recordings by
Dolores Hydock:

Dolores Hydock is an actress and story performer, whose work has been featured at a variety of concerts, festivals, and special events throughout the U.S. She is a touring artist for the Alabama State Council on the Arts, a speaker with the Alabama Humanities Foundation, and a member of the Southern Order of Storytellers. Her five CDs of original stories have all received Resource Awards from Storytelling World Magazine.

Dolores is originally from Reading, Pennsylvania, home of the Reading Railroad and Luden's Cough Drops. Her hometown is where she won her first blue ribbon in storytelling in a local contest at the age of 5 – the real gold letters on the blue ribbon convinced her there was obviously a fortune to be made in the performing arts. She continues to hope.

As an actress, she has been featured in the one-woman plays Shirley Valentine, The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, Fully Committed, Talking Heads, The Lady With All the Answers, and Nothing Sacred: An Evening of Stories by Ferrol Sams. Her early theatrical career included portraying the Statue of Liberty in a Fourth of July pageant. The role required her to stand on a float in the middle of a pond, wearing a 20-pound electrified crown on her head. She somehow managed to survive that role without drowning or electrocuting herself, but has avoided historical dramas ever since.

Dolores lives in Birmingham, Alabama. In her spare time, she tends a garden that includes a pomegranate bush, muscadine vines, blueberry bushes, a 20-foot jujuba tree, and a family of slugs the size of cheap cigars. She's held a wide variety of jobs – she’s been a house parent at a halfway house for juvenile delinquents, a blues DJ, an au pair in Paris for three small children, a computer sales representative for IBM, a cookbook copy editor, an acting teacher at Birmingham-Southern College, and a teacher of Cajun dancing. If anyone questions her strange path through such a variety of jobs, she simply says that it's all just material for her stories.

Dolores Hydock /
Footprint on the Sky: Memories of a
Chandler Mountain Spring
[compact disc]
Bonnets, bow-tie quilts, poke salad, tomato stakes, and an old-timey cure for hiccups – they’re all part of this funny and touching portrait of an Alabama mountain community in the 1970s. Memories, family histories, and superstitions are brought to life in this story of strong women, Southern hospitality, and the generous spirit of a close-knit community. The story is blended with old-time tunes and songs from the fiddle, banjo, and guitar of old-time string musicians Flying Jenny.

CD $13.98


Dolores Hydock /
Holidazed! Stories of Holiday Disasters,
Discoveries and Delights
[compact disc]
If you've ever felt overwhelmed by all the shopping, baking, buying, wrapping, eating, celebrating, and having to be nice that the holidays require, take a break and treat yourself to stories about Thanksgiving, Christmas, and everyone's personal holiday -- birthdays. The stories will remind you that other people's relatives and rituals are crazy, too. They'll have you laughing and crying at the silliness and sweetness of life. And they'll help you celebrate the longing of the human heart for comfort, joy, and connection.

CD $13.98


Dolores Hydock /
Made from Scratch
[compact disc]
A collection of original short, short stories about pennies, turnip greens, computerphobia, and other peculiarities of everyday life. Plus a story about the secret to making all your wishes come true!


CD $13.98


Dolores Hydock /
Once in a Blue Moon
[compact disc]
Many traditional tales – folktales of cleverness, courage, and hard-won life wisdom – came to this country through the immigrant families who brought those tales with them from other cultures, other lives. This collection of stories includes the real story of one immigrant family’s journey through Ellis Island into early-20th-century America, and a few of the traditional tales that came along from “the old country” at the same time.

In the title story, you’ll learn the truth about how blue moons came to be and why they don’t come around very often. Looking for His Luck reveals the surprising source of abundant good fortune, and The Golden Ball shows what it's really like to live the easy life. Then, in Putting Down New Roots, you’ll meet a green-thumbed grandmother with the secret to making things grow, and a family that takes a chance on finding a new life in the kind of adventure that only happens, well, every once in a blue moon.

CD $13.98


Dolores Hydock /
Perfect Match
[compact disc]
Newfangled meets old-school in these light-hearted stories about technology and tendiness vs. time-honored tradition.

In the title story, Perfect Match, high school romance goes high tech in a combustible mixture of cupid, computers, and chemistry class. Fashionable food fads get fried in a sixty-year-old skillet in Sharing the Gold. And a casual question about conifers leads to an impromptu lesson in Western Civilization from a woman whose world is a work of art.

CD $13.98


Dolores Hydock /
Silence: A Medieval Adventure in
Story and Song
[compact disc]
This funny and fascinating tale from the 13th century is the story of a girl raised as a boy to protect her vast inheritance (since girls could not inherit property in the England of the story). She becomes a kind of 13th-century Annie Oakley -- anything the fellows can do, she can do better -- as she follows her heart into a life as a traveling minstrel, a valiant knight, a trusted advisor to the king. Then ... well, then things get complicated.

The story is told in the voice and spirit of a cranky old crone who freely expresses her opinions as she spins the tale. The story is interwoven with exuberant melodies and haunting harmonies of the time, as played by the musical trio PanHarmonium on reproductions of medieval instruments: harp, recorders, lute, viol, psaltery, and wonderful weird percussion.

This hour-long story invites you to leave behind the hassles of the 21st century world, and enter a world of greed, jealousy, seduction, trickery ... wait! That IS the 21st century world! Hmmm... maybe things haven't changed that much in 800 years, after all.

CD $13.98