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Casey Henry Kel Kroydon Number 3

Friday, August 22nd, 2008

Casey HenryYesterday I drove up to Hendersonville, Tenn., to pick up my new Casey Henry Signature Model banjo from Robin Smith at Heartland Banjos. This is the third Casey Henry model. I played the first one for about seven months and then sold it to one of my students. The second one went to a gal in New England. And now here we are at number three.

Even though they are all supposed to be exactly alike, there are some differences. I asked Robin to give me a fifth sting peg that didn’t have the little sticky-outy part to wind the string around (that’s another one of those technical terms), rather, the string winds around the inner shaft of the peg. My old banjo has that kind and I prefer it. I also asked him to give me two railroad spikes for the fifth string (again, like my old banjo) instead of four. I actually got three, but he’s getting closer.

The main difference is that the brown color of this banjo is darker than the previous ones. I prefer the lighter color, but it is fall, after all, and I’m sure it will match my autumn and winter wardrobe better. ;) Here are a couple shots of the new model (click for bigger versions):

Casey Henry\'s banjo
Casey Henry banjo front

For the sake of comparison, here are a couple shots of the other two. First is my friend Dick Bowden picking #1, second is Michelle Canning picking #2:

Dick Bowden and Casey Henry #1
Michelle Canning

I found out that it is particularly hard to photograph shiny new banjos because the flash reflects back all over the place. So please forgive the slight out-of-focusness.

I’ll have the new axe at the Thomas Point Beach festival next week, so if you’re there and want to pick on it, or want a banjo lesson, come find me (I’ll be camped near the workshop tent).

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Posted in By Casey, Instruments | 2 Comments »

Some Mandolins I Know

Monday, August 18th, 2008

Red HenryToday I’m going to do something a little different and talk about a party in Nashville a few years ago, where we had not only a lot of good pickers but also a lot of good mandolins. Some people there took some good pictures.

There are a lot of really excellent mandolin builders active today, and Randy Wood is my favorite. I was fortunate enough to acquire Randy’s first mandolin back in 1971, and have owned it ever since. It’s a great instrument, and it really taught me to play. Then in December of 2001, Randy’s #3 mandolin came up in the Bill Monroe estate auction, and Murphy secretly bought it for me and gave it to me for Christmas. It, also, is a terrific mandolin, and it’s the one I now usually take out of the house now for picking and performing.

At this party in Nashville I had Randy’s #1 and #3 mandolins with me, and Christopher was there with the mandolin he plays, which is Randy Wood #1281 (made in February, 1981). Also there was Roland White, who acquired Randy’s #2 mandolin new (in 1969) and had played it ever since. Roland also brought along his late brother Clarence’s mandolin, a very nice Randy Wood 2-point, a real showcase with elaborate inlay and carving as well as a great sound. We lined all these mandolins up on the couch, and got a picture:

Randy Wood Mandolins

From left to right: Randy Wood #1; RW#2; RW#3; Clarence White’s RW 2-point; and RW#1281

It was a pretty historic occasion, I think, to have all these mandolins in one place. And to top it all off, who should walk in but Randy himself, who was in town for the weekend! So we had, on one place, not only all these great mandolins but also the man who made them. Such a gathering could not happen again, since Roland has since sold RW#2, but it’s a lot of fun to remember.

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Posted in By Red, Instruments | 1 Comment »

The Great International Banjo Caper

Thursday, August 14th, 2008

Casey HenryI like to think that The Murphy Method has a hand in spreading banjo around the world. Recently I got to play a part in literally sending a banjo around the world, and it was really fun.

Every year at Kaufman Kamp they give away instruments as door prizes. This year Deering Banjos donated one of their Boston banjos to be a prize. On the last night of camp, Steve Kaufman picks the winners by drawing numbers out of a jar. He rummages around for a while, pulls out the one that feels right, and slowly, suspensefully, reads the number. This year, who jumped up with the winning ticket but one of my very own students: Ginny Foard.

Now, Ginny already has a really good banjo and didn’t really have a use for the Deering. As I watched her carry it from the stage I had the germ of an idea for what she could do with the banjo, but I kept it to myself.

I met Ginny last year at Kamp and she started taking lessons shortly thereafter. This year we both met a camper who had come over from Ireland, Mark McCluney. He’s a beginning player but has lots of guts. He was determined to make the most of his camp experience, having scrimped and saved to cover his airfare plus camp tuition. He would gamely take a break on any song, rolling along in the chords, and never missed an opportunity to jam.

Back at home after camp, I saw Ginny for her weekly lesson and she said she’d had the idea of sending the Deering to Mark in Ireland. I told I thought that was exactly the right thing to do with it and that I’d had that very idea about thirty seconds after she won it. His banjo was a beginner’s model—just fine to start on, but his abilities were about to out-strip it.

The next week she brought me the banjo and I took it up to Robin Smith in Hendersonville, who builds my Casey Henry signature model banjos, and got him to pack it properly. A broken banjo would be a very bad gift. I took it to the post office and received a dour look from the clerk when I said I wanted to ship this huge package to Northern Ireland. Filling out the customs form gave me pause. If you want it to be a surprise, you can’t write what is actually in the package because that would spoil it. Yet you don’t want to get caught in a lie. I figured that when he saw the box the jig would be up anyway, so I wrote “banjo in case” in the “contents” field. And away the banjo went, across the wide blue Atlantic. (more…)

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Posted in By Casey, General, Instruments | 2 Comments »

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