Bio

The BRC clan kicked-off the Holiday Season by gathering for a Thanksgiving dinner albeit sans our Texas kinfolk who celebrated their festive weekend along the meandering shores of the Rio Grande. Despite yet another deficit BRC fiscal year, all the assembled were in good cheer as evidenced by our annual Yuletide family portrait.

Our Thanksgiving feast was highlighted this year by an extraordinary feathered visitor who we hope might happen-by your home sometime during this Holiday Season.  Guess what up tempo tune our guest performed for us prior to departure (answer below). The grandkids wondered what to call this sphinx-like creature: a turkjo? a bankey? You decide for yourself and keep on picking`.

Best Wishes to All for a joyful and blessed Holiday.

Answer: Turkey in the Straw

While traveling to Boston last month, the BRC founder set aside an afternoon to again visit with instrument designer, award-winning clawhammer musician, and banjo uber scholar Ed Britt. The two pickers share a common love of Ode banjos that were manufactured in Boulder, Colorado, from 1961-1966. 

Included in Ed`s marvelously  extensive collection of vintage 5 stringers, and pictured below cradled gently in the BRC founder`s hands, is the ornate Muse banjo (right) featured half a century ago on the cover of the 1964 Ode banjo catalogue-  held by its owner Mike Ford. This same image was pictured on the back cover of the 1963 Ode catalog.

Ed is holding  a special edition Martin guitar  for which he designed the elaborate mother of pearl inlay.  The ornate top of this 00-45 Custom is shown in Dick Boak`s book ” Martin Guitar Masterpieces”– as a full page photo, on page 12. Ed is cited on pages 10 and 11. The pearl work was cut and inlaid by Britt`s longtime friend, Dave Nichols, of “Custom Pearl Inlay.” Dave also did the highly-figured inlay on the first Martin Custom D-45, for Neiman-Marcus, in 1979 (shown on page 11) which established a precedent for decorative high-end guitars.

Because of his encyclopedic fund of knowledge, Ed is frequently sought online as a resource and arbiter of banjo history issues, and it is fabled in chat rooms that he has forgotten more factoids about banjos than most folks have come to know.  The two Ode banjo fans spent the afternoon admiring Ed`s instrument collection which, incredibly, contains the Ode banjo imprinted with inaugural Serial No. 1.  As a threesome, they jammed with Ed`s masterful Scruggs-style picking pal and fellow recording artist Don Borchelt. What better way to spend an autumn afternoon in Beantown?

As hints of Spring  slowly melt the polar vestiges of winter in the Show-Me State, early March quietly marked another birthday for the BRC founder. Looking back on picking the banjo for 54 years, he reflected, “After all this time, I should be better than I am.” Blessings are myriad- a nice lakeside home, a lovely wife (who once endured 14 banjos in the house), great kids, wonderful grandchildren, currently 9 banjos on site, and challenges of the perennially revenue-negative BRC workshop.

Attached is an all-time favorite (Hallmark) birthday card received a few  years ago from his beloved spouse.

Humbly offered below is a  link for your springtime reading enjoyment:

Arts in Health Care 08 (1)

In the marketplace  of Orccha, a small township in central India, villagers perform a traditional song while chanting a mantra. A friendly musician graciously invites the BRC founder to play the ektara. This East Indian instrument is a single string Hindu banjo. It has a gourd pot and a bamboo stick neck. The ektara is a rhythm instrument used to accompany folk songs in Punjab, Bengal, and Rajastham where this photo was taken. Click photos to enlarge for details.

Later, at the entrance of the Taj Mahal, a national landmark tightly patrolled by military forces, a security guard confiscated a copy of the Banjo NewsLetter that was poking out of the BRC founder`s coat pocket (I am not making this up). Inside the walled grounds of the spectacular monument, a wintry fog enveloped the Taj Mahal. The BRC founder, now sans his BNL, is pictured with his spouse, as they stand a few steps from a soldier with an assault rifle slung over his shoulder.

At departure from the UNESCO World Heritage site, the BRC founder recovered his contraband NewsLetter when a street wise local tour guide assistant retrieved the confiscated periodical from a souvenir shop just outside the main gate and returned the wayward  Banjo NewsLetter to its surprised owner.

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