Bryan Bowers Concert

Friday, March 24, 2006, 7:30 PM

Salem Historical Society Meeting Room

208 South Broadway, Salem, Ohio 44460

 

Autoharp Master from Seattle, Washington

Singer/Songwriter, Storyteller, Mandolin and Mandocello Player

 

Donation at Door – $10 per Person

$5 Total for All Children in a Family

$8 for Salem Historical Society or Dulci-More Members

No Advance Reservations Needed

 

 


Presented by Dulci-More: Folk & Traditional Musicians

 

 

Meeting Room of the Salem Historical Society – 208 South Broadway in Salem

The entrance to the meeting room is through a back door of the Historical Society Museum, so it is best to turn into East Alley from Pershing with church and public parking lots available.

From State Route 14 West (State Street in downtown Salem), turn south onto Broadway for one block. Turn east onto Pershing for half a block and turn into East Alley.

From State Route 14 East (State Street), head south onto South Lincoln for one block. Turn west onto Pershing for two and a half blocks and turn into East Alley.

 

 

 

Click here for an Adobe PDF Flyer for the Bryan Bowers Concert.

 

Updated March 20, 2006

 

 

 

Bryan Bowers will be featured in a 7:30 PM concert on Friday, March 24, in the meeting room of the Salem Historical Society at 208 South Broadway in Salem (across from City Hall). The entrance to the meeting room is through the back door on East Alley. The concert is sponsored by Dulci-More.

Bryan Bowers is probably best known as an autoharp player, and as such, he has helped to inspire most of the current generation of autoharp players who use the instrument for instrumental solos as well as vocal accompaniment. In typical performances he will have about 5 autoharps (tuned diatonically in different keys), and may also play mandolin, and mandocello. He will play instrumentals, accompany his singing with the instruments, do some a cappella singing, and tell some stories (maybe with instrumental background). He will certainly give the audience a chance to join in including some old call and answer songs he learned from field workers and gandy dancers while growing up in Virginia in the 1940s. He now lives north of Seattle, Washington.

Bowers has a dynamic outgoing personality and an uncanny ability to enchant a crowd in practically any situation. His towering six foot four inch frame can be wild and zany on stage while playing a song like `Dixie' and five minutes later he can have the same audience singing `Will The Circle Be Unbroken' in quite reverence and delight.

Bryan’s sixth recording has just been completed with some of Nashville’s best musicians accompanying him, and it should be available at the concert. He has put out an instructional video on autoharp playing and 5 audio recordings for Rounder/Flying Fish from 1974-2000. In 2003, Bowers gathered 55 of the best autoharp players in the world to record a 3 CD set, Autoharp Legacy, with 64 tracks of autoharps (often accompanied by other instruments and singing). For nearly three decades, Bryan Bowers has been to the autoharp what Earl Scruggs was to the five-string banjo. He presents instrumental virtuosity combined with warmth, eloquence, expression and professionalism.

Suggested donation at the door is $10.00 per person ($5.00 total for all the children in a family) or $8.00 for Historical Society or Dulci-More members. Refreshments will be provided during the intermission. He presented a concert and workshop in January 2002 for Dulci-More at the Salem Historical Society, a concert at the Kent Salem Lecture Hall in February 2003, and a concert at the Salem Historical Society in March 2004. Contact Bill Schilling at 330-332-4420, bill@dulcimore.org, or check www.dulcimore.org for more information.

The Salem Historical Society is located at 208 South Broadway, Salem, Ohio 44460. That is one block south of State Street (State Route 14) in Downtown Salem. For eastbound traffic on State Street, turn right onto South Broadway for one block, left onto Perhing for half a block, and right into East Alley (there is a sign for the Historical Society there). Since a left turn onto South Broadway is not permitted for westbound traffic, those coming from the east should turn south onto South Lincoln for one block, and west onto Pershing for two and a half blocks to East Alley. Parking is available in the First United Methodist Church of Salem parking lot adjacent to the Historical Society. There is also parking along South Broadway and in nearby public lots.

 

 

Review of Bryan Bowers Concert in Salem — January 22, 2002

By Leanna Mathes

What an amazing experience it was to watch and listen to Bryan Bowers! For a person who has trouble walking and chewing gum at the same time, I was totally blown away by his autoharp technique – five fingers on one hand but totally independent from one another. I wish I could explain it better on paper, but this is one time you really have to see it to believe it. Each finger was playing a different note/rhythm, but it all blended so marvelously. (And here, I thought an autoharp was just to be strummed after pressing the right chord button – Boy, am I uninformed!)

