The Homegrown String Band Friday Night at St Paul's

This Friday night, May 17, 2013, at 7:30 pm, The Homegrown String Band will be featured as part of the Friday Night at St. Paul's Concert Series in Exton, PA. We played there last spring and a good time was had by all. We are surely looking forward to returning to see old friends and hopefully make some new ones too. Exton is about 30 miles outside of Philadelphia, if you're in the area stop in and lend us your ears.

Rocky Point Farmers Market

Rocky Point Farmers

&

Artisan Market

Opening Day Sunday May 12, 2013

8 am - 1 pm

Corner of Broadway and Prince Road

Rocky Point, NY

Every Sunday May through November


www.roosterick.com

Happy Mothers Day!

Bob Brozman 1954 - 2013

Photo by Franz Pisa

Last week I was saddened by the news that Bob Brozman had passed away at the, relatively, young age of 59. The sadness was deepened when I learned that he had taken his own life. What a terrible loss for the traditional acoustic music community. Bob was an author, teacher, musicologist, and instrument designer, as well as a virtuoso musician. Beginning his career as a busker, performing on the streets of Santa Cruz, California, Bob would eventually record about thirty albums, several instructional videos, and travel around the world entertaining audiences with his unique interpretations of jazz, blues, and Hawaiian music.

A couple months ago I purchased Bob's Ukulele Toolbox DVD for Georgianne. I posted the following review on Amazon.com and on a forum for ukulele enthusiasts.

"The other night I sat down and watched Bob Brozman's Ukulele Toolbox Volume one. Bob is a great player and a great teacher. On this video he teaches you how to play the ukulele; not how to play songs on the ukulele. There is a lot of information presented here, some for the complete beginner, but mostly the lessons seem to be aimed more towards people who have some musical background but may be new to the uke. He starts out with some right hand techniques that are applicable to players of any level. He then moves on to chord positions, progressions, and turn arounds in several keys. Bob does a good job explaining but, given the limited time, he goes over things pretty quickly. I think a person with some basic knowledge of chord structure and chord progressions (things like, I - IV - V, or I -VI - II - V- I,  etc.) could get a lot out of this video. Basically you get couple lessons with a master musician for only 20 bucks, too bad you can't stop him to ask questions or pick his brain, but I think if you watch it and take what you can, you'll get your money's worth and more."

The talents, wit, and wisdom of Mr. Brozman will be missed.

Why I Closed My Etsy Shops

From December 2007 through April 2013, I maintained two shops on Etsy.com. It seemed like such a warm and fuzzy place and the ideal market to sell my Navajo spindles, pewter buttons, jewelry, copper bowls, and other handcrafted items. Over the last five plus years I had made over 650 sales, attracted about 1,000 admirers, and had a 100% positive feedback record. I always paid my monthly fees in a timely manner and had  been using their credit card and shipping label services, so they were receiving a nice chunk of change from me each month. I was basically using the Etsy site as a shopping cart for my own website, I didn't participate in any of the social media type activities they provide and promote, so I was blissfully unaware that the once cute and cozy community for artists had become a  big corporate, cut throat, internet marketing juggernaut. I remained blissfully unaware of the trend until I had a problem that required some intelligent human interaction, sound reasoning, rational thought, and a little good judgement. Like many of the big new internet companies, Etsy has no customer service phone number. After contacting them, via email, I was truly surprised by the treatment I received. When I contacted Etsy all I received were numerous form letter-like stock response communications from their "Trust and Safety" team. As I tried to make my case, I was confronted with nothing but stupidity, incompetence, and apathy. My frustration over the initial problem was quickly eclipsed by the frustration of dealing with the seller support and customer service (or lack there of) of this greedy impersonal corporate entity. I owned and operated a brick and mortar retail business for over 20 years, so I am no stranger to both sides of customer service issues. I'd like to believe that this is just a case of a company getting too big to be what it was intended to be, but I think this goes deeper than just being a giant corporation on autopilot. I decided to poke around the internet to see if mine was an isolated case or this was just business as usual for Etsy. Etsy does a good job of promoting and protecting their homespun image, but I didn't have to dig too deeply to find a plethora of complaints, by both buyers and sellers, ranging from blatant violations of privacy, to security issues, censorship, data mining, cronyism, deception, and just plain old bad customer service. It seems that the good folks at Etsy are quick to shut down or ban anyone who questions their policies, but are quite willing to look the other way when they benefit from users who clearly violate the "Terms of Use" they routinely use to intimidate dissenters. I know that the thousands of dollars in revenue I was generating is only a drop in the bucket to a behemoth like Etsy, but I still expected more from a company that markets itself as a kinder and gentler alternative to internet giants like Ebay and Amazon. At least those sites are not pretending to be something that they are not. I won't go into the specific issues I had with Etsy, but suffice it to say that after learning of Etsy's corrupt and odious business practices I could not, with a clear conscience, continue to do business with this corporate entity masquerading as a, mom and pop friendly artist's co-op. As I stated in one of my initial email contacts with Etsy "Help"(a misnomer if ever there was one); the Etsy marketing platform was a convenient way for me to sell my one of a kind handcrafted items, but they are not the only game in town, especially since I was pretty much bringing my own traffic to Etsy. It took me about ten minutes to find half a dozen alternatives, with real customer service, and more attractive fee structures.  I have since closed my Etsy shops and moved all my online commerce to my website: www.roosterick.com using Storenvy's shopping cart service.

Here are some other alternatives to Etsy:
www.artfire.com
www.thecraftstar.com
www.indiemade.com
Retailr
www.zibbet.com

Though I haven't used any of these sites or services myself, I may have chosen one if I didn't already have a website and domain name. Storenvy suits my needs well and was very easy to incorporate into my existing web page design.

If you don't have your own website Craftstar, Zibbet, and Artfire offer online shops and markets similar to what Etsy offers. Craftsar's shop layout looks really nice, very clean and neat. They also have a video feature that lets you post a spot on Craftstar TV. Their fee structure is similar to Etsy's, with listing fees and a small commission on sales. Zibbet and Artfire charge flat monthly rates, Zibbet also has a "Basic" free option. Indiemade and Retailr, for a flat monthly fee, will set you up with your own multipage website.

Banjo Reclamation

Now for the unveiling of my second winter banjo project. This is a late 19th or early 20th century banjo with a lightweight metal clad rim and a paddle headstock that I picked up at a festival in Pennsylvania about ten years ago. It's very light, has no tone ring, and is a shorter 25" scale. It needed a lot more attention than the Minstrel Boy did. I replaced the violin-type wood tuners with a set of Grover Sta-Tite friction pegs. The bridge and tailpiece were missing so I put on a modern, repro, No-Knot tailpiece and a standard maple ebony topped Grover bridge. I also replaced the broken skin head with a Renaissance synthetic head.

This little baby is equipped with 38 hooks and brackets! Apparently, back in the golden days of yore, brackets were a major banjo selling point, the more the better, kind of like gigabytes, watts, and horsepower are these days. 38 brackets is a lot of brackets. My Minstrel Boy Banjo has 10 brackets and my Wildwood Troubadour Tubaphone has 24. Getting all those brackets off and back on made changing the head a lot more work than I was expecting. I eventually got everything put back together and the little guy is a quite playable, basic no frills instrument. I call it my Quaker banjo. Not very loud and definitely not a gigging banjo, but fine for late night picking and to play while giving lessons. Here's a short sound sample of my new, old, lo-fi, Quaker banjo.

Minstrel Boy Banjo

Last year I used our midwinter downtime to put together my banjo book, Ragged but Right: The Ungentle Art of Clawwhammer Banjo. This year I have kept busy singing the Snow Shoveling Blues while making maple syrup, mead, and hard cider. I also decided to take some time to fix up a couple of old banjos that were in varying states of disrepair.

Yesterday I changed the head and restrung my Minstrel Boy banjo. This banjo, based on a mid-nineteenth century banjo made by William Esperance Boucher, was built in 2003 by Randy England. Randy made these historically accurate instruments to be used by fellow Civil War re-enactors. I played it quite a bit in school programs and fairs that featured Civil War encampments, as well as for a series of shows I did at The Long Island Museum at Stony Brook while they were hosting Jim Bollman's banjo collection in an exhibition entitled "America's Instrument - The Banjo in the Nineteenth Century." Two of the gut strings had broken and the calf skin head had a hole in it that was threatening collapse. I replaced the strings with a set of synthetic "Nylgut" strings and replaced the head with a synthetic "Renaissance" head. I guess it is no longer historically correct but it stays in tune better and should be more durable. I made a quick recording of myself noodling around on this low tuned banjo. I'll need some time to regain the touch required to play these lower tension soft strings, especially the short 5th string.



P.S That's Georgianne accompanying me on rattling silverware, banging pots, and running water.

Bump Banjo Case

I was looking for a new case for my Wildwood Troubadour 11 inch open back banjo. My old case had served me well, putting in thousands of miles on the road over the last twenty years. I think the old case was a TKL, though heavier and sturdier than any of the current models. Like I said, the case had been through a lot and gotten to the point where there was more duct tape on the outside of the case than the original vinyl/leatherette covering. The inside had also gotten pretty worn, but worst of all the latches were not staying properly closed. I had nightmares about grabbing my prized banjo out of the back of the van and watching it crash onto the pavement, so I began a quest for a new case. I liked the look of  the Saga/Superior "Bump" case and Mark Platin, the builder of Wildwood banjos had mentioned it in a list of case options he sent me, but when I read reviews I noticed several people had complained that it was too short or too narrow for their banjos. I was concerned that it wouldn't fit my Wildwood, which is 37 inches long, but when I saw one pop up on Amazon, for $20 off the regular price, listed as "like new open box" (returned by someone whose banjo didn't fit, no doubt) I decided to take a chance. I figured if it didn't fit the Wildwood I could switch it out with my 35 inch long Mike Ramsey fretless banjo, which was resting nicely in a TKL Professional arch top case. 

I got the case. The box was trashed, and had obviously been repacked, but the case is in perfect condition and looks like new. My Wildwood fits, but it's a pretty tight fit, only about a half inch between the tip of the headstock and the end of the case. I'm going to use it for the Ramsey, but I thought I would post this review to take some of the mystery out of buying this banjo case for the next guy who's wondering wether or not it will fit a particular banjo. 

Here are the interior dimensions of the "Bump" case:

Length - 37.5 inches with a little extra cutout for the tailpiece. (the TKL is about 40")

Neck Width -  4.25 inches (before the bump in), at the 5th string peg

Headstock Width -  3.25 (after the bump)

Pros:

1. Light weight and compact

2. Lots of padding around the pot

3. Looks great

4. Very reasonably priced

Cons:

1. Maybe too light weight and compact. Not sure what this case is made of, but it's a bit thinner than my newer TKL and Much thinner and lighter than my ancient TKL. 

2. It has only one neck "cradle" at the head stock end and none on the other side of the string compartment. It came with a padded wedge velcroed into the head stock section of the case. With the wedge in place, the planetary tuning pegs prevented the neck from resting in the cradle. I took the wedge out and put it at the other end of the string compartment where it gives the neck some needed support at that end of the banjo.

Bottom line, the Bump case is a good, but not great, fairly sturdy, arch top open back banjo case. It doesn't seem to be as well made as the TKL arch top case but it's about half the price, less if you get a deal like I did.

Maybe I will fill the old case with CDs, photos, and memorabilia then bury it out in the backyard like a time capsule to be discovered by some future generation of pickers who will be amazed by the tank like construction as they try to envision the he-man banjo player who was strong enough to haul it around for twenty years. : )