Paul Coates:
They call him "Pickin' Pauly". He started playing guitar at an early age and became a musician -- by the age of eleven he was playing lead guitar on his first recording (country by the way). By his early teens he was playing rock and rhythm and blues, touring the northeast college circuit. After a stint in the Marine Corps, he started working as a weekend musician, as well as teaching guitar in Syracuse, New York. Then Paul moved to Tucson, Arizona, and worked as a recording artist and played the Putney Street Pub music circuit until 1977. At that point he moved back east and joined a disco top 40 band called Music Street. In 1979 he came off the road and managed a few music stores and played lead guitar in numerous bands. Free Wheelin and the Mossback Mule band were the more notables, both bands covered top 40 country, the latter was a 7 piece Texas swing band which worked for the Bell Booking agency out of Atlanta, Georgia. Both bands opened for many national music acts i.e. Charlie Daniels, Pure Prairie League, Grinderswitch and Little Feat to name a few.
In 1984 Paul joined the group, Spare Parts, a blues band, which opened for notables like B.B. King, Albert King, Sea Level, as well as many other bands. In 1989 Paul joined the Too Loose band in Syracuse and played as a weekend warrior until 1990. In 1991 he went back to playing music on the road obtaining work through PMR referral agency and worked the Midwest extensively playing guitar in every honky tonk as well as many casino jobs. In 1998 he tired from the road and decided to get a real job. Paul attended Northwest Technical College as well as University of Mary in Bismarck, North Dakota. Graduating with honors and obtaining both an A.A.S. and B.S. in computer science, he found out that the economy had taken a nose-dive and there were no real jobs to be had, so back on the road he went. Paul went back to the Midwest touring with his guitar again, working with the Heartbreak band for a year, then as lead guitar player for the Kidd Billy band in New Mexico. You can visit his website at
www.PaulCoatesGuitar.com.
Kerry Coates:
Although Kerry played piano in grade school, she never considered myself musically inclined. But today when she sits on the deck of her home in Capitan and strums a dulcimer, she feels comfortable playing what is considered the only true American instrument, having evolved with the founding of America in the early years of its settlement. Kerry was introduced to the dulcimer when she was living in North Carolina in the early 1980's. She began building dulcimers in 1984 when she moved to Minnesota. Kerry is one of a very few female dulcimer builders in the United States and is totally self-taught. She moved from Santa Fe to Lincoln County in 1993 and found her way to Capitan in 1998. Through a lot of study, trial, error and experimentation, her dulcimer designs have evolved quite nicely since 1984 and she now operates The Dulcimer Shop in Capitan, New Mexico, and has lovingly named her line of instruments, "Gila Mountain Dulcimers". Kerry doesn't stock a lot of dulcimers, but rather she builds them one at a time as special orders that she receives through her website,
www.GilaMountainDulcimers.com. Kerry's dulcimers now have southwestern petroglyph designs and she hand-carves the scroll heads into pueblos, dragons and horses. She also maintains an on-line nutritional website at
www.Amazing-Health-Products.com. Sign up for the monthly Newsletter!
one of Kerry's carved dragons one of Kerry's carved horse heads
Kerry and Paul:
Kerry and Paul met in late 2003 while Paul was working with the Kidd Billy Band in Ruidoso. It was magic and they married April 1, 2005, which also happens to be Kerry's birthday! They have joined together the electric guitar and the acoustic dulcimer for a very interesting sound. They also formed a business called HoneyDos Handyman and do odd jobs, repairs and some construction work in the area. Visit their website at http://www.HoneyDosHandyman.com and look for them around Lincoln County at fairs and festivals, or just sitting on their deck enjoying the sounds.
Visit all my websites!
http://www.GilaMountainDulcimers.com http://www.Amazing-Health-Products.com http://www.GamblingStrategyCards.com http://www.CharroCoats.com http://www.PaulCoatesGuitar.com