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Who is Dances With Dulcimers???
 Meet Kerry Coates
Kerry was introduced to the dulcimer while she was living in North Carolina in the early 1980's. She went to an art festival in Boone, NC, and noticed an elderly man in a booth playing a dulcimer. She was captivated. The music stole her heart. It was so sweet and beautiful. A totally self-taught woodworker, Kerry began building dulcimers in 1984 and so far has built over 300. Mostly sold to people on the American mainland, some of Kerry's instruments have been shipped to places like Norway, England, Hawaii, Alaska, Netherlands and Germany.
Over the years, she would trade hours, performing on the instrument for booth space at shows. Kerry did a show in Santa Fe in 1990 and fell in love with New Mexico. She stayed three years, but Santa Fe was too big and congested. She wanted a smaller community so she requested a relocation packet from the Ruidoso Chamber of Commerce and moved to Lincoln County in 1993.
In 1998, she reassembled her woodworking shop and started building dulcimers again and attending music festivals. Through a lot of study, trial, error and experimentation, her dulcimer designs have totally evolved since 1984 into a thriving business called Gila Mountain Dulcimers and she now sells her instruments directly to customers on-line from her website.
Meet Paul Coates
They call him "Pickin' Pauly". He started performing guitar at an early age and by the age of eleven he was performing lead guitar on his first recording (country by the way). By his early teens he was performing rock and rhythm & blues, touring the northeast college circuit. After a stint in the Marine Corps, he started working as a weekend musician, as well as teaching guitar in Syracuse, New York. Then Paul moved to Tucson, Arizona, and worked as a recording artist and played the Putney Street Pub music circuit until 1977. At that point he moved back east and joined a disco top 40 band called Music Street.
In 1979 he came off the road and and played lead guitar in numerous bands -- Free Wheelin' and the Mossback Mule band were the more notables covering top 40 country, the latter being a 7 piece Texas swing band which worked for the Bell Booking agency out of Atlanta, Georgia. Both bands opened for many national music acts i.e. Charlie Daniels, Pure Prairie League, Grinderswitch and Little Feat to name a few.
In 1984 Paul joined the group, Spare Parts, a blues band, which opened for notables like B.B.King, Albert King, Sea Level, as well as many other bands. Later Paul joined the Too Loose band in Syracuse and played as a weekend warrior until 1990. Then he went back to performing music on the road obtaining work through PMR referral agency and worked the Midwest extensively performing guitar in every honky tonk as well as many casino jobs.
In 1998 he tired from the road and decided to get a real job. Paul attended Northwest Technical College as well as University of Mary in Bismarck, North Dakota. Graduating with honors and obtaining both an A.A.S. and B.S. in computer science, he found out that the economy had taken a nose-dive and there were no real jobs to be had, so back on the road he went. Paul went back to the Midwest touring with his guitar again, working as lead guitarist with the Heartbreak band for a year, then for the Kidd Billy band.
Settling in Ruidoso in 2004, Paul played with a few local bands for a few years and then toured with Bobby Chitwood who was then signed by Universal. Paul will be working with Bobby's band to get a CD recorded before this coming spring.
Dances With Dulcimers is available for the following venues:
Business After Hours, Clubs, Community Events, Festivals, Picnics, Anniversaries, Fund Raisers, Funerals, Bar-B-Ques, Grand Openings, Corporate Functions, Hotels, Clubs, Coffee Shops, Picnics, Awards Nights, Restaurants, Country Clubs, Reunions, Private Parties, Coffee Houses, Christmas Dinners, Banquets, Holiday Parties and other special events.
Reserve your Dances With Dulcimers show today!!!
For bookings E-Mail Kerry & Paul or call 575.973.0444.
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