An Interview With the Vamp-wire

Ringing Strings I

This interview appeared in Ringing Strings, the Folk Harp Journal's wire-strung harp feature column, by Dinah LeHoven, in the Spring 1997 issue.

This issue features an interview with Kyle Wohlmut, who, in his low-key way, strikes me as one of the most high-profile wire harpers in the San Francisco area. Kyle grew up in Palo Alto, California, and has been a working musician in the Bay Area since the age of seventeen. He claims to have completed "most of" the coursework for a music minor from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and studied music privately from childhood.

Since 1991 Kyle has been heavily involved in the very active harp scene in the Bay Area, working on various projects to heighten the awareness of the harp in the community, including producing two benefit concerts and assisting in the development of the innovative Bay Area Folk Harp Society scholarship program. He has just concluded four continuous years of service with BAFHS, including one year as president and three as secretary.

Since 1995, he has been performing in the wire-and-nylon harp duo The Telltale Harps, which has sold out of the limited run of its first CD and is now working on a full-length album. Recently he collaborated with harpmaker Michael Koster on the construction of a large O'Fogarty-style wire-strung harp, which he now plays as his main instrument. Today he maintains a rigorous performing and teaching schedule, and continues to work as an administrator at Stanford University. I traded questions and answers with Kyle over e-mail, and this is the result.

DL:When did you start out with harp? And why wire particularly?
KW: I have definitely always had a penchant for unusual (or just outright weird) instruments, so was attracted to the harp early on. But like most folks, I didn't see it as a realistic possibility until much later. As a kid, I used to sneak into an Irish bar in my neighborhood where this folk band (Golden Bough) played regularly, just to get to see them and hear the music. In those days I was into really weird instruments- the more strange and obscure an instrument, the more I wanted to try it! And out of all the instruments that band played (a dozen or more), the harp made the biggest impression on me.

Finally, my first quarter in college, one of my music classes gave us the opportunity to build an instrument from one of those relatively cheap kits, so I slapped a harp together and convinced Golden Bough's harp player, Margie Butler, to give me a few lessons. They're always so busy I think I only got eight or ten lessons from her, with several months in between each, but she gave me a great start and I managed to pick up a few lessons from other players, too. So my style has a lot of different influences, but I really trace everything back to Margie.

The kit I had selected was wire, which I guess I chose because it was just that much more strange and obscure, and I had a few records by Patrick Ball and Magical Strings that made heavy use of the wire-strung harp, so I really liked the sound. Sadly, that harp didn't last very long- less than a year!- so I had to get a new harp fairly quickly, and after a little research I was relieved to find out that the wire harps available at that time were actually a little bit cheaper than nylon-strung harps of comparable size... so I guess I owe the decision to stick with wire to my wallet, because at that time I wasn't really committed to the style but I did know it was significantly more difficult (and difficult to deal with) than nylon. My next harp was a little 25-string Markwood wire harp, in cherry, which I played from 1988 up until last year. I have nothing but great things to say about that harp, it was constructed very well and really had amazing tone. And I'm really glad I sort of constrained myself to that number of strings because I had to be very creative with my arrangements right from the start, and I learned a lot by having to squeeze things down to that range. Plus I think that's a very good size for a wire harp; it made the damping pretty easy.

It wasn't until after I had played that harp for a couple of years that I began to feel like I knew what it meant to play the wire-strung. I confess, until then I more ore less believed that wire-strung harp players were sort of second-class citizens of the harp world, because in all the literature it says "Wire-strung players have to worry about this and this and this" or "Unless you're a wire-strung harp player you won't have this problem," and I basically thought, "Well, why do we even bother!" But suddenly I reached a level of playing where, whenever I sat down with a nylon harp, I felt like I was missing something- there were certain things in the damping (and indeed in the non-damping) and other sounds I had learned to make that the nylon strings just couldn't express, and every time I played someone else's harp I knew that that stuff wouldn't come out right. So by then I knew that the wire-strung harp was really what I should be doing.

