No strings, no mallets -- musical bones make simplicity sound good

On Thursday at the old time music fest, Bernie Worrell from the trio Mescher Bones taught people how to play the bones, a percussion instrument that involves holding two strips of wood in each hand and clicking them together, [Click to enlarge]

He doesn't study dinosaurs.

But Jerry Mescher likes to play with bones.

The musical instrument that is.

Mescher, his wife Sharon and his sister Bernie Worrell are clicking and clacking away at the Old Time Country and Bluegrass Music Festival this week at the Plymouth County Fairgrounds in Le Mars.

They're preserving a tradition, Mescher says, and they're passing it on to others. On Thursday they taught a group of about 30 people the bones basics.

"If you can hold the bones, you can play the bones," he said, positioning two small flat wooden sticks in each hand. "And playing them is all in the wrist."

The bones are probably one of the oldest instruments at the old time music festival. Versions of them were found in graves dating as far back as 2000 B.C.

"They used to use real bones," Sharon said. "Some people still do use cow shinbones or rib bones."

In the Middle Ages, the bones were used by people for spiritual music and by lepers, warning others of their approach.

The instrument was likely brought to the United States by the first settlers from Scotland, England and Ireland, Sharon said.

Jerry Mescher and his sister, Bernie, grew up hearing their dad Albert play.

"He played a style he created starting back when he was 10 years old," Jerry said. "He went to the county fair with his dad on the horse and buggy, and saw a guy playing them. He never got to ask that fellow what he was playing."

Albert kept it in mind, then finally found a fellow who knew what the bones looked like, so he made Albert strips of wood out of old pitchfork handles.

Later, he met a man that knew how to hold the instrument, but not play it.

From there, Albert taught himself.

"He'd sit down with the old self-player piano -- there were no CDs or record players back then, but every home had a self-player piano," Jerry said.

Jerry also taught himself.

"I made my bones out of peach crates -- my mom canned peaches -- and I'd play them to the polka music on the radio, three times a day for 15 minutes," he said. "It takes the three Ds. Desire, determination and discipline. But if you don't have the love for it, you're not going to have the discipline."

Most sets of bones wind up in the drawer after people buy them, Jerry said.

"Don't let frustration set in," he urged the crowd, then he and his wife and sister took the crowd step by step through how to hold and play them.

*Make a fist, and bend your wrist up at about a 90 degree angle.

*The first bone is stationery, held between the index and middle finger, right down the middle of the palm, and squeezed tight.

*The second bone is held between the middle and ring finger, with the ring finger acting as a spring when the wrist moves, moving the second bone to click against the first.

*Turn the wrists out and down, letting the second bone hit the first.

Mescher Bones has more information and songs on the groups website, mescherbones.com.

People of all ages joined the workshop to learn. Jerry's wife said she learned just a few years ago.

"I thought to myself, 'I'm missing out on all the fun,' so during harvest, out in the tractor, I practiced by my self," she said.

Now she's got it down.

Lori Cloud, a visitor at the music festival from Anthon, stopped in at the workshop after she heard the trio -- dubbed Mescher Bones -- play.

"I think I'll get it," she said, holding two of the wooden strips in her hand. "It's kind of like snapping, the way you move your wrist."

The sound, she said, is like tap dancing.

Cloud said she was glad she came to the lesson.

"I think," she said, "it's a lost art."