The Instruments
Reed has owned literally hundreds of instruments and each one has a story. From the Martin Guitar he got from a trash truck driver (after flagging him down to ask what was in the guitar case in the back of the truck) to the famous ultra fancy S.S. Stewart presentation grade banjo that he traded a few nice, ordinary banjos for because it's owner was tired of drawing a crowd every time he opened his banjo case. Here are his comments on a few of his banjos.
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My Tubaphone… When I was growing up, Sears was the only store where people I knew bought banjos. No offense to Sears, but for all the years you guys have been selling banjos, there is room for improvement. Many folks took pliers and pulled the frets. Plastic heads had not come to Monroe County, so the sagging skin head was a problem. When I listened to Peter Hoover play his banjo, I had NEVER heard a banjo sound like that before. To me it seemed that the instrument itself must be responsible. I know now that that is not necessarily true. Your banjo and you will form a bond. It will produce the sound you like or you will keep working with it until you reach a happy medium. I played Wade Ward's banjo. For me it would not produce music. In Wade's hands it was the best sounding banjo in the world, They had found a musical match. Nobody else ever got that sound from Wade's banjo.
So after hearing Peter Hoover, I started my search for the elusive Vega Tubaphone. His was a #3 with the beautiful flower pot inlay in the peghead. While working one of my factory jobs back in Maryland in 1965, a fellow said "You like banjos, huh? I got a neighbor in Westminster, Maryland, who had a 4-string banjo, but all the chrome wore off and it's down to the brass." I drove to Westminster, met the neighbor, Jack White, and gave him $25 for his gold plated #9 Vega Tubaphone tenor. The inlay on the back of the peghead was missing. I asked him about that. He said "My son had a model airplane. He picked that thing out because it looked kind of like an Air Force symbol. We glued it on the wing of his airplane, but then it took off and we lost it." I found out by the serial number, that the banjo had been made in 1923. It was called an "Artist" model. Gold plated, but not engraved. The next step up was engraved and called the "Deluxe." So I finally had a Tubaphone. Now I started going to the Fiddlers Convention with another purpose. I had to find an original 5-string neck. I was playing my Thompson & Odell banjo during this time. Back in Bloomington in 1967, I found a "Graduate" model Sears banjo which I also was playing. The "Graduate" model does not have any tone ring. But it does have a white plastic vine going the length of the fingerboard. If it sounds crummy, the pretty vine helps to ease the pain.
By 1968 I had come back east again and worked a couple of more jobs. Assistant manager of a High's convenience store, car jockey in an auto body shop, and then I became a mailman in Kensington, Maryland. Tom Gray, bass player for the Country Gentlemen, was on my route some days. It was a wonderful job, but in 1968, due to terrible management, Kensington had the highest turnover of any post office in the entire United States. One day, a huge cardboard box tore open as it was being sorted within the post office. Banjo parts and pieces everywhere. Who was right there picking up the parts? Me. An Orpheum #3 with maple neck, a J.B. Schall with rosewood neck, sheet music, pictures of classical orchestras…. I volunteered to hand deliver everything to Mrs. McMahon myself. She said "All that stuff belonged to my father, Banjo Bill Bowers. Is it worth anything?" I bought everything, and in 1968 the Schall became my regular banjo. I parted with the post office and moved to Boston, to attend the North Bennet Street Vocational School to learn piano tuning and rebuilding. I lived in Cambridge and got to meet the musicians who lived a block away in a group house called "Old Joe Clark" house. The old-time musicians I remember were Neil Rossi, George Nelson, Dave Doubilet, (calling themselves "The Spark Gap Wonder Boys") Sandy Sheehan, Rusty Strange, Bill Nixon, Peter Colby. Lots of music, but it was 30 years ago and the names are fading. Rick and Lorraine Lee lived within walking distance. They were a great influence on me.
After the piano training I returned to the Washington area. One regular dance I played for was in Chevy Chase, Maryland. It had been going once a month for 40 years. Bob Beach, fiddler, and Joe Winn, guitar, were original band members. One night in 1971, Joe said to me in passing "Oh, by the way, I have an old banjo in my closet. The shell isn't much, but the neck is pretty. I traded a Bacon banjo years ago to Howie Mitchell for my banjo, but since I never learned how to play it, you can have it if you want it." I live by the rule "He who snoozes…loses." I followed Joe home and there was an original #9 Tubaphone. I told Joe I would trade my tenor to him for it, but he didn't like the yellow color. The simple solution was to trade necks. Ten years later Joe called me from the nursing home he was in and told me to come get the tenor, so the two banjos could be together.
That is why my banjo has a resonator. The shell was originally with a tenor neck. When Joe and I traded banjo necks, I needed the volume for playing at dances, so I left the resonator on. I bonded with that banjo and although I have owned a lot of banjos since 1971, it will always be my favorite banjo. It also belonged to one of the greatest men I ever knew, Joe Winn.
I have owned a LOT of banjos. Some are pictured in Akira Tsumura's banjo book. It is always a kick to go somewhere and have a banjo handed to me that I once owned. Last year a fellow handed me a #7 Fairbanks and he asked me what I thought of it. Without turning it over I told him the serial number. "This banjo once belonged to David Lindley, and it was played for many years by Dan Gellert," I said. The guy was astounded.