I played that little harp for eight years with no complaints, but when I started with The Telltale Harps, I new I really had to have something bigger. Our duo arrangements really demanded it and anyway, it was getting embarrassing playing this dinky little baby harp on top of a milk crate next to this big, voluptuous nylon harp! By then I had some pretty strong opinions on harp building, so I knew that the only way I could get the sort of harp I wanted (and still have it be REMOTELY affordable) was to either build it myself or work closely with a builder on exactly what I wanted. That's what I've done with my current instrument, a 33-string harp designed and built by Michael Koster. He had a really good design that he wanted to build, I went over it with him on a few things that I wanted in particular, and we did the actual construction together. We finished it last October, and that's my main instrument now.

DL:So obviously you've given thought to the "ideal" harp. What do you look for in quality of tone (insofar as it can be described in words), amount of sustain, etc.?
KW:In a lot of ways I just stuck with what worked about my old harp. I really like the sound that cherry wood gives to a wire harp, so I went with all cherry on my new one, even though Michael had a koa-maple combination in mind. Cherry is a little bit of a softer wood and I think that is reflected in the sound; the attack is not quite so crisp, just a little softer, and the sustain maybe just a little bit longer than in a maple body. You're right, it's hard to describe in words, but cherry just has "that sound!" I find it just the right combination of warmth and clarity that had really become part of my playing, so in the end I couldn't go with anything else on my new instrument. The sustain came out just what I was looking for, long but not too long. I do much more damping in the left hand- I do some in the right hand, but mainly just do as much advance placing as I can and hope that takes care of most of it- so this harp works great for my style because the fundamental tone is clear, but the over-ring diminishes rapidly in the upper three octaves. In the bottom two it rings more, but the bass notes are comparatively subdued because the harp needs to mature a bit more, I think, in the bottom end. Another great thing is that the harp is very loud! The box is very wide and flat which I think contributes to the overall volume.

Fitting harmonic curve to soundbox. Pictured: Michael Koster.

The first time I went to the Edinburgh Harp Festival I met Robert Evans, a harpmaker from Wales who specializes in hyper-accurate reproductions of historical harps. He showed me a lot of his work and I learned a lot about the construction of the historical instruments, but basically the bottom line for me was that his harps sounded great! I don't know how much of it is due to his use of the historical construction methods, using only four pieces of wood in the entire harp (including a single, hollowed-out log for the soundbox), but I spent a couple of years worrying whether I was going to have to hollow out a huge block of wood myself, before Michael showed me his design. It simulates the dug-out body, but is actually assembled from several pieces of wood (although unless you look closely it's hard to tell, even on the inside). Michael wanted to build this harp as a prototype, and I needed a new harp, so we worked out a deal where we could do it together, thus also producing the finished instrument in a lot less time than it would have taken him to do it himself. And I really wanted to see if Michael's design would produce a harp like Evans', even though Michael's intention was not to reproduce a historical harp as accurately as possible. Where he saw places to improve on the original construction, he did. There's a brass string band on each side of the curve, for example, that is recessed and set in to the curve (rather than just screwed on the side as in the original instrument), so it actually adds strength to the curve and makes tuning go very smoothly.

DL: Talk about your playing technique. Do you use a lot of damping? Ornamentation? How do you work them into arrangements?
KW: My theories of damping are pretty straightforward; basically I feel you should damp with whatever you can! I really take advantage of the narrower spacing of the wire harp and find myself damping with the backs of my fingers, knuckles, palms, wrists, etc. and it doesn't really throw off my hand position. I'm a little bit better at it in my left hand, partly I think because I'm left-handed, and because I do less damping in the right hand. Good placing takes care of the bulk of necessary damping automatically. But that's entirely appropriate because the bass strings ring more, and that's where you want to really sweat good damping. However, I also think that what you don't damp is as important as what you do. Since I'm always worried about leaving enough space in my arrangements (I start to feel guilty if both my hands aren't working as hard as they can all the time... but you have to fight that, it only leads to bad arrangements!), this becomes very important. For example, I particularly like to emphasize the 7th of the scale in the after-ring, especially in the Dorian mode- I think this is a great sound. Like if I'm playing a tune in A Dorian, when I come to the IV chord I might play the A and then the F# above that (where most people might play the open fifth on D), and then, let the F# build up some ring. This doesn't sound great in every tune or on every harp, but has been awesome on both my cherry wire-strungs.

