Empty Nest Syndrome

Maybe that is why I keep starting banjos -  My work table freshly empty calls out for another banjo to begin. Actually I have an idea about trying to get that high lonesome sound that Bill Monrow spoke about, the two string chords of the mountain fiddle player, with a little 3 stringed banjo.

Rooting about in my studio for a piece of wood for the neck I came upon a wonderful old thing from a neighbor's house.  It was that part of the house that Japanese call a, "nageshi."  It is a heavy strip of  wood that runs all around a traditional Japanese  room, about top of the head height along the top half of the wall beams.  I do not know the original purpose, but the locals use it for hanging things, everything from art, to certificates from the emperor, to shirts on hangers you intend to wear the next day.  The room my neighbor was renovating was built some time in the Meiji Era.  That tree was cut down over 100 years ago, cut and ripped and worked all by hand out of Japanese wood.  More effort went into that nageshi than digging and cutting a diamond.  I could not see the wood thrown away, so it waited in my studio for this banjo call.  It is a kind of softwood, unusual for an instrument neck, but hard, straight grained and strong.  I had to fill some nail holes, as it is originally attached, nailed into the beams through a "V" shaped carpenter's cuts in the back.

It is part of the fun, wondering how it will sound, or if it will even work.