Made In The Smokies: Chasing Dreams
Mountaineers have long been known for their ingenuity and independent spirit, traits that live on today among the entrepreneurs and artisans profiled in Smoky Mountain Living’s Made in the Smokies feature. In the following pages you’ll read about people who turned dreams into successful businesses, relying on a combination of smarts and just plain hard work.
From Farm to Jar: Jams, jellies, mustards, and artisan foods
By Anne Fitten Glenn
The one time I tried to make pickles, I ended up with a hot watery mess of broken glass, vinegar, and cucumbers. Luckily for me, there are now numerous regional artisans handcrafting delicious condiments, using regionally grown ingredients and traditional recipes. Here are the stories of three mountain businesses that put delicious stuff in jars, which is especially great for those of us who are canning-challenged.
Copper Pot & Wooden Spoon
The story of Copper Pot & Wooden Spoon is one of a small entrepreneurial idea taking off and quickly becoming much more. Jessica DeMarco started selling homemade jams and pickles at Haywood’s Historic Farmers Market in 2011 as a sideline business. At that time, she and her spouse were commuting from Waynesville, N.C. to Asheville to work full-time in the food and beverage industry and raising three sons. DeMarco’s flavorful take on traditional Southern preserves became so popular that she was able to quit her day job and devote herself to expanding her business closer to her Waynesville home.
Today, Copper Pot & Wooden Spoon is a full-time gig for both DeMarco and her brother, Dan Stubee. With three other employers, the siblings run a commercial kitchen with a walk-in retail space where they produce and sell a variety of handcrafted jams, pickles, and other artisan foods. Business is so good that they bring in extra hands to make it through “pickle days.”
Copper Pot & Wooden Spoon currently produces around 30 products a year. Favorites include Peach Moonshine Jam (made with moonshine distilled by Asheville’s Troy & Sons), Strawberry Whole Berry Jam, Dill Pickle Chips with garlic, Pickled Okra, Dilly Beans, and Pickled Ramps.
“The pickled ramps are really sought after. People love those because they are such a local Appalachian thing,” DeMarco says.
DeMarco’s products are all made with ingredients sourced as locally as possible and produced in small batches.
“We work directly with local farmers, and 90 percent of our ingredients come directly from them. In fact, we can get almost everything we need in Haywood County,” she says. “My cell phone is organized by types of produce.”
Because they are made from seasonal produce, once items sell out, they aren’t available until next year’s crop comes in. DeMarco admits that her commitment to sourcing produce primarily from Western North Carolina sometimes puts her in a pickle.
“Last year was rough because it was so dry, and there just wasn’t the quantity of local produce we needed,” she says. “But one of our primary goals is to promote and preserve farmland around here. By preserving produce, we feel we’re also preserving and valuing Appalachian traditions.”
She notes that May through October are peak production months, with strawberries coming in first, followed by okra, green tomatoes, and peaches, then cucumbers, then apples. She focuses on citrus-based products in the winter, which is the one fruit she does need to source from outside the region.
DeMarco grew up in New Jersey, where she obtained a culinary degree, and then lived in California, but she has family from Haywood County,N.C., and when her parents moved back, she and her family decided to follow.
“I became interested in the preservation and the history of food in these mountains,” she says. “I also had a nostalgic connection to the land and to sustainable agriculture from growing up visiting my grandparents, who were farmers in Jersey.”
If you can’t make it to the shop or to the farmer’s market, which they still work, Copper Pot & Wooden Spoon products are sold from more than 100 retail shops across the country. The business also offers online ordering.
DeMarco direct mails her products all over the country, with regular customers as far flung as California and New York. Additionally, there are seasonal pantry memberships, kind of like CSAs for preserves lovers, as well as recipe and baking mix boxes, such as one containing jam and scone mix.