I will limit my banjo stories to the banjos on the CD.
The second banjo on the CD is always tuned dADAD. That is the tuning it was in when Fred Nystrom brought it to me in the hospital in 1974. He thought I needed something to keep me busy while I was in traction. A drunk driver broke vertebrae L3 and L4, and so there I was. The story about the banjo is that it got to Hillsville, Virginia, by horse and wagon in the 1880s. Someone wanted the bridge in the middle of the head of the banjo, so to make it playable, they pulled the first five frets and put a piece of copper in the first position. The strings that were on it in the 1880s could still be the ones that were on it when I got it in 1974. The third is wound with copper and is as soft and easy to play as a first string, yet it has a wonderful low clear tone. The dADAD tuning is what Dorothy Rorrick told me was the "Old John Henry" tuning. I have left it as I found it. It is a lovely tuning. Fred had bought the banjo at an auction and had a feeling that I would appreciate it. Thanks Fred.
The third banjo on the CD is a fretless Boucher & Sons, made in Baltimore. The scholars tell me that Boucher was the first commercial banjo company. This one came to me with another connected story. I am an antique car lover. Not 1960s… I'm talking pre-1930. There is a 1931 Ford roadster in the garage as I type, and sitting around it are five vehicles pre-1901. Old Stuff.
In the early 1970s I met a wonderful fellow named Bill Bowman. He lived in the Baltimore area, played banjo, drove a 1931 Ford sedan. There was a tour for "old car" guys. It wound around neighborhoods in the outskirts of Baltimore. We were in our Model "A" Fords when Bill pulled over and said "There is an old fretless banjo in the attic of that house. A friend of mine told me about it, and you can just take it, probably." So we dropped out of the car tour and climbed up to the attic. There we found a walnut rectangular box which was big enough to hold two large guns. We opened it up to find the original deer skin lining and resting peacefully thereon, the most ornate Boucher known. The length of the fingerboard is an inlaid vine of multi-colored woods. In the area of the fifth peg is a 5" tall lady playing castanets - all inlaid in colored wood.
I knocked on doors until I found someone who gave me the name of the people who had just purchased the property. My conscience would not let me just take the banjo; I left it in the attic When I got back to Washington. D.C., I called the family. They had no idea there was anything in the attic. They said they would check it out. I called again. They said they did not want to part with the thing in the attic because their children might want it when they grew up. Reed "Relentless" Martin does not give up that easily. Twice a year they got a phone call of inquiry about the banjo. The kids graduate from high school. The kids have families. One day my phone rings. It is a week before Thanksgiving. The father has become unemployed and the stove doesn't work. If I will come to Baltimore and buy a new stove for them, the banjo is mine, I did it. That is the third banjo on the CD.
Curious musicians have asked me to explain how my banjo is set up. Well…I can "palm" a basketball. Large hands. Not from playing music, but because my dad has large hands. His dad had large hands. It seemed to me, back in 1964, that it made no sense for a guy whose hands are huge, to try to play on a banjo with a bridge whose notches are close together. I took my pocketknife and moved the notches for strings 5 and 1 to the very tippy-edge of the bridge. String 3 stays right there in the middle, and you just eyeball where halfway between strings 5 and 3 is. That is where I put string 4. Halfway between strings 3 and 1 is where I put string 2. It worked for me. So what if the strings hang over the sides of the neck at the fifteenth fret. My left hand is rarely past the fifth fret. Once I was walking around the parking lot at the Philadelphia Folk Festival. Bill Keith was playing with a group of guys when for some reason (a broken string or something) he needed to borrow a banjo. He saw me and said "Hey, can I borrow your banjo?" I said "Sure, but you'll be sorry." He started one of his trips up the fingerboard and stopped dead. "This thing is unplayable," he said in disbelief.
Rone's Music store in Bloomington carried Black Diamond Strings. They were light gauge, but more important, they were cheap. I tell folks "When a string breaks, it is a sign from God that it is time to change it." Some folks can hear the difference between a new string and an old one. I cannot. I never change them. I used to play every Tuesday night with a wonderful guitar player, Dan Blum. We played in the loft of a bookstore located on Dupont Circle in Washington, D.C. The fourth string on my banjo was always too thin. It felt mushy and it sounded mushy. I took one of Dan's used fourth strings and put it on my banjo to replace my fourth string. I think his string was .024 or .026. It stayed on my banjo for years. Dan was always changing strings, so I got a good stockpile of fourths for my banjo. We played every Tuesday for 3 years. Just instrumentals. That is as close to a regular band job as I ever got.
I put a set of old gold-plated planets with pearl buttons on the Vega. They look right, but they are a fight to tune because they are just worn out. Michael Holmes put an ad in MUGWUMPS (the instrument magazine he used to publish when he lived near me) and we located an original Oettinger 5-string tailpiece in Germany. I traded the tenor tailpiece plus cash, and now I can use the individual tailpiece tuners to help keep my Vega in tune.