Bill Spence

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Bill Spence (born August 12, 1940 in Iowa City, Iowa) is a hammered dulcimer player from New York.

Bill took up the hammered dulcimer after hearing Howie Mitchell play at the 1969 Fox Hollow Festival in Petersburgh, New York. He made his first dulcimer following a plan in Mitchell's book on building your own dulcimer. The only hammered dulcimer recordings available at the time were one by Mitchell, and another by Chet Parker on the Folkways label. Consequently, Bill developed his own style, working out tunes he heard on recordings of other instruments.

In 1970, Bill helped form Fennig's All-Stars, which featured his hammered dulcimer as the lead instrument. The group made its first recording, The Hammered Dulcimer in 1973, using a two-track recorder in Spence's living room. The album was widely distributed (over 60,000 copies have been sold), and became very influential in the early part of the hammered dulcimer revival. One of the cuts from the record (Gaspé Reel and Fiddle Head Reel) was used as the theme for the popular PBS series Crockett's Victory Garden. The album was also designated as a "Recording of Special Merit" by Stereo Review magazine.

The Hammered Dulcimer also marked the beginning of Spence's own record label, Front Hall Records. In addition to several additional albums by Spence and Fennig's All-Stars, the label also released albums by a number of other folk performers, including John McCutcheon, Walt Michael and Company, Louis Killen, and Alistair Anderson. Bill and his wife, Andy, also operated Andy's Front Hall, a mail-order business selling instruments, recordings, instructional materials, and related items. In 2005, the business was scaled down from a full-service operation.

Bill graduated from the University of Iowa in 1962, with a degree in Communications. He worked for the Army Security Agency until 1965, and then at the State University of New York at Albany as an audio-visual and computer graphics specialist until retiring in 1998. He currently lives in Vorheesville, New York.

[edit] Discography

The Hammered Dulcimer, Front Hall Records FHR-01, 1973
Saturday Night In The Provinces, Front Hall Records FHR-05, 1975
The Hammered Dulcimer Strikes Again, Front Hall Records FHR-010, 1977
Fennigmania, Front Hall Records FHR-024, 1981
The Hammered Dulcimer Returns!, Front Hall Records FHR041CD, 1992
The Hammered Dulcimer, Front Hall Records FHR-302CD (compilation of FHR-01 and FHR-05), 1990
The Hammered Dulcimer Strikes Again & Fennigmania, Front Hall Records FHR-303CD (compilation of FHR-010 and FHR-024), 2000