449 A Pigeon Street, Waynesville, N.C.
Tsali Notch Vineyard
If you’re one of those Southerners who occasionally says, “I’ll have muscadines with that,” then Tsali Notch Vineyard’s extensive line of muscadine products is for you. As the largest commercial muscadine vineyard in the state of Tennessee, Tsali Notch takes muscadine love to a new level.
“Everything we do we add muscadine to. I call it the loving fruit. Muscadine blends with all different kinds of flavors. Almost any flavor you can think of is better with muscadines,” says J.D. Dalton, Tsali Notch’s long-time vineyard manager.
While the majority of the fruit grown at Tsali Notch goes to making muscadine wine, plenty is available to create muscadine jellies and jams, muscadine chow-chow, muscadine salsa, muscadine marinara, and even muscadine-infused lip balms, lotions, and soaps.
Muscadine grapes, also often called Scuppernongs, are native to the Southeastern United States and have been cultivated here since the first European settlers arrived. Most Southerners are familiar with the wild variety that grows up woodland trees and drops the reddish-black fruit on the ground—much beloved by children and local wildlife. Muscadines, like other grape varieties, are high in reservatrol, a beneficial antioxidant.
The current Tsali Notch owners bought the vineyard, which sits between the Tennessee towns of Madisonville and Sweetwater, in 2009. They hired Dalton to manage the property, and he’s since expanded the production acreage from 30 to 35 acres, which includes 202 rows of six different varieties of muscadine grape.
“Harvest season is in September, October, and November—mostly October,” Dalton says. “I have about five to eight days under refrigeration to do something with that fruit, and while the majority of fruit we grow here goes to making wines, we needed to have something that has a shelf life so when people come visit in January, they can taste some of the fruit we’re growing here.”
The condiments aren’t made on site, but in a nearby commercial kitchen, although Dalton is deeply involved in all stages of production, from recipe ideas and creation to tasting and tweaking the results. The first two non-wine products were muscadine jelly and muscadine pepper jelly, as the property also has a large garden with peppers, tomatoes, and onions that he wanted to utilize.
The few ingredients that aren’t grown on the property are sourced locally. One of Tsali Notch’s new products, Muscadine Raspberry Jam, is made with berries from a nearby farm, and the body products (lotion, lip balm, etc.,) use goat milk from a local goat farm. Dalton says he likes to bring out at least one or two new products each year.
“Last year, we had a bumper crop of banana peppers, and so we made muscadine banana pepper jelly. That went fantastic and sold out really fast,” Dalton says.
The vineyard has an on-site tasting room and a recently opened satellite tasting room in nearby Sweetwater. The site includes buildings and open spaces to host weddings, reunions, receptions, and festivals, including the popular Muscadine Balloon Festival every Labor Day weekend, a benefit featuring hot air balloon trips.
“Myself, my father, and one guy who works in the field for us, we groom 40 or 45 acres a week, because you never know when that next bride will drive through the gates,” Dalton says.
One of the vineyard’s earliest ventures, a you-pick-it option, still brings in loads of people who want to use the grapes to make their own preserves and tipples, per Dalton.
While Tsali Notch’s seven award-winning wines and its rolling green grape vines framed by long range mountain views may be what brings visitors to the property, an added bonus is that they can leave with muscadine products they have probably never dreamed of.
140 Harrison Road, Madisonville, Tenn.
Crooked Condiments
Making mustard with beer gives the condiment a thick, creamy texture and a complex flavor that’s difficult to attain with water, which is the primary ingredient in most mustards, according to Lee Madison. Almost 10 years ago, her daughter, Chelsea Madison, came up with the idea of using fresh, locally brewed, craft beer in mustard. That idea led to the creation of Crooked Condiments, a commercial kitchen in Asheville, N.C., which makes and sells mustards, hot sauces, and apple butter, among other products.
Chelsea Madison made her first mustard, Gaelic Ale Mustard, with the iconic beer of the same name from Asheville’s first brewery, Highland Brewing Company, founded in 1994.
