Montgomery City resident enjoys time with Simply Strings

Dulcimer band performs at Saturday In The Park

By Theo Tate
Posted 9/24/21

When Peggy Kleine joined a traveling musical group of women from central Missouri several years ago, she had no problem coming up with a group name.

The Montgomery City resident named the group …

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Montgomery City resident enjoys time with Simply Strings

Dulcimer band performs at Saturday In The Park

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When Peggy Kleine joined a traveling musical group of women from central Missouri several years ago, she had no problem coming up with a group name.


The Montgomery City resident named the group Simply Strings.


“We’re simple and we simply play strings,” Kleine said.


Kleine, along with Mary Corderman of Madison, Melanie Black of Jefferson City, Carol Welch of Thompson and Linda Tremain of Holts Summit, play an assortment of hand-built mountain dulcimers, banjos, a bowed psaltery, a fiddle and an acoustic guitar. They perform American folk and mountain music, bluegrass, Irish and Scottish tunes, old-time hymns and a couple of waltzes.


“We don’t sing. Our songs are historical,” Kleine said. “We read about the history, tell about the stories behind them, tell jokes and get the audience involved. The history in those songs is wilder than fiction.”


Kleine lived in Montgomery City for about 40 years. She worked as a teacher in four elementary schools at the Montgomery County R-II school district.


One year, Kleine received a mountain dulcimer from her husband, Dennis, as a Christmas present. Since then, she was hooked.


“I got on YouTube and I ordered some books and I kind of figured out how to play it,” Kleine said. “Then, Dennis found the Show-Me Dulcimer club for me to join. I never thought I would be doing this.”


A dulcimer is an instrument that has three strings and was originally played in the Appalachian region of the United States.


“It appeared in the Appalachian Mountains in the 1800s,” Kleine said. “Wire was extremely expensive. They wanted to make music with the few strings that they could.”


Kleine and her Simply Strings bandmates were members of the Show-Me Dulcimer Club before they decided to form a band.


“We were all in the Show-Me Dulcimer club that met in Fulton once a month,” Kleine said. “We wanted to play more than once a month. So we started getting together that way. That’s why we’re all from different areas. Otherwise, the five of us never would have met.”


Welch said Kleine really impressed her after they met at the Show-Me Dulcimer Club.


“I asked Linda and Melanie if they thought Peggy would be a good addition for our group and we all agreed,” Welsh said. “Peggy started to join us and started coming down with us.”


Simply Strings has performed in nursing homes, churches and libraries and is scheduled to have its next performance on Sept. 25-26 at the Walk Back In Time festival in Mexico. The band recently produced its first CD, which is titled, “Stay Tuned.”


“Of course, with COVID, we didn’t play much at all last year,” Black said. “We played early in the year like around February, then that was it. So we were off for a year. When we got back together, I think it was February or March of this year, we had a lot of rust to get out and get back playing. It was really fun to get going. We do anywhere between 18-24 gigs a year.”


Kleine and her group performed for two hours at the Saturday In The Park event on Sept. 11 at Wabash Park in Montgomery City. They played songs such as “The Southern Soldier Boy,” “Down The River I Go” and “Oh, Susanna.”


Kleine said she was thrilled to be part of an event that had a flag presentation from numerous VFW members in the area to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. She wore a T-shirt with an American flag on it.


“That gave me chills,” Kleine said. “That was such a beautiful presentation. It was a perfect day. It was very fun. We knew we were background music for everything. It was enjoyable.”

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