Babbling Brooks

Flat Rock Happenings

Hello, I have been out of the Babbling Brooks sphere for way too long. I’ve been working on a ton of stuff in the shop and have a bunch of updating to do on this website. But for now, here is what Flat Rock Stringband is up to. Thanks to Eric Bagdonas, our guitar player, we now have a website in the making;

  http://www.flatrockstringband.com/

The next event we are excited about happens in Astoria, out at the Oregon Coast!

More on the shop happenings later, I hear a banjo that is ready to ship calling me.

Have a great weekend!

cabin banjo for sale

  I was surprised to see this banjo for sale on ebay today. It is from my second year making banjos back before I stamped numbers on them. This banjo is #12 looking through my ships log and my third silverspun rim. The rim is most likely a very figured piece of maple burl one Dulcimer Dan Arterburn gave me, that I milled and steamed myself. The neck is mahogany I had sent to me from Portland, because even then my wood guy was a Portlander. The finish is French Polish.

  A music store in Kansas originally bought this banjo from me over the phone, site unseen. Learning instrument making from Stephen Owsley Smith made that possible for me at the time. Phone calls would come out of the blue asking me if I had any banjos, I hadn’t even taken a picture of one yet. Steve would tell folks about me and they would call. I pieced this whole journey together through those calls. Thanks Steve! Thanks John Meade! Thanks Jim Curley! Thanks Stephanie Wilds! Yall kept us eating in the cabin and put shoes on my boys feet.

 
    http://cgi.ebay.com/Brooks-Masten-Hand-Made-Open-Back-Fretless-Banjo-/110639213366?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item19c29c6b36

POTMG

  The Portland Old Time Music Festival rolled through town once again and I think I like it better and better every year. I think that’s due to living in Portland now for 5 1/2 years and getting to know folks better each year. That’s what festivals are all about right? Enough said. I’m a bit wiped out, so I won’t go into to much detail. If you search http://www.bubbaguitar.com that will give you a pretty accurate idea about the whole thing.

  My favorite thing about the festival is that Jason Romero and Colin Vance come each year and we all get to hang out. It’s a banjo maker pow wow. Doc shows up too and Nate Calkins, sometimes Vern Marr. I’ve gone down to Arcata to stay with Jason in the past and for a few years Jason and Colin would stay at my house during the gathering. My living room was all banjo cases and twang. This year I didn’t get to see Colin as much as I would have wanted, but he did manage to catch me totally ignoring a jam I was in to count the 46 brackets on an old banjo somebody laid by me. Laughing so hard you cry is what gatherings are about right?

  Today was more than wonderful because I got to hang out with Jason and Pharis Romero all afternoon and shop for wood. We made an agreement over the phone we wouldn’t fight over pieces of wood and since he has a 12 hour drive to get here it was really his day to stock up… Did he ever…I walked away with three beautiful necks worth and I’m happy. We actually go for slightly different grain types, so I didn’t get too bad of pangs watching them cut it up for him. Jason does 3 or more piece necks and I mostly make one piece necks, so grain choice is a bit different between us. He also has rims made for him out of the really figured claro walnut, so he needs longer lengths than me. I get very tempted to do the same and make highly figured walnut rims, but there is pretty much only one rim maker nowadays who will do that and that would be stepping on Jason’s toes, because it is his original idea. So I stick with the maple and cherry rims that I love and have the sound I’m looking for. If I ever do make figured claro walnut rims, I will bend them myself. I have the tools in my shop to make rims, I still have my steamer from New Mexico. But it takes a lot of time and the wood is EXPENSIVE, I would have to charge $500 a rim just for the rim.

  Here are a few pictures of the day and Gathering. Doc, sold a banjo, he always does!  Nobody else, it’s not a big banjo selling event. More a meet and greet. Sorry the Gathering pictures are a bit blurry, it was the end of the day and I think I was drinking on the job.