The best thing for my ornaments on the harp has been messing around on the uilleann pipes, which I started to do a couple of years ago. I don't think I'll ever be any good on that instrument, but playing it has put a whole new perspective on a lot of the harp ornaments I had been doing for years, and gave me lots of good ideas. It hit me (duuuuuuhhh) that a lot of the cuts and rolls in Irish music came from piping, because on the pipes there's a steady stream of air so the only way to play a repeated note is to jam a note in between them. But why do that on the harp, since we can play repeated notes? I started replacing a lot of the cuts and rolls I had been doing with the "bee's plaiting" (as it's called in the Ap Huw manuscript; the rapid trilling of a single note with different fingers; also something I learned from talking with Robert Evans) and found that most of the time, this sounded even better than what I had been doing before. It makes it a real distinctive harp ornament, not something copied from another instrument in traditional Irish music. Especially in jig-type tunes where you have three repeated eighth-notes in a row; now I do the bee's plaiting there instead almost every time. And then you don't have to worry about how to damp the dissonant notes from your ornament; they're all the same note. And it's a very distinctive sound that not a lot of people use much.

DL: How would you describe the music you play?
KW: Basically, in The Telltale Harps we just want to be rock stars, so we're hoping there's a niche out there for rock harp music! I played in rock bands for many years so we're experimenting with incorporating rock elements into our arrangements- rock rhythms, lots of open 5ths, rock arrangements with room for 12-bar improvised solos, odd time signatures... You know, bonehead stuff. Not to say that we're trying to 'dumb it down,' but to give a strong edge to it. Just enough to be able to dominate any stage! We also mess with folk rock styles, especially modulation. Folk harp players know how hard it is to modulate freely on our instrument like a guitar player can, but it's a lot easier with two harps. That element is a big part of our style right now. Anyway, we'd like to do for rock harp what Deborah Henson-Conant did for jazz harp!

In my solo arrangements I'm in uncharted territory because I feel like I'm one of the few treating the wire-strung harp like a modern instrument and not a museum piece- sure, I do play the ancient Celtic tunes, but always deliberately, even obstinately in new ways, and I'm also trying to play modern and original music, so as to keep the attention of even a jaded modern audience. This is hard work and it doesn't always succeed, of course, especially in prolonged solo gigs, but when it does it's magic. I really feel like I'm accomplishing something when I go out there and play some surf music, or some old Cream tune or whatever, and the audience really sits up and takes notice. Most people probably just think it's neat to hear those tunes on a harp at all, and probably don't even know the difference between wire, nylon & gut strings or between folk and pedal harps... but I do, and it's exciting to play that kind of material on this instrument- when it works, that is! Some nights I feel really comfortable, like the wire harp was made for this stuff, but other nights... well, it flops!

For my own playing, the main thing I'm working on right now is leaving more space. Wire-strung arrangements should really leave a lot more space than nylon arrangements, but it takes a conscious effort to do that- again, I feel guilty unless I'm trying to play every note that I think should be there, but the fact is the particular qualities of the wire strings actually demand much less. This goes for my solo arrangements as well as the duo material. When I toured with Rüdiger Oppermann in 1994, I didn't learn much from him directly applicable to wire playing, since his music is so original, highly improvisational, and his harps are so weird that most of his techniques are not very applicable to a standard harp, but I did learn a lot from his approach to music. I realized that he was saying a lot musically in the spaces he left in his playing. And a lot of the time he's just playing the harp like it's simply a melody instrument. It's very liberating to play like that- you find yourself really focusing on tone and expression.

DL: What do you have coming up, musically?
KW: At this point, all my other instruments and musical projects have fallen by the wayside and I'm finally working on just harp. The Telltale Harps has been incredibly satisfying and I'm really happy do be doing that and hope we keep it up for the foreseeable future. It was really gratifying that we sold out of the first "test run" of our CD very quickly, so we're currently working on doing a full production run of that one, with some extra material, and are also already back in the studio working on a full-length CD. Right now we're trying to set up some dates in Europe in the summer, and I would really like to have it done before then so we can take it with us, but we've laid down a pretty rigid timetable to get it done in time and I have my doubts... this year, Harpers' Hall [the local ISFHC chapter] is working on doing a recording, too- we'll be doing an album of the standard repertoire that we play at events, so I hope to be involved in that project also.

