"...Booked out and bound to go..."

Big Bill Broonzy: "I got the keys to the highway, booked out and bound to go..."

Mike in Westminster, Maryland purchased a Barker Bass and it set out on the journey last week.

But before that, well, here's your behind the scenes peek. Though the inventoried basses hang in a pretty clean room, it's not perfect. Dust, like a desperate pilot, always finds a place to land. (You can get a feel for this room, including the photo corner, on this Oregon Art Beat segment from Oregon Public Broadcasting.) So first, cleaning. Compressed air first, microfiber cloth next.

Then to the bench for setup as if it were just assembled: Neck relief, string height, string spacing, string radius, pickup height, tuning, intonation and checking for the proper amount of Barker Mojo Fluid.

From there, back to the SemiClean Room for playing, double checking the feel of everything, noting the balance of string tone, and snugging down the Mojo Fluid Dipstick.

Wrapping is a little more involved than you might think, with protective foam between the strings and fingerboard, new, clean plastic sleeve over the whole instrument, custom cut foam blocking (the same foam insert in the custom box accommodates all three sizes of Barker body, provided this little added block is right) and then inserting the stand and bag set in the box, making sure the owner's manual is in there along with the wrench for string height adjustment.

Once all that is done and double checked, the final strapping goes on. It's ready to

"...leave here runnin', 'cause walkin' is most too slow."

It's a triumphant, top-o'-the-world feeling to have brought this instrument from nothing to something, attempting to instill in it my ideas about quality and beauty and joy, hoping that will be reflected through the hands of the new owner and into the ears of those who hear her or him play it.

Mike, welcome to the Barker family. She'll be at your door soon.

The Math of Dirt

The long range plan: Replace the lawn between the sidewalk and the street--sometimes called "the parking" or "the terrace"--with pavers.

The motivation: conserve water and reduce mowing.

The steps so far:

1. ad on Craigslist: "free sod--you cut, you load, you haul." A young couple answered, did a great job.

However. That sod--50 years old--had grown tall with years of accumulated normal thatch decomposing and, in effect, creating soil. Setting the sodcutter at its greatest depth still left the remaining soil about even with the sidewalk and the curb.

"You've got a lot of dirt there, Lee," was the common comment from Those Who Know.

We enlisted the help of Rex (guitar player and contractor) and his wife Sharon and grandson Chance, and JD, manager of his rentals and owner of a stunning home which he built by himself up in the Ochoco mountains. And among JD's credentials, maybe the topmost: He owns a tractor with a bucket. Add Linda and me, and you've got the crew portrait.

The soil to be removed measured thus: 3 inches (depth of paver) by 588 square feet. If one focuses on the inches, it doesn't look like much. But what you have is 147 cubic feet, which is nearly 5 1/2 cubic yards--a small dump truck full.

It wasn't all tractor--shovels, landscape rakes, buckets of rocks up to large grapefruit size (and two marbles and a few shards of a flowerpot).

Little barbecue in the middle of the day.

JD dumped the surplus soil over the fence in the back yard, raw material for Linda's dreams of berms and plantings.

I can't grasp the work it would have taken to get it there by wheelbarrow.

By 5 o'clock the paver area was raked free of rocks and roots and screeded to depth. Amazing.

Now it gets easier.

Love your friends.

Cleared For Takeoff

The presence of a few twigs on the front porch coincided with the breezy part of spring, during which the local elms give up detritus stored through the winter when things are just not attended to by the Branch Manager.

Then we realized the robins were back. Likely it's the same pair that tried this last year and then, experiencing our coming and going and violating their construction zone, moved twenty feet west to the identical light fixture on the front of the garage. We enjoyed their courtship and shared effort in the construction. That fixture being lower allowed us to easily hold a camera up and snap the eggs, the hatch, the supersonic growth and the eventual launches.

This year, the garage was not attractive to the birds so we blocked off the front door and let Mother Nature nurture.

One half an eggshell appeared on the lawn. We feared the starlings had raided. But Linda's artfully held camera revealed at least 4 hatchlings. Now they're ready to go, all five of them! The image above was taken just before writing this on Thursday May 28. The alpha baby was wanting to do some demo flapping for the photographer, but a watchful parent dived at me. I found myself encouraged to get the heck away.

When I head home for lunch today I expect to see one or two gone. Not that I'm an expert on birds. Or on kids.

But I recall Peter Guy's first day, first grade, as I watched him walk away from me, down the sidewalk.

I remember saying goodbye to Joel, dormitory Freshman, after we unloaded his stuff at Southern Oregon University in Ashland. LiAndra shoehorned into her little red car, off to Iowa. Joe and Sarah, married and gone to fashion their own life and family.

All of them fledged and flew.

"Empty nest" is apt. A little sad, a little prideful, a moment in life when you hear that otherwise inaudible click and know that things have changed at this very moment.

Linda and I will enjoy reclaiming the use of the front door and our mailman will appreciate free access to the mailbox. Life will return to normal.

I just wish those little birds would send a postcard every now and then. Living mostly in a two dimensional world, we could learn from those who live in three.

Friday morning postscript #1: Alpha Baby Robin popped from the nest last evening and spent at least an hour hopping around the yard. Parents were always within sight, sometimes on the ground, sometimes perched above. At dark we lost track of both.

This morning, four still left in the next, enjoying the roominess. Parents still bringing groceries at an exhausting pace.

Monday Morning postscript: By Saturday evening all 5 were gone. Linda and I were fortunate to see flight #1 of Gamma Robin, from the nest, straight line to the Ponderosa, about 20' as the, er, robin flies. The parents stayed attentive throughout the major exodus, not only keeping track of the boots on the ground but also the in-training class still doing wing-flapping calisthenics in the gradually uncrowded nest.

