WINCHENDON – For over 35 years, Steve Brown of Winchendon has played the drums using a very unique instrument.
That’s because Brown is one of the few people in the area who uses rhythm bones, a folk instrument that uses animal bones, though more modern versions may be made of wood and shaped like bones. This musical instrument dates back to ancient cultures in the Americas, as well as those of China, Egypt and Greece.
And, he also makes his own.
“You can imagine that some of the earliest bones were made from ribs. They have the perfect shape,” he said. “The problem with ribs is they tend to have marrow inside of them, and if you take the marrow out it makes a very loud sound. But there is a section of the rib that has very little marrow in it, and that’s the best section of the rib to use. They do tend to have a different tone.”
Brown said he played percussion instruments while growing up.
“My brother played the drums and when I was 7 years old he took a pen and wrote ‘R’ and ‘L’ on my hands and stuck a George Stone book in front of me,” he said. “Now, when people think of the 60s they think they were all rock and roll, but it wasn’t. There was a diverse amount of music: people listening to Ravi Shankar or all the folk artists or the really amazing blues artists.”
After attending a fiddle contest in Vermont in the early 70s, Brown said that he fell in love with that style of music and tried to figure out how, as a percussionist, he could participate.
“The spoons are really well known, and I did try the spoons a little bit,” he said. “I had heard of the bones, but I saw an album by The Chieftains and on the cover was a set of bones.”
In 1977, just before Christmas, Brown sent a letter to Percy Danforth, a bones player who lived in Ann Arbor, Michigan, asking how to get started playing the instrument.
“At the end of January, a package came in the mail and it’s two pairs of bones and all this instructional material,” he said.
It was while he, his wife, and their son were stuck in their apartment during the Blizzard of ’78 that he began practicing the bones in earnest.
“So, that’s how I started and I just kept it up,” he said.
In addition to playing the bones, Brown travels to Ireland on occasion to be a judge for the All-Ireland Bones Competition, which he won in 2008.
Over the years, Brown began making his own sets of bones. The actual instrument, he explained, are made from the leg bones of cattle – the femur or the tibia – and the metatarsal, which connects to the foot. He said he gets the bones already processed cleaned and dried and then files and sands the bones into the desired shape, generally straight or slightly curved.
When he performs, said Brown, he always gets questions about the bones – where they come from and how they’re played. He periodically plays with a band known as the Sons of Blarney, which specializes in Irish American music. He also played blues and old style country and jug band music with a band called the Legendary King Snakes.
Working with the Rhythm Bones Society, Brown, with the assistance of his wife, has three times stepped up to organize Bones Fest, an annual gathering of bones players. He’s also been its executive director for nearly 20 years. The experience of being at the festival, he said, was cathartic.
“There was this unbelievable feeling, like you were with your brothers, like you’d never encountered before,” he said. “It was like a reunion of the family you didn’t know you had. We used to say we were like the duck-billed platypus, because the duck-billed platypus was an endangered species, and we were an endangered species.”
Brown will be performing at the Central Mass Irish Festival on Sept. 26 at the Robinson Broadhurst Performing Arts Amphitheater in Winchendon Community Park, 88 Ingleside Drive, in Winchendon. Day-of tickets are Brown will also be doing a workshop on how to play the bones and will have a booth where he will sell the instrument.
Tickets in advance are $20 and available at www.centralmassirishfestival.com.