“She was working as the office manager at Cucina 24 restaurant, and she wanted to do something with food featuring local ingredients,” Lee Madison says. “She came up with the idea for Gaelic mustard. It was long before using local ingredients in local food was big. She was a pioneer in the local movement.”
Soon Chelsea brought in her mother, an avid cook who worked in the film industry for 40 years, to run the Crooked Condiments kitchen. Today, Lee Madison manages the business, while her daughter works in the film industry, although both Asheville natives are involved in decision-making for the business.
“She worked on all four ‘Hunger Games’ movies,” says Lee Madison. “We kind of ended up trading jobs. Now she stays on the road and I’m here managing the business. When she started it, I was a minor partner. Now it’s my full-time job.”
She and her team of five now produce a variety of condiments out of their commercial space in Woodfin, just north of Asheville, including her famous apple butter.
Lee Madison’s apple butter recipe was handed down to her from her great grandmother, a native of Madison County. She’s been making it herself for more than 30 years, and people order it from all over the country, some by the case.
“I like to say it’s hand-milled, slow-cooked and spiced just right,” Madison says. “I love making it, but it’s more trouble than some of the other recipes. For apple butter, you have to mill it the old-fashioned way, not grind it up. That’s what gives it the right texture.”
She sources Stayman Winesap apples, a variety of heirloom cooking apples from Barnwell’s Apple House, a multi-generational family farm close to Edneyville in Henderson County.
In addition to local beer, the kitchen sources peppers, honey, onions, and apples locally. Madison says she had to buy four additional freezers last year—two for hot peppers and two for apples. They hand mill and freeze the apple pulp in order to make apple butter year round.
Crooked Condiments also cooks and packages products for other Asheville businesses, including mustard for Sierra Nevada Brewing Co., barbecue sauces for 12 Bones Restaurants, and hot sauces for Mamacita’s Restaurant.
Reflecting on the success of Crooked Condiments, Lee says: “People are really into condiments in general. We’re becoming a foodie nation, and people are into food like condiments. I did some research on it, and sales of condiments have really increased in the past few years. There’s lots more variety and local ingredients now.”
Crooked Condiments products are available in six southern states, at both local and chain grocery stores and on-line.
Asheville, N.C.
Meet the Gear Makers: Fabricators let the adventure take center stage
By Constance E. Richards
Time was when most visitors came to Western North Carolina largely for the outdoors, the history and visiting family. Now tourists also descend on the mountains for the breweries, the art, and the eateries. Some never venture beyond the confines of our towns.
But more visitors mean more bodies and increasingly, they and locals alike are looking for experiential travels and staycations. What better conduit between would-be adventurer and mountain adventures than the makers of the gear that will get them there?
Recreational tourism is an ever-increasing driver in the area’s tourism in general. It generated $19.2 million in North Carolina last year, according to the Outdoor Industry Association, a membership-driven trade organization for the outdoor industry. With the most-visited national park in the U.S.—the Great Smoky Mountains National Park—right next door, the quest for outdoor adventure in the mountains has never waned, and rather, has given rise to growing competition in the outfitters arena. From savvy recreational sports travelers to first-timers, most expect first-class gear and equipment during their weekend-warrior (or longer) experiences.
We spoke to three companies that stand out in Western North Carolina and learned about what they make:
Misty Mountain Threadworks
The history of Misty Mountain reads like a buddy-adventure film. The Valle Crucis-based company designs and manufactures climbing harnesses and ‘sewn’ climbing gear that is in use world-wide, but started life as tiny Misty Mountain Threadworks in 1985 as a maker of fashionable and comfortable swami belts (an early waist-harness), leg loops, harnesses and slings.
President Goose Kearse bought into his high school buddy Woody Keen’s business in 1989. The duo are both climbers and craftsmen. The company has morphed with different combinations of ownerships over the years, but has stayed true to its mantra of US-made innovative climbing equipment made by and for climbers.
