Leo Kretzner
Leo Kretzner – Brief Music Biography
Leo and the mountain dulcimer met in 1975, and neither has been the same ever since. He has been a major innovator of the instrument, playing everything from Celtic jigs and reels to blues and rock, as well as more traditional Appalachian styles of music. He is also known for his user-friendly yet highly informative teaching style in workshops, and rounds out his concert performances with vocals and guitar playing added to rollicking mountain dulcimer instrumentals.
Leo Kretzner
MUSICAL HISTORY – ‘My Back Pages’
Early Ear Experiences
I grew up in Detroit, Michigan listening to my mother’s choices in pop music of the 50’s – Nat King Cole, Peggy Lee, and such – and my father’s classical recordings, plus his small collection of Viennese zither recordings. This latter fact is particularly ironic, as I would have never thought I’d end up playing a type of folk zither twenty years later!
Two things happened in 1963, when I was thirteen years old: My uncle who owned a music store in Ohio sent me a pair of bongo drums, and the Beatles burst upon the US musical scene. I had the invaluable experience over the next several years of learning and playing the drums – not just the bongos, but a whole ‘trap set,’ and marching drums in the high school band. As a freshman I was assigned to the lowly but loud cymbals, and lived for those moments like the bridge of The Star Spangled Banner: “And the rockets’ red glare – crash! The bombs bursting in air – crash!” Not for nothing did my peers dub me Crash Kretzner…
Of course the 60’s was a tumultuous time socially and a joyous, exciting time musically. I actively soaked up and began learning the music of my own home, ‘Motown’, the various ‘British Invaders,’ and their rapidly appearing American counterparts: Bob Dylan, Buffalo Springfield, and the Byrds, to name only my top favorites. These in particular led me to buy a guitar and explore what this ‘folk music thing’ was all about. I went to the library and took out a copy of Jean Ritchie’s ‘Child Ballads of the Southern Appalachian Highlands’ and had no idea what to make of it – unadorned and unaccompanied singing of long, mysterious and ancient stories, it was both strange and intriguing.
Real Folk Music
A now-legendary folk festival outside of Toronto, the Mariposa Festival, put it all in a living context for me. Forever seared into my brain are two kinetic images from opposite ends of the folk music spectrum: The aging New Orleans pianist Roosevelt Sykes romping and stomping through his jumping, juke-joint set, and the incomparable French Canadian fiddler Jean Carignon unleashing his technically brilliant and melodically complex Celtic-Quebecois repertoire, while simultaneously clogging up a storm! I thought anything that could have a couple white-haired guys each single-handedly putting out as much infectious energy as an entire rock band had to be something worth getting into. And get into it I did.
The Dulcimer
I borrowed a mountain dulcimer from my great friend and playing partner Rich DelGrosso, and became completely mesmerized by it. That was the spring of 1975. Later that summer, I met the wonderful Margaret MacArthur at the Pinewoods Folk Music Camp, and learned a few of her tunes with their slight-of-hand, hammer-on and pull-off ways of getting ‘the fancy notes.’ Though she had delicately finger-picked these with her right hand, I could do nothing but use a flat-picking technique itself adopted from folk-rock guitar-strumming - and a steady ‘ride-cymbal’, drumstick rhythm before that. I was off and running with Irish and old-time 'fiddle' tunes on an instrument not too many people played and that most didn’t even know what to call. “So where’d you learn to play that two-by-four?” was a memorable remark between sets at a pub in Salinas, Michigan.
The Four-String Dulcimer
I met the trail-blazing dulcimist Lorraine Lee a year after my experience with Margaret at the Pinewoods Camp. At the time she had an all-treble string arrangement – A,D,D – that gave beautiful chord voicings. I had my bass string-rooted D,A,D tuning, and neither of us could play the other’s arrangements. When we met again about a year later, we had both gone to four equidistant strings – the best of both worlds! To this day, the highest concentration of 4-string players can be found around Boston and throughout New England – a reflection of Lorraine’s tireless teaching schedule in that area, and to a lesser extent the more occasional festival workshops I gave around there in the eighties and early nineties.
Making Records
By 1981 I had recorded the instrumental albums ‘Dulcimer Fair’ and ‘Pigtown Fling’ with the more traditionally styled dulcimist Jay Leibovitz and various other friends. Next I wanted to make an album that better reflected the full variety of musical styles I played, including songs of my own, and that was the 'Bold Orion' recording in about 1984.
I played music full time at this point ('83 - '85), touring the east and Midwest, and teaching at the acoustically oriented Music Emporeum in Cambridge, MA. Gig highlights were The Ark in Ann Arbor, MI; Kentucky Music Weekend in Louisville, KY; The Eisteddfod Festival in RI; the Bahamas Folk Club; and Club Passim in Cambridge, MA - to name just a few. Along the way I added blues and rock to the dulcimer repertoire in addition to the fiddle tunes and songs I'd always done. A purist I never have been.
'Not So Still Life' - with its 'still life with dulcimer' cover - was the next CD, made over the years of 1988 - 1990, in several locations. I recorded basic tracks and the visiting Rich and Maureen DelGrosso, Howie Bursen and Sally Rogers in the Boston area. I added bassist Ralph Gordon in Washington, DC, Jerry Rockwell and Ron Ewing in Columbus OH, and later added Bryan Bowers and finished it all in Seattle. 'Have tape, will travel'!
More recently Jay and I re-mastered and re-released Dulcimer Fair and Pigtown Fling as a compilation CD, 'Dulcimer Fling!', just a year ago. But how can it be that the 1990 'Still Life' CD was my most recent all-new album?!? I've been VERY busy with family life and career in bio-medical research, my friend! I do hope to update my discography in the next year or so, now that my kids have grown and I'm returning to a more music-centered life.
I’ve moved around quite a bit, out of desire or necessity, and now reside in Claremont, CA, about forty miles east of Los Angeles. I work at the City of Hope National Medical Center, and have continued playing dulcimer and guitar as often as possible.
I’ve had periods of activity and inactivity with music and festivals, and I’m now in a position to become more active again. A couple years ago I had a total blast playing electric guitar for a stage presentation of The Who’s Tommy, and also played dulcimer on a couple quieter pieces. I’m currently playing with a Celtic string band (with an old-timey name), The Old Grey Cats. I’m also playing for an Indigo Girls ‘tribute’ band here, called Closer to Fine. So, I remain musically adventurous! While mindful of stylistic differences between various genres, I like to keep my ‘passport’ updated to cross over musical borders whenever the mood and opportunity arises.