Playing Since: 1964
Experience Level: Purty Good

Interests:
[Socializing] [Helping]

Occupation: musician

Gender: Male
Age: 70

My Instruments:
Guitar, banjo, mouth organ, vocals.

Favorite Bands/Musicians:
Robert Johnson, Hendrix, Johnny Winter, Doc Watson, Buffy St. Marie, Hank Williams, Jackie Wilson, George Jones, Merle Haggard, Link Wray, Hazil Adkins, RL Burnside, Don van Vleit, Bowie, Dylan, Randy California (Spirit), Bill Henderson (Chilliwack), Gord Downie (Tragically Hip), Wilf Carter, Kate & Anna Mcgarrigle, Amos Garret, Steve Goodman, Johnny Cash, Bobby Curtola, and many more "faves"

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Profile Info:
Visible to: Public
Created 6/5/2016
Last Visit 5/17/2021

My childhood friend Phil, who was (is?) First Nation, had an older cousin who was white, dressed like a C&W performer, taught me my first three chords, G, C, D (took me a year to master C), to play Johnny Horton's "Battle of New Orleans" which was popular at the time. I grabbed the classical guitar that my dad got my ma off the wall where it hung like a picture for years---got a big crack in the top, but it worked. Quit school when I was 16, hitchhiked out West, only time I didn't play guitar for a few years (harmonica was easier to travel with). Bought a Fender acoustic off friend who needed rent money (still have it 42 years later), played it in many tree-planting camps and logging camps all over BC, Alberta and in Montreal and Quebec where I wintered for a few years, during which time---for a short while---had a five-string regular banjo; finally got rid of it cuz it was too loud to play quietly in a bunkhouse room (walls are very thin). Started playing in a regular band when I moved to Denman Island about 28 years ago---which grew to playing for five or six bands almost simultaneously. I worked so hard in the woods for so long, had to retire a bit prematurely---including from all those bands--- which surprisingly turned into a recording project bankrolled by some fans who'd long been bugging me to go solo. I discovered the mountain banjo while researching some candidate for my debut solo album---on Youtube, where else?---and was immediately transported back to those big-ass loggers banging on the bunkhouse wall when I was trying to play my steel-stringed banjo as quietly as possible, telling me to shut up---or else! Not only was the mountain banjo quieter, I was attracted to the fretless action because I play slide on a steel resonator. So I built a prototype out of a salad bowl, 2-litre popbottle for the top, a chunk of oak for a neck, some spike-buck elk-antler for nut and bridge, tuning pegs off an old slide guitar (now a birdhouse) and a few bike parts. Man! I love it. People start coming around to check it out which turned me on to some hitherto closet instrument fabricators (in some cases I'd say "fabulators" cuz of the uniqueness of their inventions). So now I'm determined to build another one, Frank Proffitt-style, got most of the stuff, goatskin and everything. Plus I'm gonna build an akonting and its descendant gourd-banjo---gotta find some gourds, too late this year to grow them up north here. Next album (my producers browbeat me into abandoning the bucket-list approach to my debut album) will now feature mountain banjo (and maybe a hammer zither which I'm also fascinated with). That's gone be what I'll be doing on my "Big Day", whenever it comes. So long from Denman Island