Barn News

Geetar Club

One of the aspects to living in a locale so isolated as Shangri-la is that it is populated by folks who are at the very least comfortable with isolation; for the “born here’s” it is simply the life they have always known, for many of the “come here’s” it is the life they actively sought.  If you cannot tolerate isolation, you leave.  I can speak truth to this, for about 99% of the time my only in-person contact is Mrs. Barn.  Going to the Post Office or feed-and-seed-co-op hardware store a few minutes a week hardly describes a life of social interactions — “social distancing” describes every day ending in “Y” out here —  and during this season of psychosis our only regular time of interaction beyond ourselves is at church.  (I am increasingly convinced that functionally Covid-19, while deadly to a miniscule slice of the population pie, is more of a psychological experiment in repression than a public health crisis; I will believe it is a catastrophic pandemic when the elites act like it is one rather than jetting about for vacations in Cancun or group dinners at fancy restaurants and when politicians and gubmint employees rather than small businesses lose their incomes.)

One of the things in which I have been long interested is finding other woodworkers here for fellowship and collaboration.  They are around but like me they mostly stick to themselves.  I’ve had some success in finding and interacting with gunsmiths, blacksmiths, metalsmiths, this smith and that smith, but thus far the woodsmiths have kept to themselves.  In recent months this has begun to thaw as one retired “come here” with whom I am on a local Board revealed he is a luthier, and lo and behold there is suddenly a critical mass of luthiery-ish practitioners in the county.  One is a newly arrived pastor/amateur musicologist, another is an actual full-time guitar maker who moved here recently and has a small studio in town.  (When your region’s largest metropolis has fewer than 200 people…)  Together we are in the gestational phase of starting a woodworking club with just the four of us working in my studio, the only space any of us has that would be amenable to the enterprise — plenty of workbenches in a heated work space.  I think the plan is for us to gather weekly to work on individual projects as our schedules allow.

Since I am in fact the only one of us four who has never built a guitar from scratch I will be the main hindrance to the overall performance level.  Still my enthusiasm for the effort is high, and not too surprisingly I expect to bring my own peculiar approaches to building a dreadnaught six-string guitar.  Eventually I will build a hammered dulcimer for Mrs. Barn, who has expressed a strong desire for one ever since listening to the pastor/musicologist play his at a local music program.   She never reads this blog so I will be able to maintain the secret surprise until it is finished.

Stay tuned.