My name is Wendy Chappell-Dick, and there is music inside me.

Although I have been chasing it for all my fifty years, I still don’t know what form it will take: each time the muse surprises me.

I choose my songs like quilt squares, my music partners gathered round the table. My tools are a cello, guitar, dulcimer, piano and a stock of over 1000 tunes by memory. I am an evangelist, an activist and an enthusiast of music that comes from the cradle of the Mennonite church. My music is at home at protests, coffeehouses, living rooms, churches, woods and cabins. I actively pursue all genres especially folk, celtic, choral women’s music, a capella, historical, and 80s rock and roll.

This website chronicles some of my past musical projects, in the hope of inspiring more to come.

I have two adult daughters, Hannah and Sara.

My father, a physician at the Clover Fork Clinic, was caring for the underserved communities of Harlan county, KY. One of his patients gifted my mother with a dulcimer when I was only a baby. The haunting tones and harmonies of the dulcimer were engrained in me, along with a love for the mountains of Appalachia. Later in life I took that dulcimer with me to college, and my future husband Andy and I started a business together called Sweetwood Revival, designing and making dulcimers.

Here is a beautiful poem by Paul Conrad, the Mennonite maker of my dulcimer, describing how his instruments come into being: A Dulcimer Builder Poem  

Musical Bibliography, just a few of my many influences

And a Voice to Sing With: A Memoir by Joan Baez

How Can I Keep from Singing?: The Ballad of Pete Seeger by David King Dunaway

Jean Ritchie Celebration of Life: Her Songs…Her Poems by Jean Ritchie

The Laura Ingalls Wilder Songbook: Favorite Songs from the Little House Books

by Laura Ingalls; Garson, Eugenia (ed.) Wilder (Author)

American Folk Songs for Children by Ruth Crawford Seeger

Southern Harmony and Musical Companion; Containing a Choice Collection of Tunes, Hymns, Psalms, Odes and Anthems Selected from the Most Eminent Authors in the United States by William Walker

Sing Out!, P.O. Box 5460, Bethlehem, PA 18015-0460 USA

Our mission is to preserve and support the cultural diversity and heritage of all traditional and contemporary folk music, and to encourage making folk music a part of our everyday lives. We are a tax-exempt, not-for-profit educational organization

Rise Up Singing: The Group Singing Songbook by Pete Seeger, Peter Blood, Annie Patterson, and Kore Loy McWhirter

Sing for Freedom: The Story of the Civil Rights Movement through its Songs by Candie Carawan and Guy Carawan

Songcatcher, Lionsgate, 2000 Starring Janet Mcteer, Jane Adams, PG13

In the Appalachian mountains of 1907, a musicologist arrives to record the Scottish and Irish folksongs that the locals have preserved for generations. She soon… finds herself getting involved in other ways, including helping them with their struggles with the coal mining companies, and falling in love with a rough local musician, Tom.