FAIRHOPE, Ala. — “Well, why don’t we play one,” Stan Hodgins said Monday at his Fairhope house, holding a mountain dulcimer on his knees, one of dozens of stringed instruments he’s made by hand since retiring in 1983 from his job as director of training for an international company.

He looks to his left at Doreen Sorrels, holding an instrument with an ancient lineage: a bowed psaltery.

She lifts her hands, a bow in each one, then leans over the triangle-shaped instrument he made for her from amaranth, or purple heart wood.

“It’s mentioned in (the Book of) Psalm 150,” she said. “It’s a very sweet instrument from long, long ago.”

Jim Hays, another regular at these Monday music sessions, pulls his chair up a little closer, resting his hands on his mountain dulcimer, one of the few instruments not made by Hodgins in a house filled with elegantly crafted mandolins, harps and bajimers (a cross between a banjo and dulcimer).

“We play a kind of country chamber music,” Hodgins said. “This is ‘Starry Lullabye’ by David Schnaufer. ”

The high silvery sounds of the double-bowed psaltery combine with the sweet, mellow strumming of the dual dulcimers for an achingly beautiful tune, by turns sad then joyful.

“You should hear Doreen play ‘Summertime’ with Robert Gates (on guitar),” Hodgins said, after the song’s last notes float away. “It’ll bring tears to your eyes.”

Upwards of 100 people are expected this weekend to listen and join in for a variety of stringed-instrument music at the annual Stan Hodgins Jubileefest at Southwind R.V. Park east of Fairhope. The festival starts Thursday and ends Sunday.

“We’d be delighted for the public to come,” said Jack Smitherman, who helped organize the event. “This is about the eighth year. In the past, we’ve had people from states like Texas, Arkansas and Mississippi. This year we have one couple coming down in their R.V. from Canada.”

The event is hosted by the Jubilee Pickers, the dulcimer and stringed-instrument group that has met every Thursday morning for more than a decade at Homestead Village in Fairhope. About 20 to 30 people attend that musical gathering, said Smitherman, who learned to play the dulcimer from Hodgins about 11 years ago.

“I was in Stan’s second class on how to learn to build and play the dulcimer,” he said. “After it was over, the class wondered what are we going to do now? We’ve been meeting together on Thursdays from 9 a.m. to noon ever since.”

The festival will include impromptu jam sessions of small groups every day, workshops on Saturday morning, an open stage that afternoon and the featured act that evening.

“Anyone can learn to play the dulcimer,” Smitherman said. “I can sit down with you and in 30 minutes you’ll be playing a song. It’s unbelievable.”

The event organizers are excited to have Jeff Hames, the national 2006 Mountain Dulcimer Champion, as the featured entertainment, who will also be teaching Saturday morning workshops.

“This will be my first trip to the Fairhope festival,” Hames said from his home in Madison, Miss., north of Jackson. “I’ll be playing a little of everything. Traditionals like ‘Black Mountain Rag,’ but also The Beatles and The Police, as well as Johnny Cash and Hank Williams. When I play, I try to show how versatile the instrument is.”

Hames, 20, picked up the dulcimer when he was 9. Two years later he heard Schnaufer play. Schnaufer is the Nashville legend credited with bringing the dulcimer to national prominence, playing with the likes of Cash, Mark Knopfler, Chet Atkins, Cyndi Lauper and the Everly Brothers.

“I told my parents I want to learn to play like that,” Hames said. “So, we started driving the seven hours to Nashville five or six times a year for me to take private lessons with him.”

Hames studied for six years with Schnaufer who established a dulcimer program at Vanderbilt University’s Blair School of Music.

Schnaufer died in August 2006.

“We’ll be playing ‘Starry Lullabye’ in his honor this weekend,” Hodgins said.

Schnaufer took an instrument some thought as merely quaint and quiet, mastered the traditional picking style, but then added fingerpicking, flatpicking and bowing the dulcimer, a lost art that can create a haunting bagpipe-like sound. He resurrected an instrument some people had called dead.

“Everyone has an instrument,” Schnaufer was often known to say. “It’s just a matter of finding it.”

For those in search of such an instrument, there will be vendors selling all kinds, as well as musical supplies and music, at the festival, according to a flyer for the event.

Jubileefest will be located at Southwind R.V. Park on County Road 9, one-half mile north of U.S. 98. For more information, contact Jim Hays at 990-9114 or Jack Smitherman at 929-1771.