Feb 25, 2017
Lobby card for "The Sidewalks of New York", 1931.
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Lobby card for "The Sidewalks of New York", 1931.
The misfits from Company K, "Doughboys" 1930.
Edelston & Dulcimer presents: She's Always a Woman
Yes, it's a Billy Joel classic cover song
Amazing guitar work
This track is from Sam Edelston's groundbreaking debut album, Making Waves, out now. This bold new project marks the first-ever album to feature the dulcimer as the leading instrument in a rock band setting, pushing the boundaries of what the traditionally folk-associated instrument can achieve.
Edelston showcases the dulcimer's incredible versatility by performing on both the fretted (or mountain) dulcimer and the hammered dulcimer across 15 tracks, including covers of classic rock and pop hits by legendary artists such as Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, Queen, The Beatles, The Who, The Ramones, Billy Joel, Bruce Springsteen, and Brandi Carlile.
Stream:
Edelston & Dulcimer is the duo of Sam Edelston and his fretted dulcimer (mountain dulcimer) .
Sam Edelston is on a mission to make fretted dulcimers as popular—and as badass—as guitars and keyboards. He is one of just a handful of performers actively promoting them as a featured instrument in rock and pop music.
Fretted dulcimers, more commonly called mountain dulcimers, come from the traditional world of folk music. When people ask how he came to that instrument, Sam says, “Kicking and screaming.” He was into fingerstyle guitar and hammered dulcimer (a low-tech ancestor of the piano, which happens to share the “dulcimer” last name). Fretted dulcimers usually have only 3 strings, and they typically don’t have frets for all of the musical notes—so for 30 years, Sam thought they were too limited to be interesting.
But his life changed in 2004 when he became the founding chair of the Nutmeg Dulcimer Festival in Connecticut. He decided to “get acquainted with the other side of the family,” bought a fretted dulcimer, and within a couple of hours he had come up with decent arrangements of Donovan’s “Mellow Yellow” and T Rex’s “Bang a Gong.” This was his eureka moment.
Just as “the Folk” played the music that was around them—the music their kin and their neighbors played—Sam plays the music that’s around him: Everything from bluegrass to bossa nova, Sousa to Gilbert & Sullivan, Tin Pan Alley, some of his several hundred original songs, and especially the many flavors of rock music from the 1950s to today. On both acoustic and electric dulcimers, Sam often makes his three strings sound like multiple instruments, or even an entire band, earning him a reputation as a creative force and an innovator. His covers of Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love” and The Ramones’ “I Wanna Be Sedated” went viral, and he has garnered well over 1 million views on YouTube.
His video of Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline” is shown at the renowned Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix, AZ.
He has performed and taught at dulcimer festivals across the US. He is a frequent performer for The Folk Project (NJ) and has been featured by the Folk Music Society of New York. Sam has played to rock audiences at the famed Bitter End in New York City and the FabFest Charlotte (NC) Beatles festival. His 2025 schedule includes appearances in Connecticut, Massachusetts, upstate New York, North Carolina, and Ohio, with more to come.
In 2024, Sam released his debut album, MAKING WAVES, the first-ever record to feature a dulcimer fronting a rock band covering (mostly) classic rock and pop songs.