Flat Rock Stringband

  It’s Monday morning and my German neighbor poured way too much hard cider he made down my throat last night as we played cards. So, instead of hitting the power tools this morning, I will babble and let the cat out of the bag;

  It’s official, Brooks is in a new stringband! We call ourselves the Flat Rock Stringband. We are; Linnea Spitzer on fiddle, her husband Eric Bagdonas (twin brother of Brian Bagdonas, bass player from Foghorn and co-owner of Stumptown Printers here in Portland) on guitar, Robin Wilcox on bass and I play my banjos. We have been offered a slot playing one of the square dances at the Olympia Old-Time Music Gathering, so yesterday I pulled out the H2 and recorded us playing a few tunes. We are new and a little rough around the edges, but that’s OK. I think on one of the tunes you will hear my two tiny dogs wrestling and one of them yelps, comic relief! The frogs are my phone ringing, if you hear the frogs. I play banjo 184P on these, the fretless/fretted combo with a Bacon tone ring.

  Flat_Rock_Sally_was_a_poor_girl.mp3

  Flat_Rock_Greasy_String.mp3

  My Brooks Banjo T-shirts are almost complete also, here is a picture of the transfer from paper image to fabric. The original print is a watercolor, so transferring to fabric was a challenge for my printer friends. We had to make these shirts 5 colors with a base bleach since they are dark color shirts. The shirt in the photo is a test shirt, the real shirts will be army color and done on Tuesday, just in time for the Portland Old-Time Music Gathering this week! It should be a very fun week!!

A Bacon Day

Well the post the other day was meant to be saved and re written not posted, but it posted. I wasn’t exactly filled with joy when I realized today that it posted and has been up for a few days. Ouch… Outspoken, unedited and unfinished. Forgive me, I’m not 100% blog software compatible. Live and learn.

To keep it short tonight, here are links to recordings of the 5 banjos I assembled this week with Bacon tone rings. These tone rings are my personal favorites, they are the right tool for me. Have a great weekend!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAYaLaFfh48

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUxAlNYULk4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rD8Zb3-2wD8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1Byo_Trcy4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1nVyJ9wfgc

A nightmare before Christmas

Help help I’m a Brooks Banjo stuck in a Bluegrass banjos body!!

No seriously, if you want to know who “King Tinkerer” is look no further, it’s Marc Horowitz. He’s the man responsible for ordering the first Bacon tone ring over a silverspun. He plays on fishing wire, he stretches Tyvex heads (vapor proofing material for building houses). Marc has taken off the Bacon tone ring and replaced it with a Dobson and maybe back again, I hope. He has tried three different types of tuners in his banjo. Basically he is the quality control guy, really putting the whole banjo picture to his test. I’ve learned a lot from him, he’s not afraid to tell me what he really thinks and he continues to have good ideas. This one drives me crazy because I really want to play it and it is 2000 miles away. Marc found an old Sligerland Maybelle resonator and “King Tinkered” it, mounting it on a Bacon Silverspun I made for him a few years ago. The resonator was for a 10 3/4” tenor and fit into the 11” rim with a little woodcutting and felt. Nice Job Marc. Upload some mp3’s on the site brother.

Happy Holidays

  Holy cow another year went by in a blink of an eye like driving past a small town in Texas, if your not paying attention you’ll miss it. Lots of work this year, much thanks to all of you who have ordered banjos this year and in the years past. This was year six full time making banjos in this shop! The tally this year was 30 banjos, my usual average. I shoot for 36, but something always gets in the way of the last six. It’s always something, but I feel that I’m better than ever at my craft and I love working each day. Thanks again everybody for keeping this ball rolling.
  I have just completed a new bench in my shop, so hopefully more space will add on at least another 3 banjos to next years tally. My son Aubrey has been eagerly helping out in the shop lately also. Since he’s entering high school next year, Aubrey is biting at the bit to get a MAC BOOK PRO and the price tag has him down in the shop with undivided attention. Maybe this can add up to another 3 or 4 banjos in the tally. Aubrey is king of the ring roller and slip roll, making the tone rings and rolling out tension hoop stock for me. Aubrey is also skilled at set up and assembly. If he has a need or a want he will be down in the shop in a second, when the need is met I’m on my own again. I feel blessed to have him around and it’s quality father/son time.