I'm also lucky enough to be teaching harp a lot at the moment, which is something I really enjoy doing. Gryphon, where I teach out of, has been really great in promoting me and the harp; and through them I have maintained a pretty full student load. And I've just started publishing a little teaching newsletter for all my students, which is fun- quite a time sink, but I do think I'm a better teacher and musician for it.

I'm taking a break from any official role in the harp societies for now, but I'm sure I'll be working on various projects with them this year. February saw our first all-wire get-together, which I organized... I'm trying to draw on all those closeted wire players... that is, we have a lot of people around here who literally have wire-strung harps in their closets! So maybe we'll start to see some developments on the wire-strung scene here.

DL: Talk a little bit about the wire harp scene in the Bay Area. From LA it's always looked to me like there's lots of you up there doing all kinds of cool stuff. Why do you suppose there seem to be so many more wire harpers there, and do you have any suggestions for helping wire harping to flourish elsewhere?
KW: I guess there are a few more wire players up here than "normal," but few if any are really exclusively wire players. I can only think of a couple of others in the Bay Area besides myself. I think harp awareness in general is quite high here, so a surprising number of people know that there is such a thing as the metal-strung harp- largely, I think, due to Patrick Ball, who comes through often and plays to huge numbers of people. Another great player who has done a lot for the instrument is Howdy Emerson, and I was really thrilled to meet him and hear him at the ISFHC conference, but in fact he's so far up north that I think he's actually farther away than you guys in LA! In the two harp societies here, there are a whole lot of folks who dabble or own one and use it as a hatstand, so that may make it seem like there's a lot of us here... but I think I'm the only one who's obstinate enough to bring mine to all the jams and stuff. So if I had any advice for other maverick wire harpers in other areas, it would be to do just that, get your harps out there and play with everybody else... vive la difference. Everyone is always thrilled to see and hear a wire harp, it's just a few that want to play one.

At one point, I even swore off playing nylon strings altogether for a time, but that was mainly due to you, Dinah! I used to write this column for the BAFHS newsletter called "Be a Metal Guru" where I would just drone (ahem) on and on about wire-strung stuff, but at the same time I still had sort of a complex about playing wire in public and my own playing and my own dinky little harp, so if at all possible I would play other people's harps on stage. so I was at this highland games and we were all taking turns playing, and when it got to me I borrowed a big nylon harp from somebody. After I played and got off the stage, who should come out of the crowd but your good self, and you said something like, "I'm so disappointed because I came all this way and was really looking forward to hearing you play the WIRE!" So right then and there I swore off nylon, "for good." To tell you the truth, that was really a turning point for my development on the wire harp.

DL: Thank you, it's nice to know that occasionally my own single-mindedness in promoting wire actually has a noticeable beneficial effect!

What do you see coming up for the future? I know you've been active on the internet and in a lot of areas besides harp.

Preparing for performance at Highland Games, possibly the first harpist ever to perform in a suit of armor

KW: Well I'm glad to say that harp is really the main thing for me right now. I've been so busy with TTH and teaching that I've been able to go part-time with my 'day job' to make room for the harp stuff. I'm at a real transition point right now because the hobby I've loved for so long is becoming a profession, and that's great, but it is crowding out a lot of my other interests. I even stopped brewing beer because I just don't have time anymore! And anyway, it was like so bad for my nails.

I had done a couple of web sites (including one for Warr Guitars and one for Harpers Hall), but in all honesty I'm becoming less enchanted with the internet stuff, and I don't even own a computer so I'm rapidly falling behind in terms of keeping up with the technology. I've had the Harpers Hall site up for several years already and it was one of the first harp-related sites on the web, so I'm glad I was able to provide a good harp resource early on. But now there are so many great sites mine is just one of many, and an outdated one at that. As always, I'm still doing lots of freelance writing and editing (both on the internet and in the real world) and will probably continue to do so. I'd also really like to go back to Europe for a while so the past few years have seen me working a lot on languages, which I really enjoy.

One thing I'm not going to be doing again any time soon is building a harp! I think Michael plans to make a few more of this model soon, but I'm sure not going to be involved... it's just too much work!

This interview was conducted by Dinah LeHoven and appeared in the Spring 1997 issue of the Folk Harp Journal (issue no. 95)

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