Some background: The Cactus Brothers were a Nashville-based band who released two albums in the 1990s before disbanding. The band...

This post is not so much about David, but how David sparked some thoughts about growing older and the passage of Time with its shifting...

If you are one of the people who have written or asked about what I knew about David's love life, this post will disappoint. By the end,...

Watch David perform "Tennessee Valentine" at the 2001 dual launch party for the Starlings, Tn's album, Leapers Fork and David's Uncle...

One of the many ways researching and writing Pluck has changed me is that it has given me a new appreciation for first-hand diving into...

Back in April, I wrote the following about Diana White in this post when I knew very little about her. In the previous post to this one,...

So, why, you might ask, might Pluck never have been written without John Lomax's participation? Well, first, he's a walking encyclopedia...

Several people have asked how I was able to write a biography of someone whom I had never personally met, so this last of three posts...

In 1988, Frets magazine, "The Magazine for Acoustic String Musicians" featured a smiling Richard Thompson on its cover. It also...

One of the best experiences in the research for Pluck happened whenever I found an obscure source that opened many more lines of...

Remember the old Reader's Digest recurring series, "My Most Unforgettable Character"? Well, Neal Hellman is in my Top Ten list of most...

The researching and writing for Pluck was a gargantuan learning experience on a number of levels. And the learning continues, thanks to...

The first time I visited the Schnaufer archive at Vanderbilt University was several years before I ever had an inkling I would plunge...

Writing on this project has enabled me to get to know and learn from a whole host of remarkable and talented people, some from within the...

"Harris Picking" was David's first submission to Dulcimer Players News.* It appeared in 1979, and he was twenty-six years old. Allow me...

I know how this is going to sound. I just want you to know that I swear it happened. I was in the middle of some serious burnout. So,...

As previously described here, David's song "Brush Arbor" was one of those "signs" that kept popping up during the research for Pluck that...

1960: Folk Revival begins. Jean Ritchie introduces Richard Fariña to the dulcimer./Nancy Johnson (later, Nancy Barker) gets her first...

I'm sorry to say this didn't occur to me to include in Pluck prior to publication, but a couple of people suggested I should have...

David Shnaufer in the mid-seventies