Kevin Roth on dulcimeditation, “Dulcimer Dreamland,” and finding space “Between the Notes”
By Fiona Potts
In August 2023 Kevin Roth and I talked about his latest projects: the book and accompanying album “Between the Notes” and his latest album “Dulcimer Dreamland.” You can watch the complete interview below. The following transcript has been condensed due to print space limitations and edited for clarity.
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Condensed Transcript
DPN: I wanted to start off with the last time you were featured – May of 2019, 4 years ago. They were talking about your latest album at the time which was “The Deviant Dulcimerist” and about Butterfly Boy, the dulcimer that Joellen Lapidus made for you. But it’s been four years and a pandemic since then. What are you up to now?
Kevin Roth: Shortly after, I think, that article came out, someone suggested that I teach people what I did to survive melanoma, which is what I wrote my book “Between the Notes” about. So I became what some people call a life coach or other people call just a teacher.
And I used the dulcimer, and still do, to teach something called dulcimeditation, which is a process of playing the dulcimer to occupy the mind while you’re at the same time asking your inner self, “What do I need to know?” So if you think of a baby in a crib that’s crying, and you wind a little toy, the baby’s attention goes to that and it stops crying over whatever it was. That’s what dulcimeditation does.
Dulcimeditation is a very simple thing, and I’ve given many workshops on it, and I teach it to my clients. I had a dulcimer created for that specifically. It’s called the Cosmic Dulcimer. It has sound holes that are planets and it’s made with spruce and cherry so it has a very meditative and mellow kind of sound.
That was the big shift after that article came out. I turned my music business into my lifestyle coaching business. And it’s been a great success.
DPN: I had a quote from that article – you said, “The old formula doesn’t work anymore. I don’t know how people make a living at it,” at being a musician, but you said “I’m not going to stop creating,” and you were going to do things you love and book gigs that you love.
KR: Yeah, it was sort of by accident because someone asked me, “What am I going to do next?” So I said I was going to try and tour, and he said “Well, you’ve got sixty-some records, why don’t you just teach people? Become a teacher, of how you moved from the midwest, where you were not happy, and recreated the life in your head, this fantasy life of living in San Diego near the beach, with your dog Bosco, and dulcimers, and paintings, and how you pulled that off successfully when everyone said you couldn’t.”
DPN: In your book you talk about some of the “woo woo” stuff that’s out there. And you called yourself a “self help book addict.” How do you separate that from the good stuff?
KR: Everybody wants to be happy, and life is not full of happiness. It’s full of ups and downs. So depending upon how you were raised and whatever story you believe in, different people need different things at different times. I happen to come from what I would consider a dysfunctional family, so I was looking for a spiritual answer as well as a psychological one. So I would bounce around from self-help book to different courses and weight loss things and they would be temporary fixes. But they never lasted.
It wasn’t until I got melanoma, and I was given a death sentence, that I said you don’t have time to play around with stuff. So I asked myself 3 questions. What really matters? My music, my dog, and my painting. Why does it matter? Because it’s who I am naturally. And, what am I going to do about it? I’m going to stop trying to book tours. And I had a lot of success as a musician. I became “rich and famous.” And I sought that out because I thought that was going to be happiness. But as it turns out, it wasn’t.
I basically teach people what I did to turn my life around successfully. And I happen to use the dulcimer as part of that process. I still give concerts, and I still make records and things like that, but that’s not the focus of my life any more.
DPN: I wanted to talk about another article that you had written for DPN in 2018. This was “Voice and Dulcimer.” In that article you said, “Giving the song space is important… Whatever it takes to open up the expression of each song… It’s the space between the notes that make it music in many cases.” I guess this “between the notes” idea has been knocking around your head for a while.
KR: I always find that simplicity is better. In the 70s, when I started to get known as a dulcimer player, it was as an innovative dulcimer player. I was doing a lot of things that people are now starting to do on the dulcimer, back 50 some years ago. But now I’ve gone back to almost very, very, simple playing. My last album I just came out with, “Dulcimer Dreamland,” I know you want to talk about a little bit. But it’s based on the idea of just one dulcimer, no overdubs, no voices, just let that dulcimer sing expressively. So it’s space between the notes. It’s quieting the mind and letting authenticity emerge.
DPN: The album “Dulcimer Dreamland,” it says “instrumental lullabies and other dulcimer ditties” but it’s not kids’ songs, it’s instrumental music. It’s beautiful, it’s simple, and flawless playing. You talked in your liner notes about finding tonal resonances on the dulcimer, and I was hoping you could explain a little more about that, and how you find those, and what that really means.
KR: Each instrument has its own tonal quality, and my friend Jerry Rockwell had built, as a gift for me, a concert, professional, grand dulcimer, which was beautiful. It has lovely tones, on the bass string, and different parts of the instrument, it’s fuller in some parts and more expressive in some parts perhaps than other parts. And that has to do with the weather and how you’re playing and all kinds of things.
But I just used his dulcimer, I think I used one or two other little dulcimers by Ron Ewing for variety. But that’s what I meant by expressive tonal qualities – letting the dulcimer sing and using the voicing of that particular instrument along with the way I play it. By slowing it down and picking it up and putting expression into it. Much like a jazz player would do.
DPN: Did you have a favorite song on the album?
KR: There’s one that I wrote for my father called “Jakey’s Lullaby” and I really like that. It’s in a capo’d minor tuning. My father and I were very close, and it kind of came to me as a last musical thought before I went in to record the record. So that’s probably my favorite. But I like all of them. I can be overly critical of my own playing and things I would have done differently, but I’m the only one that hears that. Everyone else just seems to say “Oh wow.” It’s really nice to hear a dulcimer album without a bunch of stuff on it. Just the dulcimer. So it was a fun recording. I had a good time making it. And rare that I would do an album like that.
DPN: The final thing, because next year is a big anniversary year, and I’ve been digging through archives. You were actually in Vol. 1, No. 5, from 1975. Your article was titled “Some questions.”
You said, “The question is this, what is going to happen to the dulcimer in the next few years, and will we be able to accept the changes that do come along? As for my own opinion, I hope that we will always love and respect the traditional maker and player, and that we don’t ever forget where the dulcimer came from! Is there a stopping point with the dulcimer? … Opinions, opinions, what do they mean? Growth, Life, what does that mean?? Where, and what will happen to the dulcimer in the years to come?”
50 years later, what do you think about where the dulcimer has come? What questions do you have for the next 50 years?
KR: I would hope that more people discover the historical dulcimer people, like Jean Ritchie, and Howie Mitchell, and Paul Clayton. These are the pioneers of the mountain dulcimer.
The older makers, the traditional old makers, were very innovative in their style. If you look at what they did in photographs of the Smithsonian Institute, of their collection of dulcimers, you’ll see they’re very modern.
And I think that the instrument is going to continue to evolve.
Is the chromatic dulcimer still a dulcimer? It’s a question.
As I get older, the less frets the better for me. Not because I can’t play them, but because I… as one discovers as they get older in life, less in more. There’s a lot of music in a really simple instrument like the dulcimer.
As my journey continues, the dulcimer treks along with me.