I have been building mountain dulcimers on and off for over 30 years. My father was from Wayne, WV, and he had heard of dulcimers before but had never seen one. When my sister bought him a dulcimer kit, he put it together and enjoyed it so much he made another of his own design.

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I took the dulcimer made from the kit with me to college. At that time I was lucky to find a record in the university library of some dulcimer tunes! I listened to that album until I could play most of the songs on it.

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In between semesters at college I would work with my brother at his cabinet shop in Detroit, building furniture and refinishing antiques. One day I saw some plans for a mountain dulcimer in a magazine and decided to build one. That was in 1977, and I still have that first dulcimer I ever built. 

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Later, after discovering the Foxfire book series on Appalachian living, I found a more straightforward and more traditional way of building dulcimers. 

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When my parents retired and moved to southern Ohio, the area they moved to was back in the hills away from town on a ridge the locals called Tick Ridge. (That’s just a coupla’ hollers over from Greazy Ridge). I always got a kick out of that name, so what better name for my dulcimer company than Tick Ridge.