Sam Edelston’s Dulcimer Should Be Heard
Born in Newark, raised in Irvington, with a home in Bradley Beach, Sam Edelston is blazing new trails when it comes to the fretted dulcimer, a string instrument related to the zither that’s played like a lap steel guitar. If you ask him, he’ll tell you his mission is to make the dulcimer as popular as the guitar in rock’n’roll. Joni Mitchell used to play it but Edelston, on his Making Waves debut, is the first artist to use it as a lead ax in a rock setting. He’s performed in 14 states, and has played with the Morristown-based Folk Project since the ‘70s. Just last month, he made his Carnegie Hall debut and chairs the Nutmeg Dulcimer Festival in Connecticut. Get him in a good mood and he’ll do dulcimer versions of Beatles, Stones, Queen, Ramones, Billy Joel, Pink Floyd, Taylor Swift and Brandi Carlile.
“For many years, I had no respect for fretted dulcimers,” he admits. “They usually have only three strings and are missing a bunch of notes, and I was a finger-style guitarist accustomed to creating a full sound." Yet once he felt comfortable, he coaxed the full potential out of his instrument and, as he says, “It was a bolt of lightning. I became an evangelist for it.”
When he told his friends at The Folk Project that he was working on an arrangement of Black Sabbath on dulcimer, they flat-out told him, “you can’t do that!” So he proved them wrong. With tomorrow being International Appalachian Dulcimer Day, today’s a great time to check out Edelston’s version of “Whole Lotta Love.”
For more information on this most unique artist, visit https://www.samthemusicman.com/