LYMAN — Four decades ago when Bryan Bowers was, as he put it, “flat-bellied and brown-haired,” he became so obsessed with the autoharp that he rigged his car’s steering wheel so he could drive with his legs while strumming and picking the obscure folk instrument with both hands.

“Everything fell by the wayside,” the 68-year-old autoharp master said at his simple cedar home in eastern Skagit County.

“Music was like a drop of crystal clear water out of the mountains into the dry lake bed at the bottom of my soul. Every song was like another drop of clear water. I was totally seduced.”

Swept away at the time by his love of the autoharp and chasing a “long-legged redhead,” Bowers wound up in downtown Seattle. He spent several years performing as a street singer, living out of his ’66 Chevy panel truck.

“I lost the girl years ago, but the Northwest stole my heart,” Bowers said.

In a deep voice laced with hints of a Southern accent, he talked about the years he’s spent crisscrossing the country and flying around the globe, his autoharp always by his side. At a sturdy 6-foot-3, Bowers now sports a bushy gray beard and silver shoulder-length hair, accompanied by a small pot belly.

A storyteller, singer and poet, Bowers bounced seamlessly among the three crafts as he shared his journey from a curb in Pike Place Market to the top of the autoharp world, and even into the Autoharp Hall of Fame.

“He was one of the people who began showing people the autoharp could be used in a lot of different ways,” said Pete Daigle, publisher of Autoharp Quarterly.

“Bryan was really the troubadour of the autoharp and has been ever since.”

As a youth
Bowers grew up in Virginia, an only child. By the fourth grade, he had read all of the 462 books in his school’s library.

With a soaring vocabulary, Bowers said he tested as “some kind of genius.”

“Just about the time I noticed girls and sports, they’re coming with extra homework,” Bowers said. “I retreated completely, determined to show no spark of effort in school.”

At age 10, Bowers’ cousin tried to teach him to play the guitar, but not being from a musical family, Bowers said he didn’t want to be bothered with it.

He moved more than a dozen times between Virginia and Pennsylvania before graduating from high school at the bottom of his class. Later, Bowers learned that his family moved so much because his father secretly worked as an inspector for the concrete pours on Nike missile sites.

“I learned about saying hello and goodbye to people,” Bowers said of his many moves, and noted that he also picked up a handy “gift of gab.”

After high school, Bowers worked several odd jobs, nearly finished a degree in Spanish, hitchhiked to Mexico and had a son.

It wasn’t until his junior year in college that he picked up a guitar, and shortly after, an autoharp.

The autoharp days
“I went nuts,” Bowers said of the square-shaped harp.

He spent hours each day strumming and picking, discovering new sounds and complexities of the instrument. While working at a job where he drove six hours a day, Bowers attached two knobs he found in a junkyard to the bottom of his steering wheel so he could drive with his knees and play the autoharp at the same time.

“And all of a sudden I got really good,” said Bower, who moved to Seattle in 1971.

Later, he played in Seattle’s Pike Place Market all day — everyday. At night he would bounce between gigs at churches and bars.

“I cut my chops,” Bowers said. “I wasn’t just a street singer; I was learning my craft.”

Bowers’ career took off when a friend invited him to play two songs at the Chicago Folk Festival in the early 1970s. The audience “went crazy,” he said, and shouted for an encore.

“At that moment I think I had a huge well of strength,” Bowers said. “I could really give something magic.”

Three days later, three major newspapers wrote reviews praising his show and giving him more visibility.

He later played on an album for county singer Emmylou Harris, and folk singer and songwriter John Denver recorded a song he wrote.

The money from Denver’s greatest hits recording of Bowers’ “Berkeley Woman” paid for Bowers’ Skagit County living room, the autoharp master joked.

In 1993, Bowers became the first living person to be inducted into the Autoharp Hall of Fame — an admittedly niche title.

“I totally understand the obscurity of it,” he laughed, noting that the Hall of Fame honor exists solely in autoharp enthusiasts’ minds — and on the Web.

“We’re too poor to build a building,” he said.

A new voice
Before Bowers came along, most autoharpists played the small harp as a rhythm instrument.

Bowers infused complex melodies, giving the autoharp a new voice.

After hundreds of hours of tinkering, he eventually translated the sounds he imagined through the autoharp.

Bowers said he uses every finger to create layers of harmony and melody. He tops off his playing with a melody “where 10,000 fairies dance on the head of a pin.”

Seattle physician Cathy Britell said hearing Bowers play the autoharp at a folk festival in the 1990s changed her life.

“I didn’t think of it as a real instrument until I heard Bowers play,” Britell said. “He made it seem like a real instrument rather than a toy or something that your music teacher strums while she teaches you ‘Wheels on the Bus.’ He has taken the autoharp to a whole new place.”

Bowers’ playing inspired Britell to pick up her own autoharp. In 2005, Britell was crowned the International Autoharp Champion, and now hopes to teach and play the autoharp full time professionally, abandoning her life as a doctor.

“That’s all because of hearing Bowers play the autoharp,” she said.

And Britell said she’s not alone.

“Just about anybody in the country who has ever played professionally started because they heard Bryan play,” she said. “It’s wonderful to be able to play a musical instrument that hasn’t been that valued in the past and make people sit up and notice that you can make beautiful, beautiful music on this thing.”

Life today
Pushing 70, Bowers said he’s slowing down. But he still spends more than 240 days a year on the road. He’s performed in such far-away places as the United Arab Emirates, Bangladesh and the British Isles — and everywhere in the United States.

“He has crisscrossed the country so many times truck drivers would envy him,” said Daigle, the Autoharp Quarterly publisher and an autoharp builder.

But Bowers’ favorite venue is the intimate setting of a living room, where he’s alone with his autoharp without microphones or amplifiers.

For just a few months a year when he is home, he’ll spend weeks in his 1,000-square-foot home on a 30-acre parcel rich with alder, Douglas fir and cedar at the end of a rural dirt road.

Sometimes, his sweetheart from Alaska will come stay with him, and they will sit together watching the salmon stream running through the property. On a recent weeknight a friend dropped by with a fiddle, and the two played together in Bowers’ kitchen. The music rang out from the home into the surrounding wooded mountains.

But like he began, learning how to say hello and goodbye, Bowers said he’s not ready to give up life on the road just yet.

“I love singing, playing and telling stories,” Bowers said.

n Tahlia Ganser can be reached at 360-416-2148 or at .