To tell the whole story, one has to go far back—when a 17-year-old Keen first showed Kearse the ropes—quite literally—of climbing beyond the usual YMCA outdoor programs and summer camp. For college, Woody Keen headed to Appalachian State in Boone, N.C., (Valle Crucis is right outside of Boone), Goose Kearse to UNC Chapel Hill and Wake Forest. Keen made his own climbing harnesses in his garage on an old sewing machine borrowed from the outdoors shop where he worked part-time. His father worked for a large textile company, so he had access to textiles and test equipment.
While working at the NC Outward Bound School Keen designed the Fudge harness, an adjustable “Swiss-seat” style harness with buckles instead of knots. It was an invention known to be one of the first true “one size fits most” harnesses and resulted in forming the small company.
Called a “cut and sew” operation, Misty Mountain purchased component materials like webbing, fabric, foam and hardware, cutting the parts and sewing them together to create climbing products. Recreational harnesses and climbing gear were the mainstay of the company, recognizable as Misty Mountain by wild patterned designs and whimsical elements like fringe or faux fur, introduced by Kearse’s old climbing buddy and business partner.
Once bitten by the climbing bug, Goose Kearse never looked back, choosing to invest in his passion. The Valle Crucis facility occupied 7,000 square feet and only added a satellite operation in near Boone in 2015, when he bought out another friend to become sole owner of Misty Mountain.
Strength, comfort, and durability are key fundamentals in the manufacturing of Misty Mountain climbing gear. Kearse notes that trends propel innovation. As bouldering grew in popularity, for example, boulder pads became part of Misty Mountain’s product line. In 2009, Misty Mountain began designing and producing harnesses and tethers for the military, opening an entirely new products category, including military packs and K-9 harnesses. Zipline gear, adventure, and adaptive gear (designed to allow people using wheelchairs to experience climbing) also figure into the repertoire of the company of 18 employees.
The climbing and outfitters industry has changed in the nearly three decades in which Kearse has been a part of it as a manufacturer and a user.
“It’s all globalized and the manufacturing has gone offshore for the most part,” he says, referring to the thousands of textile jobs that disappeared throughout the region.
“We are the salmon that swim upstream, against the current,” he states.
One of the greatest boons to the company’s longevity has been the enviable military contract.
“During the economic downturn of the late previous decade, I began to look for underserved areas where we could provide our load-rated textiles to new customers,” explains Kearse.
“The military was a pretty obvious target,” he says, “given our proximity to multiple military installations and their need for lightweight, durable, and comfortable personal protective equipment like harnesses and tethers.”
His initial contacts led him to plenty of experienced military climbers who were familiar with Misty Mountain from the civilian side.
“Making good products for better people,” says Kearse, is what he’s most proud of after all these years. “It’s fun to help our customers succeed in their adventures.”
Valle Crucis, N.C.
SylvanSport
It’s been called a “backpack on wheels” or the Swiss Army Knife of camping trailers. The GO Camping Trailer and the GO Easy Adventure Trailer are U.S. made lightweight vehicles for ease of transport of outdoor gear. They also look way-cool and weigh a fraction of traditional trailers or RVs.
Founder Tom Dempsey created SylvanSport in Brevard, N.C., in 2004 after managing product launches and multi-million-dollar campaigns at Liquidlogic (the kayak company he founded in 2000), as well as a number of companies in the medical and outdoor recreation fields.
Dempsey and his designers, launching the GO in 2008, created the compact, lightweight, and gear-friendly trailers to look high-tech, but be easy to use for quick weekend camping trips to day trips to whitewater. The visionary identified outdoor enthusiasts who wanted comfort, but not sacrificing style. The camping trailer can haul up to 800 pounds of gear, be it ATVs, motorcycles, bikes, boats, lumber—anything that needs hauling.
Once unloaded, the GO Camping Trailer’s roof drops down to transform the trailer into a camper in only some 10 minutes. Once cranked up, the tent walls made of lightweight, airy materials expand into a modern camper for sitting, sleeping, weathering a storm.
