Ken Kolodner

Dirty Linen

This is an excerpt from the print edition of Dirty Linen #119 (August/September 2005).
The full article is in the magazine, available on newsstands, by subscription, and at the Dirty Linen webstore.

Ken Kolodner

Hammering It Home

by Deborah Justice

In college, Ken Kolodner was too busy playing soccer and foosball to think about music. But when he took a road trip after graduation, he was drawn to the old-time fiddle festival in Galax, Virginia. He said, "I went to Galax before I even knew how to play; I just went to listen. I stopped there on this cross country road trip after college. I was driving down through the Blue Ridge, and I thought it would be a good place to journey to... I thought it was the coolest thing that people just hung out and played tunes together." While most newcomers are impressed by the warmth and openness of the old-time jam scene, these social dynamics resonated especially strongly with Kolodner's own personality. He draws energy from other people and infuses those he meets with his contagious cheerful optimism. Now he often leads the sessions on fiddle or dulcimer, and he is frequently the last to put away his bow or hammers. And once the jam winds down, Kolodner tends to stay up even later, chatting with other musicians until the wee hours of the morning. His family, occasionally in tow at summer music festivals, now understands that giving him a five-minute warning is useless -- as soon as Kolodner turns to go, he sees another friend or student between himself and the door.

Although he has been playing for only 20-some years, Kolodner is well respected as an "old master" of the hammered dulcimer. The dulcimer world is relatively unusual: Where else can someone with two decades of experience be regarded as a source musician, entrenched in style and technique? Contemporary dulcimer culture is a young music scene, whose shallow roots in established hammering traditions support an eclectic group of players tied together by their affinity for the instrument. Modern players began grafting today's performance practices onto the dulcimer in the late 1960s, catching the coattails of the folk revival. By the early 1970s, new players like John McCutcheon, Malcolm Dalglish, Bill Spence, and Sam Rizzetta were reintroducing the instrument into the American soundscape. As this handful of players gained musical momentum by the late 70s and early 80s, they attracted a new generation of enthusiasts, like Kolodner.

Thus, with two decades of intense involvement in the dulcimer community, Kolodner is one of the most-experienced and skilled players in the United States. He smiled as he recalled Sam Rizzetta calling him "a beacon of light" for today's players. "It's always good to hear from your peers, and especially great when guys who were your mentors become peers at some point." An equally seasoned fiddler, he keeps up a rigorous schedule of touring and teaching, performing roughly 100 dates in a year. Kolodner maintains this busy pace with lessons from his Baltimore home, teaching about 45 students on fiddle and hammered dulcimer. He has now recorded nine albums, having most recently released Journey to the Heartland [Maggie's Music] with guests Paddy League, Laura Risk, Robin Bullock, and Elke Baker.

[cover #119]