Bryan played a variety of old and new tunes, as well as letting us, the audience, participate in singing some of the songs. He’s a wonderful storyteller in addition to his music and often provided a story to preface the next selection. (Just ask anyone who was there about “Cluck Old Hen”!) He shared a wonderful musical travelogue of a recent trip to Alaska that created wonderful mind pictures of the scenery and wildlife he described. Just when we were soaring with the eagles, the end of the song made a crash landing, as he described waking up on September 11th  and hearing the news. There weren’t many dry eyes in the house for that one, but it was well worth the listening. My personal favorites were “Cluck Old Hen” and “The Woodland Dream”. The latter was sung a cappella like only Bryan could do it.

As concerts usually go, it ended all too soon for the audience. As an encore, Bryan read his latest work in progress. He had a dream in which many women came and spoke to him, giving him insight of their lives and how they are or were viewed by the world. The song speaks from the perspectives of all the women and seems to be a cry for understanding. The fact that these powerful feelings came from the heart of a man was even more enthralling. I can’t wait to hear the music that he puts to this amazing work of art and only hope he passes our way again. It was truly a night to remember.

 

 

Born August 18, 1940 in Yorktown, Virginia, Bryan Bowers was raised in New Bohemia near Petersburg of the Civil War's Battle Of The Crater fame. As a child, Bowers would tag along with the field workers and gandy dancers and learned to sing old call-and-answer songs. Bowers recalls, "The music I heard while working in the fields was mesmerizing. And, I'd see the gandy dancers coming down the tracks, setting the rails and getting their ties straight. You've heard that song `Whup Boys, Can't you line 'em?, Chack a lack.' Whup Boys, can't you line 'em? was the call the leader would sing. Chack a lack was the bounce-back of the hammer after falling on the pin. I just thought that music was something that everyone did. It was years later that I realized what I'd been raised around."

Bowers enrolled at Randolph Macon College in Ashland, Virginia, but found that college was not satisfying an emptiness he felt. Three hours short of earning a degree in Spanish, Bowers dropped out. About the same time (the late '60s), Bowers discovered music when he took up the guitar. "The roots of the music had gone real deep in me. Music was real fulfilling, unlike anything I had ever done before."

It wasn't long before Bowers encountered the autoharp. "I ran into a guy that played several instruments and could get the harp in good tune. He played without any fingerpicks, just with his fingernails. He had a real sprightly style on it. It was the first time I'd heard someone play it in good tune and play it well. It opened my eyes and my ears. I went out and got one the next day."

Bryan relocated to Seattle, WA in 1971 and played for coins as a street singer and in bars for the right to pass the hat. Once he had polished his technique, he headed east in a 1966 Chevy panel truck he affectionately called "Old Yeller." "The Dillards heard me in DC when I went to the Cellar Door," recalls Bowers. "I introduced myself and played the `Battle Hymn Of The Republic' to show them how the harp worked. Sam Bush, Curtis Burch and Courtney Johnson of the New Grass Revival were there. I didn't realize how presumptuous I was being. The Dillards took me to a bluegrass festival at Berryville, Virginia and when they got an encore, they put me out there for their second encore, saying `Here's a guy you ought to hear.' The bluegrass community has been real supportive."

Bower's creativity and talent have won him induction into Frets Magazine's First Gallery of the Greats after five years of winning the stringed instrument, open category of the magazine’s readers' poll. This distinction put Bowers along side other luminaries, such as Chet Atkins, David Grisman, Stephan Grappelli, Itzhak Perlman, Tony Rice, Rob Wasserman and Mark O'Connor, recognized for their personal accomplishments. In 1993, Bryan was inducted into the Autoharp Hall of Fame to stand only with Maybelle Carter, Kilby Snow, and Sara Carter.

From his rather unglamorous beginning as a street singer, Bryan Bowers has become a major artist on the traditional music circuit. He has redefined the autoharp and is also well known as a singer-songwriter.

 

"To call Bryan Bowers' performance simply a 'concert' would be inadequate if not inaccurate ... (it) could better be described as an experience!"

 -Deseret News

"Bowers is widely regarded as the leading virtuoso on the autoharp... Bowers also has distinct gifts as a singer and songwriter."

-People Magazine

"...This man makes more music from an Autoharp than you can imagine from a 12-string guitar and a harpsichord combined. He has more stage presence and charisma than any stage performer in recent memory."

-The Washington Times

 

 

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Bill Schilling

984 Homewood Avenue

Salem, Ohio 44460-3816

330-332-4420

bill@billschilling.org

bill@dulcimore.org