The even lighter-weight GO Adventure Trailer can be filled with gear and hauled by a motorcycle.
“The SylvanSport GO by far has been the most complex and challenging overall product,” Dempsey reflects of his decades of creations. “As a designer, I have always sought to reach simplicity ‘on the other side of complexity,’ and the GO delivers on that challenge.”
The trade thinks so, too. National Geographic Adventure dubbed it as the “Coolest. Camper. Ever.” with the Best Gear of the Year award. And the GO accumulated awards like Men’s Journal’s Gear of the Year, an Industrial Design Excellence Award, and others.
Dempsey was a Boy Scout growing up in the central Appalachians, loving to camp, hike, and boat. “Combine that with the fact that I spent much of my childhood building structures out of scrap materials in the woods behind our house, and you have me as a grown-up,” he laughs.
He studied industrial design at Auburn University and first became acquainted with Brevard as a student during a visit to climb Looking Glass Rock. Today, SylvanSport’s 17,000-square-foot facility headquartered in Brevard employs 20 people directly and many more in supply and distribution chains.
“Keeping manufacturing and sourcing close to home has been our objective since beginning to make the SylvanSport GO,” explains Dempsey. “Overall, it continues to be challenging. The proximity of the automotive manufacturing corridor along Interstate 85 is helpful.
“Through diligent sleuthing, we have also managed to find great relationships with skilled companies within a 100-mile radius of Brevard. It is hard work to establish, but a true advantage when solving problems together with suppliers.”
Dempsey’s company is keeping up with demand and the times. “We intentionally operate at the intersection of the outdoor recreation industry and the recreation vehicle industry,” he continues.
“Both industries have changed. The outdoor industry has matured from passionate entrepreneurs to larger companies who have acquired their businesses. Innovation continues to be driven by the entrepreneurial companies that continue to rise in a dynamic market,” Dempsey states.
“SylvanSport is driving innovation in the broader way of how people are making use of their free time pursuing outdoor recreation and adventure,” he said.
“While I am grateful to receive recognition for cool things, I am just hard-wired to create things. Finding the link between creativity and market demand is a more refined skill, and that is what keeps me on my toes today.”
235 Commerce Street, Brevard, N.C.
Liquidlogic
Another company that promotes its products as designed and produced by users for users (in this case paddlers), LiquidLogic sits squarely in the nexus of whitewater and rivers in Fletcher (just outside of Asheville, N.C). Founded in 2000 along the Green River by visionary craftsmen, world-class athletes, and industry veterans, the company manufactures kayaks and gear out of a state-of-the-art, energy-efficient factory. LiquidLogic has become a worldwide brand with distribution centers in Europe, New Zealand, Japan, and Russia.
Care to tour the factory? Stop by the first Friday of each month at 2 p.m. Close to 50 employees build over 45 styles of kayaks and other watercraft, including fishing and sea kayaks and stand-up paddleboards. During the tour, you might run into Shane Benedict, one of the founders of LiquidLogic, who’s life-altering experience of losing two friends in whitewater kayaking accidents propelled him to work in kayak design and manufacturing to create safer, high-performing products.
Benedict and five other paddlers, designers, and artisans migrated from a Greenville kayaking company to a cabin near the Green River Gorge in Flat Rock, N.C., designing prototypes and launching LiquidLogic in 2000. Tom Dempsey, now of SylvanSport, was one of the originals.
Benedict was a boat designer but had been an instructor and adventure guide with the Nantahala Outdoor Center in the ‘90s, leading paddling trips to New Zealand, Chile, and other destinations as a sponsored athlete and guide. Eventually accountants, sales, marketing positions had to be filled, and for that, the founders looked to fellow kayakers. Everyone on the team needed buy-in, and that comes from being an avid fan and participant in what’s being created. Today, the cross-trained staff can mold boats, sew outfitting, assemble kayaks, and push pencils in the offices.