  It’s the time of year where I’m getting ready for the Portland Old Time Music Gathering which happens January 12th-16th. It is also the time of year where it is frightening to drop off a banjo to ship. I went yesterday to Fed Ex to drop of a small package and they already had more than a truckload of packages ready for pick up. So, I will bring joy for the New Year and ship out this batch of banjos after the Christmas rush. There will be new banjos at New Years parties this year. I have a huge batch of 15 banjos going at the moment due to Stew Mac running out of Bacon tone rings. The new tone rings showed up last week, bringing the back burner banjos back into the mix. It’s super exciting having so many banjos about ready to string, next week I hope to flood yall with photos. For now here is a picture of our Holiday Banjo and in the background is my personal banjo that has come back to life after being stripped of it’s Bacon tone ring for about 2 years. It’s great to have it back. Happy Holidays! A special thanks goes out to John Bowlin this year for being a magnificent friend. He has helped me in so many ways this year, a lot of it is subtle and that’s what I really like about him. John sees my path as a banjo maker and really goes out of his way to be supportive and shine light on the aspects that can improve to make my banjos and my life a lot better. Much Respect.

Bigger silverspun rims

  This week I finished my first 12” silverspun rim. The dilemma in the past was lack of a supplier for the longer nickel needed to make bigger than a 11.5” silverspun rim. The only reason I was offering 11.5” rims was because that was the biggest rim I could make with 36” of nickel. Now the gates are open, I can get 6 foot sheets of nickel!

  Pretty much the biggest reason I started making banjos in the first place, was to produce silverspuns. I sold a really nice old S.S. Stewart I owned one day, out of desperation, and regretted it minutes after.  I would spend hours when I was getting started making banjos, drooling over all the S.S. Stewarts in the Tsumara banjo book my mentor Stephen Owsley Smith owned. Steve told me not to worry, one day I would make my own banjos that nice. I had too much respect for the man to let him down and laid awake at night until I had a plan. I used my foot as a stop, hunched over on the front porch of my cabin, to make my first silverspun rim. Now, 11 years later, I need to finish the rim I owe him, I finally feel up to snuff and he can have the 12” rim he requested. If you have ever seen an instrument made by Steve, you will know what I’m talking about when I say respect. He is the best maker of instruments in the guitar and mandolin family there is, hands down. He made them out of a school bus at 7,000 feet for 30 years in Taos, New Mexico. He likes life away from the public eye and has a lengthy wait list, so most folks will never hear of him. He lives is Hawaii now and has a thatched shop, Aloha Steve! He was the one who told me to quit my job and make banjos full time…so I quit my job (working for a high end stair builder, 4 1/2 hours from home in Denver), went out and spent $400 on a school bus to set up my shop by golly. When folks like that tell me what to do I listen.

  Now that I have found a supplier of long sheets of nickel, I have my machinist working on some risers for my lathe and bigger mounting plates. I’m building a huge new work bench for assembly and I have a huge batch of 12 banjos going at the moment. It feels like a whole new operation around here. In the coming months look for a 14” slothead gut strung silverspun, a 16” slothead silverspun cello banjo, a 16” silverspun mando cello banjo, a 9” silverspun mandola banjo and an 11” silverspun octave mando banjo. It feels like the love boat around here, exciting and new!! Thanks to everybody who has kept this ball rolling with 11 years of solid orders!

Banjo 176 mp3s

Banjo 176 is a 10L model guitjo with nylon strings. It has a 12” x 3 3/8” x 1/4” rim with a 1/4” round brass tone ring. Here are a few recordings of this banjo I made with the 15 minutes I had to do so on my trusty H2 recorder. Better than no recordings at all. The beauty of H2 recorders is that you can get something decent recorded in just a few minutes. When the Fed Ex truck pick up time is breathing down your neck.
 
 

Banjo_176_Guitjo_E.mp3

Banjo_176_guitjo_D.mp3

Banjo #137 mp3

Here is a track of Banjo #137 that is for sale on the banjo hangout. It is an 11.5” 18 shoe Spartan with a combo fingerboard. Which is a nickel plate from the 1st to the 7th fret, then it is fretted from the 8th to the 17th. This is an exercise in figuring out how to post mp3s from my H2 recorder. Testing testing banjo two three.

Banjo_137_11.5_combo_fretboard_.mp3

Banjo_137_11.5_combo_fingerboard_.mp3