I've added an image of one of the adolescents, could be Gamma, or Delta, or even Epsilon. Instinctively, when they're on the ground, they stay around cover, as this one was, close to the flower bed. From the back they look pretty drab, but on the front the speckled breast is charming. I had no luck getting close enough for that kind of shot. Besides, one could only imagine the hullaballoo over publishing such an image.

We're enjoying using the front door again, but a little sad that the drama is over.

Introduction to the Ed Goode Six String Barker Project

He bought his Barker Bass used, so I never really got to know him until his writings--terse, direct, entertaining, well spoken--showed up on the Barker Bass forum and elsewhere, always with kind and enthusiastic tidbits about his relationship with this vertical bass. I started paying attention to Ed Goode

Then the hammer. He wanted a six string. He is one of an elite crew, the Extended Range Bassists, who have used the bass as a vehicle to explore not only new sonic territory but to challenge conventions of building the very instrument. Stew McKinsey comes to mind, as do others such as Gregory Bruce Campbell.

One of the builders who consistently rises to the top in this realm is fellow Oregonian Fred Bolton who consistently pushes himself and his designs into admirable results.

So with a confluence of gently unrelenting pressure from Ed and inspiration from players and builders, I figured out a way that I could sidle into this genre of instrument without a full-on retooling away from the heart and soul of the company--the four and five string Barker basses.

Ed leapt at the opportunity, which required him to furnish me with a 6 string bass guitar of his liking. From that, to reduce the process to a mere line, I have the components to produce exactly what he is looking for: The Good Stuff of a Barker with Much More String!

In the images above you'll see the very rare wood which will grace the front of this bass: quilted fir. I had just a few boards to select from, and this one wins because of consistency of pattern and color match. Both sides are shown. The board will be resawn and bookmatched for the front of the bass. Also note how the colors in the fir bring out the reds and browns in the rosewood fingerboard.

From time to time I'll bring you up to date here on this process, which will be interwoven with another effort in the shop which, in a sense, heads quite the other direction but is driven by enthusiasm equal to that of Ed. Soon you'll meet Craig.

Without these two bassists, this could have been Just Another Summer.

Trashformations, Part Last

This is 60% of the products of 5 years participation. Missing are the wood tower which blew over after several years in the front yard, and the whirligig on massive bearings, driven by wind onto family size pizza pans (sold to a neighbor).

What you see here are Java Jeeves, the coffee butler; Her Royal Bugness, Queen Noreen; and this year's piece, One Thing Leads To Another. All are installed at the Redmond Oregon Public Library.

If you have any comments, know they're always welcome. If you have questions about any of these works, fire away. I like to answer.

I try to keep the subject matter moving on this blog, but since Trashformations is really about Earth Day and all that, it seemed right to, ahem, reuse the topic a couple of times.

New stuff next week. Though it may be made from old stuff....

Trashformations, Part 2

These images are scant reflections of the sanguine spirit that prevailed that weekend at Pakit Liquidators in Bend, Oregon. (See previous post for more background.)

Captions for the snapshots: The big bird was created by two lady welders--it's not often you get to use those two words in tandem--and they were a constant joy. We laughed about hiding the tape measure. "NO MEASURING!" they'd say if they happened to walk by. I'd occasionally visit them as a tape measure cop, seeing if they were packing any Stanley heat. They were just having a blast, making the sparks fly.

One of the larger scale projects was the boat, built by Dave. The arcs are from garage door rails--aha, you say, now you recognize them!--and the rest, just Pakit flotsam and jetsam. Mechanical types know that the side flanges of these rails often have bearings built in, and he used two of them and threaded a propeller shaft right on through. The low angle of the sun here tells the tale: He's about done with this. It was a startlingly graceful creation.

My effort is shown, sun likewise low, and the busy background makes discernment of the elements difficult. In the next post I'll put up a formal portrait of the finished product.

Completing something like this is a game of stages, sort of like Beethoven's 4th symphony. (I know, that's a stretch. Just listen to the last movement. It will bring you to a new level of understanding of the final hesitant steps of this endeavor.)

After two weeks of display at the Old Mill District in Bend, the more mobile projects were displayed at the weekend Earth Day celebration downtown.

Once I got "One Thing Leads To Another" back to the shop, it was difficult to ignore the sirens' keening wail. I occasionally had to pry myself away from bass work and pull out a few drawers of Stuff and Fasteners and, much like the archetypal al fresco artist, lean back and hold out a vertical screwdriver and squint past it at the "canvas." Never knew why they do that, but I tried it and I felt very official. Then I'd say, "What the heck" and bolt something on.

Next post: Portrait of the done work.

Trashformations, Part 1

Pat owns this fabulous store of reclaimed items in Bend, Oregon. Pat is concerned about the earth. Pat acts on his beliefs.

Once a year he hosts Trashformations. Local artists, anybody really, sign up for $25 and sign a release and, for 2 days, create art from the else of our culture. Some weld, some glue, some bolt, some frap. This year marks the tenth anniversary. I'm a five year veteran.

The time of year--April--can be challenging and chilly (see image of the hot tub) but it's designed to coincide with Earth Week, during which the final products are displayed. Better said, a show is mounted.

Buffalo Folsom is the coordinator of the event, and he and Pat make sure the welders have juice, the hot tub has fuel (see topmost image), and there's hot coffee and stuff to put on the barbecue for a hot sandwich anytime you want it. The creative energy in the air is palpable.

Again this year it was a delightful weekend. A future post will include more images. For now, we'll just set the scene: the center image is after turf has been established, tools unpacked and some material is accumulating. The lower image, embarrassingly out of sequence, is 7am Saturday morning.

Ladies and Gentlemen! Start your Art!