“We make it our goal every day to provide you with the safest, most reliable, and dynamic kayaks on the market,” is the company’s mantra. “We test every piece as if our very own lives depended on it.”
And the company racked up awards, right away—Manufacturer of the Year by Canoe and Kayak Magazine, during its second year of operation, for example.
Today, all employees are encouraged to get out on the water and utilize the products as often as they can—even during their lunch break. The company is living wage certified and encourages workers to check boats out from the company fleet to ride the river for a spell. The signature curved elongated mold grooves that run the length of the boats are visible from afar and create marketability right on the water with every LiquidLogic kayak.
Check out one of those tours and witness molding, sewing, and general assembly occurring on the main factory floor, but a glimpse into the Rotational Molding Laboratory, or RotoLab, showcases LiquidLogic’s state-of-the-art testing capabilities, particularly the plastics used for the bodies of the kayaks. The lab findings have improved not only LiquidLogic’s product, but made inroads in safety in the kayaking industry as a whole.
Like the aforementioned locally-based outfitters and may other such outfitters of WNC, LiquidLogic’s history is long and elaborate—with like-minded makers coming together to better the world of outdoor recreation and sports because they love what they do, live what they do, and never let the passionate flame for invention and innovation extinguish.
210 Old Airport Road, Fletcher, N.C.
Striking the Right Chord
With 1,000 dulcimers and counting, perfection still doesn’t come easy
By Dillon Jeffrey
Jerry Read Smith had just finished studying and was walking through the student center at Warren Wilson College in Swannanoa, North Carolina, when he heard the alluring sounds of a hammered dulcimer pinging through the halls.
It was a serendipitous turning point that sparked a lifelong love affair. The year was 1974, and Smith was so enamored with the magical tones he wanted to try building one of his own.
Of course, there was no internet then, no online tutorials, no YouTube instructional videos. So, he sent a letter to the Smithsonian Institution Building of History and Technology asking for plans.
“That’s what I based my first dulcimer on: really, really simple plans. With plywood and cement nails,” Smith says.
Smith built this dulcimer in his dorm room. After three months, he was playing the finished product, which had just one bridge down the center and 12 strings.
The instrument was beautiful even in it’s simplicity, and hammering the basic strings—a scaled-down version of a piano’s innards—produced a close relative to the beautiful sounds Smith had heard in the student center. It was not perfect, though.
“After I had it together and I’d been playing on it for a few weeks, I started thinking, ‘Boy, I bet I could build a better one than this.’ So I just thought about what I had done and what I might be able to do to make it better, and I set out to build another one,” says Smith. “And that’s what I’ve been doing for the last 42 years.”
Smith operates on a simple building principle.
“Every time I finish one I think, ‘What could I do to make this better?’”
Smith crafts some of the most beautiful looking and sounding dulcimers in the country: well-lacquered, trapezoidal slabs of local lumber with fine, taut strings pegged over top of hand-crafted rosettes to artfully release the sound. Smith has built them larger over the years, but has never sacrificed their portability, and certainly not their sound.
He discovered how to cultivate the dulcimer’s sound through different varieties of wood. By gluing two soundboards on top of each other and tapering them so there is more mahogany in the base spectrum and more spruce in the treble, Smith has captured the clearest tonalities.
“By laminating the two woods together and then tapering them, I go from a warm, rich base up to a clear, sparkling treble, by getting the advantages of each wood and its density,” Smith says.
Even after crafting more than 1,000 instruments, Smith has maintained his artistic integrity.
“Most people are in a hurry to build them and get them out to sell, and I’m not. What I’m trying to do is build the best instrument I possibly can. It sounds kind of crazy, but I don’t really care how long it takes,” he says.
Smith has grown from making one dulcimer at a time to making six. He is no longer making simple dulcimers, either. His most common instrument has five bridges and 100 strings.
