BONNIE CAROL
Bonnie Carol began teaching dulcimer almost as soon as she learned to play it, and through those first years of teaching, she came to understand her informal musical education better and how to communicate it to others. She played piano from the time she could walk, accompanying community theater and school choirs till she went to college and discovered the guitar and folk music. When she was twenty-jive, Max Krimmel made a fretted dulcimer for her, and she cobbled together enough information to make some sense of the modes and tunings, and off she went learning to play. She began doing everything dulcimer she built dulcimers, she taught dulcimer, she made dulcimer recordings, she wrote dulcimer books, and she performed on dulcimer. In 1979, Dana Hamilton offered to trade her a hammered dulcimer he made for a fretted dulcimer she made, and thus began the study of new instruments for both of them. Dana won honors in various fretted dulcimer contests at about the same time she did so with his hammered dulcimer.