AUTOHARP VIRTUOSO BRYAN BOWERS TO PERFORM TUESDAY

Brian Bowers is a master of an instrument long associated with campfire songs and tone-deaf musicians.

The autoharp is Bowers' instrument, a box with strings known to hill people as a "mountain piano."

"When they couldn't get it in tune it was called `idiot's delight,'" Bowers said in a phone interview from Madison, Wis.

"Once you get it in tune there is a lot of music in it."

Bowers is one of the best autoharp players in history, a member of the Autoharp Hall of Fame. He will perform at 7 p.m. Tuesday at Rose Theatre in the second of three concerts in the KRCU Folk Music Series.

The guitar was Bowers' instrument until he discovered the autoharp. He taught himself to play and developed a unique five-finger picking style he didn't realize was anything special at the time.

Bowers became a street singer in Seattle, living in an old panel truck.

"It was not a life laden with lots of frills and frippery," he said. "The frippery was at a minimum."

Working for cheeseburgers and a few bucks, he'd play at coffee houses and churches or at clubs between the rock 'n' roll bands. "Afterward I'd get together with other musicians and play half the night," he recalled.

"I learned to appreciate every day, a belly full of food, good friends and music."

Eventually Bowers started getting regular work, playing mostly fiddle tunes and the call-and-response songs he picked up as a boy in Virginia.

"I go to a lot of wonderful places, I laugh a little bit, play a little bit. It's an amazing thing to do."

Bowers now lives among 30 acres of old-growth forest with a salmon stream north of Seattle. And he is as recognized for his ability on his instrument as Chet Atkins, Stephan Grappelli, Itzhak Perlman and Mark O'Connor are on theirs.

He also is known for his ability to captivate an audience and get them involved in his show.

At the time Bowers was inducted into the hall of fame in 1993, the other three members -- Maybelle Carter, Kilby Snow and Sara Carter -- were all deceased. Now there are about 100 members in all, many of them very much alive and playing all kinds of music on the autoharp, from Celtic to marches.

There is, he admits, no place you can go to visit the hall of fame. "The autoharp community is so impoverished we don't have a real building. It's just a little bubble in their minds."