The Project

The Project is a new song from Evan Hinshaw’s solo musical experiment Sly Like Fox.

It is the first song in the Sly Like Fox project to feature Evan’s home-made dulcimer at which he calls the Flintwood CSD.

Evan originally designed the dulcimer to work as a fun lead instrument in Catchlight. You can find hand-held strum dulcimers for sale but they are mostly built with a diatonic fret layout which makes it easy to play scales in a song but forces you to tune the instrument to whatever key the song is in.

The Flintwood C.S.D. (Chromatic Strum Dulcimer) has a complete chromatic fret layout which allows the instrument to stay in a form of standard tuning. It feels a little like playing the bass guitar but has a sound that is much like a mandolin.

Evan has developed a few prototypes in which he has future plans for building and selling CSDs and other small specialized folk instruments under the product name of Flintwood.

“When I play the CSD in Catchlight, I usually play it with a familiar folk mandolin strum style, but with this Sly Like Fox song, I wanted to think outside of the box and play the CSD in a progressive pick style to showcase the instrument in a different way.” -Evan Hinshaw

Evan calls this song, “The Project” because it reminds him of a parent and child working on a project together. He said he visualizes something like a woodworking project or some sort of craft project. The string section is the parent that has slower and patient guidance to it. The dulcimer is the child with a playful, bouncier tone to it. There are moments when the dulcimer pauses and the strings continue on as if the child is waiting for instruction from the parent.

You can find and purchase this song at: Sly Like Fox at BandCamp

You can also visit his Youtube Channel of other great content.