All of Smith’s hammered dulcimers are polished smooth, which is a rarity in the business afforded by his lack of time constraints. Each instrument is cared for individually, and no corners are cut to meet deadlines. Smith crafts each dulcimer with his undivided attention, and the pay off is the finished product.
“My joy comes from putting all the work I can into an instrument, and then when I give it to someone it’s just awesome. I love to see the reaction of people when they get one from me,” Smith says.
This dedication has earned him commissions from around the world, from Brazil to Japan. When someone wants a hammered dulcimer, they come to Jerry Read Smith.
His craft has led him to just outside of Asheville, North Carolina. Here he lives, works and plays. His store in Black Mountain displays his craftsmanship with folk instruments and is not limited to the hammered dulcimer. Smith also makes bowed and plucked psalteries, as well as mountain lap dulcimers. All of these instruments are available for the casual customer to play and test in the store.
“I consider myself unbelievably fortunate to have sort of created a career for myself. And as far as I’m concerned, I live in an absolute paradise,” Smith says.
His workshop is bigger than his house, and only a few steps away. Wallpaper is replaced with lumber in various stages of the building process. Rosette designs occupy one table, while pin blocks occupy the next. Nearly completed dulcimers hang in the drying room for weeks until the lacquer hardens enough to polish.
Connected to the workshop is his recording studio. The studio is two stories, built with a vaulted ceiling, a balcony and floor-to-ceiling windows looking out over the valley. In front of these windows is a raised platform that serves as a stage, providing performers a backdrop of the rolling Blue Ridge Mountains.
The trio of his home, workshop and music studio is set on a ridge, tucked away at the end of a winding, one-lane road. With this seclusion, Smith is still only a few minutes from the conveniences of town.
At 68 years old, Smith lets nothing get in the way of experiencing the forest. Each morning, before the sunrise, he takes a three-and-a-half mile hike through the relaxing nature that he lives in. Then he returns to his workshop and starts his day.
Three years ago, Smith took on an apprentice. This lifted Smith out of the general labor portion of building, freeing him to spend more time perfecting his craft.
“He’s doing almost all of the work, at this point, and I’m concentrating on the finer points,” Smith says.
Smith has taken on the role of teacher with enthusiasm.
“It’s fun to teach somebody how to do what I’ve figured out how to do over the last 40 years,” he says.
The process of making a normal hammered dulcimer is lengthy. Making one following the style of Jerry Read Smith is arduous.
“There’s an awful lot to it, but it’s awfully satisfying,” Smith says.
With his newfound free time, Smith hosts concerts and camps in his studio. He holds about 15 concerts a year of folk and bluegrass players, as well as more contemporary musicians. His academies are weeklong events, extensively training participants how to play the hammered dulcimer. Smith does not teach these academies.
“I let the professional players play and I build,” he says.
He plays the instruments he makes when he can, but he does not play as often as he used to.
“I practiced every day and did as many as 75 performances a year. I was recording, doing concerts, and playing weddings,” Smith says.
In 1981 he pressed his first record of hammered dulcimer music. While selling his instruments and his services at craft fairs across the country, he started his own record company and has sold over half a million records.
These days, Smith has settled into a different role.
“Now I pretty much just concentrate on the design and getting the instrument into the hands of people who do play all the time,” Smith says.
Atop a mountain, secluded from the hassles of the city, it’s easy to see why Smith considers his life paradise.
“I’m pretty fortunate: I’ve got a motorcycle, I’ve got a set of golf clubs. I ride my motorcycle every day. I play golf once a week. I work on instruments and enjoy the forest,” Smith says.
203 West State Street, Black Mountain, N.C.
songofthewood.com
Divine inspiration lends a new twist to a familiar sound
By Daniel Jackson
If you want a musical instrument that’s inherently Southern, look no further than the banjo. From its roots in African music to its rise in popularity during the antebellum South, it has played key roles in mountain music, country and jazz.
