Introducing the Ingly

I went into Artichoke Music store this afternoon. Artichoke is another longtime mainstay of Hawthorne Blvd, my One Street. Over the years it has become a community gathering place and you never know who's going to be there plucking an instrument or beating a drum.

Today this fellow on the left, Wayne Earl Evans, was showing off a prototype of an instrument he designed and has had patented. The other fellow, Ray Hughes, who works at Artichoke, is the luthier. The instrument is called an "ingly," for reasons I didn't quite understand, but had something to do with Wayne's book publisher telling him his writing used too many "ings" and "lys." (Wayne is a bit of a character.) The ingly sounds very much like a mountain dulcimer but it's held like a guitar rather than across the lap, like a dulcimer. It has the same diatonic tuning as a dulcimer, with a drone string, so as stringed instruments go, it's fairly easy to learn.

I was quite impressed with this lovely instrument and have a hunch we'll be seeing more inglies out and about. Not sure the name will stick, though. Here's another shot of Wayne and the ingly, with a better view of the instrument.