Show Booked at Whatley
If the guy who toured with Mouse and the Trapps in the 60’s playing bass behind Debbie Porter’s dulcimer with accompaniment from Billy Bob Thornton’s guitarist April 18 at NTCC’s Whatley Center doesn’t describe a collision of cultures, try this.
Her “Dulcimers for David” mission put a dozen dulcimers in a Syrian refugee camp because a retired music professor she knew from Austin was having coffee at a sidewalk café in Ohrid, Macedonia the same day somebody named Snezhica, who was taking a break from humanitarian work in refugee camps, was in the same café in Macedonia talking about the need for ways to put aside, for a while, thoughts of war, squalor, running water fantasies and lousy food.
Music’s one answer for that.
The retired Austin professor knew about the Dulcimers for David project because it brought Dr. Porter to Austin to remaster the late David Schnaufer’s album featuring dulcimers, then use the money from sales to buy dulcimers to give somebody.
David Schnaufer was a professor of music at Vanderbilt and continues – post mortem — to be a part of the up-side of life in a Syrian Refugee camp. Besides teaching while on earth, he played with the Judds and Johnny Cash. Keeping his music playing is the flip side raising money to buy dulcimers to give away.
“It’s satisfying to spread it around,” smiled Dr. Porter. Besides Syrians, some 100-plus dulcimers paid for from album sales more typically filter out through the American education system.
There are two things about dulcimers you need to know. Dating back to the early 1800’s, the Appalachian Dulcimer is the only musical instrument indigenous to American New World Culture.
“And if you’ll bring one with you, I can have you playing a tune before you leave,” said Mrs. Porter, who in 1992 organized the first Northeast Texas Dulcimer Chorus. “It’s easy.”
The chorus meets the first Saturday of the month at Pittsburg’s Sewell Building. Janice Marsh is the reigning ringleader.
As seen on TV, COVID gave dulcimer music a boost when ABC’s Tyler affiliate sent a sound crew with the cameras for a feature piece on one of the 110-consecutive evening Driveway Golf Cart Drive By concerts Dr. Porter began playing when pandemic protocol swept through her slice of America, a residential development overlooking Lake Bob Sandlin.
Through the summer, she added some Ray Price and John Prine originals to her American folk-music play list. Neighbors on golf carts rolled up for her driveway shows.
“You play 110 straight nights, your repertoire has to increase,” she said.
The spirit of the thing soared for Dr. Porter when Whatley Center Director Carolyn Franks booked Dr. Ron Clinton for a cameo at the 2:30 p.m. April 18 concert.
Locally known as the NTCC President Ron Clinton, in the classical music sliver of the international scene he’s the pianist Dr. Porter and friends once flew out to see at his show in Frutijar, Chili, home of the University of Chili’s annual summer music festival, the Woodstock of concerts featuring artists performing music from classical eras.
“He was chosen to play one of about 40 concerts performed over the days of the festival,” she said.
He readily agreed to play with the college’s Debbie Porter Sunday afternoon show. She counts it as a feather in her cap, a reminder of music’s way of transcending time and cultures.
Here, it was her “QuaranTunes” series of pandemic concerts that caught Carolyn Frank’s ear and imagination, triggering the Whatley Center Concert featuring Dr. Porter with David Stanley, who after leaving Mouse and the Traps played behind Dolly Parton, Delbert McClinton and Buggs Henderson.
There’s a preservationist chord in this.
“I play endangered music with user-friendly instruments,” Dr. Porter said.
