"Mama Tried" (on Dulcimer? Yeah… we tried it)

"Mama Tried" came out in 1968, and if you know anything about Merle Haggard, you know it wasn’t just another track he wrote to fill an album. It came out of a pretty complicated part of his early life, and even though the story in the song isn’t perfectly literal, there’s enough truth in it that you can feel it right away.

It’s a song about regret, about looking back, and about recognizing that someone did their best for you even when you didn’t quite meet them there.

And somehow, it’s also just a really playable tune.

That balance is part of what makes songs like this stick around. They’re simple enough to pick up, but they carry something with them.

So Justin and I sat down with it.

He’s playing the Cumberland River dulcimer here (w/ a pickup in it!), and we didn’t spend a lot of time trying to shape it into something polished. We just played it the way we would if we were sitting in the same room without a camera on.

There’s something about this instrument that lends itself to that kind of moment. You’re not fighting it. You’re not trying to force anything. You just fall into the rhythm of the song and let it move the way it wants to.

And when you get to do that with someone else, it changes things. It becomes less about getting it right and more about sharing the experience of it.

That’s the part I always come back to.

If you’ve ever thought about learning, or you’ve picked one up and weren’t sure what to do next, this is really the end goal. Not perfection, just being able to sit down and play something that means something, with someone else.

Happy strumming,

-Ryan