These days, you don’t have to travel far in the Smoky Mountains to hear a bluegrass band, and the banjo player laying down steely rolls over the twang and thump of the music. It’s the sound of America and the South.
It’s only fitting that some of the best banjos today are made in Gatlinburg, Tennessee by Ronnie Bales.
For 15 years, Bales has made banjos and earned the reputation of a skilled luthier because he brings an exacting attention to his craft. It starts with the wood he selects and continues until he plucks the instruments’ first notes. Over the years, his banjos have traveled to Australia, England, California, and Colorado. Professional pickers like Bill Evans have played Bales’ banjos.
Bales started making banjos 15 years ago. He had always been skilled at shaping wood. He grew up in a cabinet making shop. He started learning to play the banjo 30 years ago with his son, who has since gone pro and plays the instrument at Dollywood.
Bales’ first banjo was for himself. He always loved the way the banjo sounded. Bales admits he’s no fast-pickin’ professional player. He wasn’t blessed with playing ability, he says. Instead, Bales plays to develop his ear, to tune banjos so each in its own unique voice can make the sweetest sounding music it can make.
After that first banjo, Bales made a second for his son, and then he made a third.
Bales models his banjos after the banjos Gibson made in the years leading up to World War II. Those pre-war Gibsons are to the picking community what the violins made by Antonio Stradivarius are to violinists—the gold standard.
A Bales banjo begins from the ground up. He cuts his own maple, walnut and cherry from the region. This area is a climate ideal for great banjo wood, he says.
He might search for a red maple that has grown in a valley, its grain open because it grew a little faster than a red maple on a craggy mountain.
Unlike many makers, Bales shapes all the wooden parts of his banjos: the bridge that hold the strings above the skin-tight banjo head, the neck and even the wooden banjo ring, the key piece that makes up a banjos’ pot.
Creating the banjo ring takes a week’s worth of work and exacting measurements. While normal woodworking demands carpenters to be accurate down to the 16th or 32nd of an inch, crafting a banjo requires Bales to be accurate down to the thousandths of an inch.
“It’s like you’re working metal,” the luthier said.
After all, the metal tone ring needs to sit neatly onto that wooden banjo ring.
If wood and metal fits too tightly, then the tone of the banjo won’t ring through. That’s why Bales developed and patented his turbo ring—carefully machining out the wooden ring so the metal tone ring floats a bit more on the instrument. The result is only heard in a consistent sound from winter to the slow days of summer when the wood swells and shrinks a few thousandths of an inch.
It was early on in Bales’ banjo-making career when the idea of turboing a banjo rim came to him. When he developed the courage to try it, it was 2 a.m. and Bales lay awake, thinking.
“What’s wrong with you?” his wife asked.
“The Lord’s given me an idea,” Bales said, “and I can’t get if off my mind and I’m afraid to try it.”
Bales’ wife replied if the idea was from the Lord, it would work. So Bales got up and went into his shop and cut out his first rim. It worked. He tried the technique on another and another. He developed a banjo that had “a little more sustain” than an average banjo.
On December 17, 2007, Bales filed a patent for a “banjo pot sub-assembly.” The U.S. Patent office awarded him the invention in 2010.
Two years ago, Bales moved from his farmhouse in New Market, Tennessee, to Gatlinburg, the place he was born and raised. He knows most everybody in that town.
His shop is smaller. Still, he has the metal lathes and the other metal-working machines, plus the usual wood shop tools.
A banjo will take him 100 working hours to fashion and cost thousands after he’s finished. While he’s repaired Gibson banjos, and shaped necks for others, he’s made about 70 serialized banjos so far—Bales banjos from bridge to neck, all with turbo rings.
“I’m trying to make the best banjo I can make,” Bales says.
Banjos will remain part of Smoky Mountain culture, and chances are, the ringing notes of Bales’ will reverberate across these hollows and hills for decades to come.