Sale Bass Details and Mike Huckabee explainer

The details on the basses on sale:

Brio #12, fretted four, in lovely blue. List $2595; Street $1995. Sale: $1595

Brio #13, lined fretless four, java. LIst $2595; Street $2195. Sale: $1755

B1 #89, fretted four, dark walnut. List $3795; Street $2895. Sale: $2355

Price includes stand, stand bag and gig bag.

And--get this--shipping is FREE in the USA!

(International buyers will receive a $75 credit)

Now is a very good time to step up to one of these Barkers--it's fair to say you'll not see prices this low again.

Pay by credit card (MC or Visa) or Paypal. toll free: 888.899.8302


Now on to Mike Huckabee. The Governor of Arkansas will be in Central Oregon for the High Desert Men's Summit on September 13. He is the keynote speaker, and is also scheduled to play bass on a few tunes.

Bassist for the specially selected all-star local band is Craig Brown, who will be playing a Barker B1 5 string fretted for the two days of the event. Mike will be sitting in for Craig. So likely Mike will play a bass guitar (he usually plays a four string) but he will see and hear the Barker there.

The Barker shop (factory and office) is about a mile from the event.

Now it is my job, as creator, luthier, promoter and general Idea Guy to figure out how to get to the point where stopping at Barker Bass is a Must Do for the Governor of Arkansas.

Your ideas and input are graciously invited!

Stealth info about Barkers On Sale

On our morning walk today Linda and I decided to put three Barker Basses on sale. What do you think, "end of summer" or "back to school" or "fall cleanup"?

We haven't worked out all the details yet, but here are the three that will be marked down:

A blue four string fretted Brio, a java four string lined fretless Brio, and a B1 fretted four.

And in addition to the markdown price, your choice will be shipped FREE in the US. That's about a $100 savings.

As always, this includes stand, stand bag and gig bag.

If you're out of the US, we'll help on the shipping.

This is the first public mention of the sale. It's just our way of saying thanks for reading the Blog.

I'm off to work on the finer points of the sale, and do some direct email marketing to folks who have expressed an interest in owning a Barker recently.

In the meantime, here's a wretched teaser: The next post, later this week, will include a substantive mention of Mike Huckabee on Bass.

It would appear that I've seen too many melodramas where, as the act ends, the lovely Prudence is lashed to the railroad tracks and the evil Mr. DeMummery has vowed to get the deed to her land and Milton Sanguine, who could solve all this in just a few minutes, is busy studying for his accounting exam. Delmar Bravelung, living alone in his mountain cabin where he restores riparian areas along the virgin rivers, has just realized that he must make his way to town to buy more Krusteaz Pancake Mix. Will he ride his Schwinn on the railroad right of way? Or will he walk the short way, leading his loyal llama on the dangerous trails crudely cut through the loose shale of Mount Crabapple?

Allow me to introduce...

That's folly, of course. If you're here, you know what Barker Bass is all about. So now we have a blog, a window into our company and, at times, into the scattershot thought processes of the owner.

I welcome your comments, your insights and your questions.

I will post twice a week, usually Monday then Wednesday or Thursday.

Today's shop project is to get three B1 basses in sequence for final assembly and stringup. One is Leo Goff's custom four string fretless (www.leogoff.net), notable for some aesthetic things as well as a little different electronic setup (more about that as we go along), and one will be, at least for a while, one of my players. It has the Graphtech Ghost bridge with peizo pickups, and I want to be with that option for a while so I can build an informed opinion about it. I may also tinker with some other things on that bass, provided they don't muddle one another up.

In creating testbeds there is an efficiency temptation to try several things at once. The result might be a flashy prototype but fuzzy information from the new ideas.

The music in my head today came from the Stolen Sweets (www.stolensweets.com) who played the penultimate Music On the Green concert in Redmond last night. It's that tight harmony, lots of rhythm guitar, slightly swooping yet ratatat music of the 30's. It was so very well done, and the bass player was a Gibraltar back there, and the arrangements were so varied, intricate and clever, that the time went by way too fast. It was in that somewhat rare category where the art of music becomes an illusion in time (like a painting may become an illusion in space) and we were there but not there. It was good to experience that with Linda (Barker) and Rex (Gatton) our guitar player friend and colleague of many years.

And rain threatened. The crowd, however, was bumbershot in preparation. Bumbershooted. Umbrellized. And on went the show.