing a mountain dulcimer. He was instantly mesmerized by the haunting sound of the instrument, and set out to find one for himself to learn to play. Dulcimers proved to be hard to find at the time, so after a year of a frustrating search, he heard about a dulcimer building class being offered at a local adult education center, and enrolled. He built one, and then another, and soon he and his wife Beth started vending his instruments at weekend craft shows all over the northeast US, marketed under the company name he created, “Dulcimer Daze”. One day, while doing a craft show in a shopping mall, Gil was watching folks shuffle in and out of a shop selling all sorts of roasted nuts while noodling around on his dulcimer. It was from that noodling that the tune “Nut Factory Shuffle” was created, which has since become a favorite standard at dulcimer jam sessions all around the country.

During that same period, a group of dulcimer enthusiasts started getting together regularly at Gil and Beth’s house to play together, and learn from each other and write new tunes. Gil came up with another tune to share with them, which he named after his company, “Dulcimer Daze”. With Gil’s kind permission, this month’s tab is an arrangement of that tune, composed on and for the mountain dulcimer. Gil describes it as “just another tune born from noodling around with various chord progressions”.

Here’s a link to a YouTube video of the 3-part arrangement being performed by workshop students at the 2019 Black Mountain Music Festival in Black Mountain, NC: