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Bio

Quarter Tones in the Desert Sun

July 14, 2012

In Petra, Jordan, the BRC founder listens to an Arabic musician play a spike fiddle called a rabab, rababah, or rbab. This banjo-like instrument is used to accompany poetry recitation and played with a horse hair bow.  The Bedouin version, as seen here, has a rectangular sound chamber covered with a skin and a solitary horse hair string. Although quarter tones of Middle Eastern music are foreign to the Western ear, they are occasionally  heard in the American blues genre when a guitarist “chokes” a string for a whining-crying effect or when a harmonica player “bends” a note.

Cell Perches & HVO

A Banjo Man All Four Seasons

June 16, 2012

In the late 1950’s, a young trumpet player in a Dixieland jazz band also performed on tenor banjo during gigs in the northeastern college circuit. He and his band were featured in a 1958 magazine article about a NYC jazz fest (see him in clipping).

With the dawn of the folk music revival, this multi-talented musician became interested in the bluegrass 5 string cousin of the tenor banjo. He rigged a 5th string on his tenor instrument to adapt it to either style on the bandstand, as he had visions of bursting into the middle of an up-tempo Dixieland jazz tune with an explosive solo from a Scruggs style banjo. His dreams of merging these two disparate genres lapsed when he became preoccupied with medical school studies.

His visionary aspirations came to realization, however, more than half a century later when Del McCoury and his bluegrass band released an album jointly recorded with New Orleans` world famous Preservation Hall Jazz Band. To this day, the trumpet player (pictured wearing a BRC T-shirt) remains an inveterate fan of banjos, jazz, and fine wine.

Cell Perches & HVO

Banjo or Song or Dance…..

May 26, 2012

The workshop staff at the Banjo Rehabilitation Center are all encouraged to study performance on stringed instruments, so we will understand the challenges of customers who purchase BRC banjos. Our Senior Vice-President of Sales has elected, however, to explore music studies in voice. In the attached training clip, she skillfully demonstrates the rigors of daily warm-up and singing exercises. We welcome and admire her role-modeling of pioneer spirit in this chosen field which brings new artistry to the BRC workplace. Is this tomorrow`s high lonesome sound? She`s got the pipes…

Despite a busy schedule also serving as tour guide for the BRC Museum, our senior VP of Sales finds time to experiment with interpretive dance as pulsed by the music of her father and grandfather. Is this tomorrow`s contra dancer? She`s got the footwork….

We hope someday our young VP of Sales will grow-up and sing mezzo soprano for the BRC founder`s jam band when they intone “Sittin` Alone in the Moonlight” as heard on the below video clip. Enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SM6zuYM-3w0

Bio

Banjo twang heard in faraway Lands

May 8, 2012

Not surprisingly, the banjo has figured its way into the Israeli music scene as evidenced by this cover photo on an entertainment guide published recently in Tel Aviv.

Although the not too distant Dead Sea is the lowest place on earth (400 meters below sea level), the BRC founder uplifts himself by reading the Banjo Newsletter while mud bathing on the Jordanian shoreline.

P.S. Shoppers  check-out the BRC banjo on e-bay May 12th-19th (sold).

BRC Events

June 13, 2012– International Banjo Wife`s Day

April 7, 2012

The BRC Board of Directors has mandated that every June 13th, starting in 2012, will hereafter be known as International Banjo Wife`s Day in recognition of the courageous patience of those legions of saintly women married to banjo playing husbands. Attached is a photo of the 2012 poster-girl competition winner who has endured 40 years of marriage to a banjo player with as many as 14 banjos in her house.

She is pictured donning a desert safari hat as she readies to enter the deeply tunneled crypt of King Tut in Egypt`s stony Valley of the Kings where she prays no banjos will be among the treasures therein. To salute the untold virtues of banjo wives, all banjo husbands will still their instruments in a respectful moment of silence worldwide from 4:00-4:01 am Greenwich Time on this date annually.

 

 

As illustrated, wives may apply a loving headlock to husbands as a gentle reminder of this yearly observance. On June 14th, there will be a smaller, but no less important, celebration on behalf of those heroic men whose wives play the banjo.