What is Mixed-Up Strings?
Mixed-Up Strings is a dulcimer/folk music club centered in Summit County, Ohio. (For the geographically challenged - that's the county just south of Cleveland - which is on Lake Erie -which is one of the Great Lakes - which is in North America but not quite in Canada....)
The club began as a mountain dulcimer jam at the old Barberton High School in 1993. It quickly evolved into a performing club. The original name of the club was " The Summit County Dulcimer Society and Traditional Folk Instrument Friends." That didn't last long. Wonder why?
Considering the odd mixture of instruments and personalities, the name changed to "Mixed-Up Strings of Summit County," and lastly to "Mixed-Up Strings." (Some of our members live in Wayne County, Stark County, Cuyahoga County, etc. and were feeling sort of marginalized).
We play a wide variety of instruments: mountain dulcimers, hammer dulcimers, auto harps, banjos, guitars, fiddles (that's "violin" to you high-brow types), mandolins, Celtic harps, bowed psaltries, tin whistles, flutes, concertinas, harmonicas, bodhrans, wash-tub basses, keyboards, "shakey" things, saxophones (don't ask), and pretty much anything else we can drag through the door and tune to the key of D (it's a long story - see the section on Music).
We're living proof that conservatives and liberals can be together in the same room without killing each other. A good sense of humor helps. We're a strange mixture of Republicans, Democrats, Independents and probably a few closet Communists ( I know who I suspect!); Baptists, Methodists, Lutherans, Catholics, Seventh Day Adventists, Unitarians, Pagans, Atheists (see if you can guess which of us wear red and which wear blue); college professors, preachers, nurses, machinists, plumbers, laborers, artists, teachers, homemakers, and retirees of all sorts. Some of us can even read music! Most of us have some gray hair (among those who have hair, anyway), but we welcome younger folks and children, even those with tattoos, body piercing and spiked hair (but you've got to turn those danged cell phones off - unless they're in the key of D).
We play at festivals, fund raisers, church services and events, nursing homes, businesses, private parties, etc. We play for friendship, good causes, bad causes, money, food, attention, to swell our egos, to have something to do with our spouses now that the kids are grown, to get away from our spouses, to try to find new spouses, to justify the expense of the instruments we've bought, and for no reason in particular. Why does a man (or woman) play a dulcimer? (Hint: because it's there... sheesh.....) We even dress-up in costumes (because Vici makes us). And, boy, could we use some tech-head to run our sound equipment for those amplified gigs. Imagine a bunch of old people whose vcr's are still blinking twelve. Yeah, it can be that bad.
Some of the "big name" (for Summit County) gigs we usually play are Stan Hywet's Ohio Mart, Akron Art's Expo, Medina County's Pioneers in the Park, and for the last three years in a row - First Night Akron! We've recorded one CD and are working on our second - some people just can't get enough of us. We even have some fans who aren't relatives.
Browse through our web site. If you like what you see and hear, come out to one of our performances. We'd love to see you in the audience. Heck, we'd love to see anyone in the audience... Join us for a club meeting, bring your musical instrument (or voice) and join in.
I, the club's web master, am wholly responsible for the contents of this introduction and am eagerly anticipating the flood of emails from club members seeing it for the first time....