If there were a list of hammered dulcimer uses, “therapy instrument” might be included, at least as far as Ruth Smith of Boone, N.C., is concerned. During a winter-long recovery from November, 2001 kidney transplant surgery, Ruth turned to her dulcimer. “I found myself with some time on my hands, some unexpected time during my recovery,” she says, “and I started playing it and I absolutely fell in love with the instrument.”

Ruth has been a musician for most of her life, in part because her father was a music professor at the University of Illinois. Ruth’s introduction to music, in fact, preceded her birth. “Mom used to sit for hours when she was pregnant with me listening to my dad’s orchestra rehearse,” she says. It’s appropriate that Ruth was born at a summer music camp (Brevard) where her dad was teaching.

As a University of Illinois music education major, Ruth played multiple instruments in addition to the classical piano she grew up playing. She took her first step toward Celtic Appalachian music when she met her future husband Steve, who had grown up in a musical family in Athens, Ohio. “I was an itinerant musician on the road playing restaurants and supper clubs,” he says. “ I grew up an Appalachian boy playing mountain folk music.”

When Steve and Ruth married, they took off for Hawaii and Asia. Steve was part of a bluegrass group that needed a mandolin player. “So he handed me a mandolin,” Ruth says, “and said ‘Here. Learn how to play this, because we can’t lug around a piano.’”

So she did, and Steve thinks her classical background gives her an appealing style when playing Appalachian music. “She had a different feel to playing the mandolin because she wasn’t a bluegrass musician,” he says. “That’s why, when she finally sat down with the hammered dulcimer, she could play mountain folk music and also play classical.” In turn, Ruth compliments the instrument. “The one thing that I absolutely love about the hammered dulcimer is that it lends itself to playing so many different styles of music,” she says.

After several decades of playing together, Steve and Ruth have had their music evolve into the Celtic Appalachian style that’s now their specialty. It took some time, however, for the hammered dulcimer to become a primary instrument in their repertoire. When the couple moved to the North Carolina mountains more than 15 years ago, Steve bought Ruth a 15/14 koa dulcimer made by Mack McKinney. “I played about 2 ½ songs on it and said ‘Okay, I don’t like this’,” Ruth says. “I just didn’t get it because I was still thinking of the piano and trying to relate the piano to the dulcimer.”

Then came the winter of ’01–’02. Following three years of serious health problems and daily dialysis, Ruth had the kidney transplant she needed, followed by a long recovery period. Several things combined to increase her enthusiasm for the instrument. For starters, the sound of the instrument had always appealed to her. Plus, she remembered her previous attempts. “I’ve never been one to let something defeat me, especially musically,” she says. Plus, she had a request from a flutist to perform together in a concert, and Ruth had two months to learn a couple of songs. That got her started.

“There was something really magical about that winter,” she says. “I had a lot of time to play the instrument. I was healing physically and the instrument became part of that.”

Would it be hokey to describe the dulcimer as a key to her rehabilitation? “No, I think it really was,” she says, “because as my new healthy life was emerging, there was a renewed method of getting the music out that had been bottled up inside me for so many years.”

Steve thinks the time Ruth spent on the hammered dulcimer was just what the doctor ordered, so to speak. “I think the hammered dulcimer is something you have to spend a lot of time with,” he says. “It’s very intricate. It’s not as though she’s playing a lot of scales. It’s just getting to know her instrument and where it can go and what it can do. The more she plays it, the more creative she becomes on it.”

As Ruth’s interest in playing increased, so did her commitment to more versatile instruments. Mack McKinney made her a 17/17/7 instrument when Steve and Ruth began performing more, and then Ruth obtained a 4 ½-octave Grand Concert Master from Jerry Read Smith. When Ruth wants a more portable instrument for jam sessions or workshops, she’ll take along her Traveler, built by Rick Thum. Next up will be another Jerry Read Smith creation, a five-octave instrument with dampers.

In 2005, Ruth’s dulcimer and Steve’s Martin guitars were primary instruments on their CD titled An Appalachian Aire, described as a blend of Celtic, Classical and Appalachian music. Steve produced the album in their cabin studio in the hills of western North Carolina using the same skills needed in his full-time job teaching audio production at Appalachian State University. The song on the CD they are perhaps most proud of is the title cut, which was written by Ruth in a somewhat reverse order. Steve came up with the CD title and Ruth was then given the mission of writing a song that fit the title. One minor problem – although Ruth had been playing music for most of her life, she had never written music.

Ruth says An Appalachian Aire came into her head at the end of an exhausting day of recording. “I was ready to throw the instrument into the creek and give up,” she says. “I sat down at about 11 at night ready to turn on the TV and space out, and all of a sudden the beginning notes came into my head. So I ran upstairs and started diddling around. I finished the song the next day.”

Ruth has since written several more songs which will be included on Steve and Ruth’s next project, a CD titled Dancin Cross the Strings they hope to release this summer. “Writing music is all so new to me,” Ruth says. “It’s really exciting and a lot of fun. I’ve been a musician my whole life but this is the first time I’ve actually had music come out of me, something brand new. That’s an amazing thing. It’s pretty cool.”

One of Steve and Ruth’s current objectives is to find national representation and expand their concert performances, even though they’re already busy booking concerts, festivals and workshops, and selling their music through their website (www.steveandruth.com). They hope the success of Dancin Cross the Strings matches that of An Appalachian Aire, which was selected by NPR’s “All Songs Considered” and is played on XM satellite Radio. In fact, XM included the CD in ’06 on its “Best This Week” list, which makes recommendations of CD’s across all genres.

Sometimes, Steve and Ruth find out from strangers about the success of An Appalachian Aire. Several people, when ordering CD’s from CD Baby, have included notes telling Steve and Ruth where they first heard the music. That’s where, for example, the two learned their music was on XM and is being played by at least one airline. Steve says finding out such things makes him think of Mac Davis once saying he knew he’d made it as a songwriter when he was in a hotel and walked into a public bathroom, where the fellow standing next to him was whistling one of his songs.

So is something like that a goal for Steve and Ruth? “No. It’s not one of mine!,” Ruth says.