JOE HIGH

As a side note; I met Joe High a good number of years back as stated at the Brown Creek Correctional Institution and he helped out in our armory.  Joe is a very talented individual and has years of Gunsmithing experience and making custom leather goods.  He also is gifted working with wood creating some unique crafted items of which I own a couple along with my bride.

Joe is a dedicated Christian along with his wife Crystal and Joe preaches and sings at the Wadesboro Church of God when given the opportunity along with his Dad Bruce High (retired minister).  The entire High family is an inspiration to myself and others and leads by example; in other words, they practice what they preach!  Bruce and his wife Rose are very energetic in the Wadesboro Church of God with Bruce teaching the Adult Sunday School Class and Rose and Bruce both very active in the Youth ministry.    

Joe advised me that him and Gary would come by on July 17, 2018 for a visit and I got a digital recorder out and planned to record him playing his custom banjo and my banjo.

THE VISIT

Joe High and Gary Pressley arrived around 6:30, guessing at the time and we headed down into my basement "man cave" and chewed the fat about ole times.  Gary knew about all the old timers that were doing musical instrument repair back in the 70s, even though he is younger than myself, of which many of them are now deceased.

I had heard a lot of good things about Gary and his musical instruments and it was great to get a chance to finally meet him.  I had talked with him some years back about him building Gibson style F5 mandolins and pre-war Mastertone aka Masterclone banjos and glad the visit materialized.

I had Gary play several tunes on his custom made banjo and mine.  I thought I was recording him, but the digital recorder was in the pause mode with the vu meters showing the sound levels of both channels....my bad on this one for sure.  I guess I am still "old school" and need to see some wheels turning to validate that recording is taking place.....grin if you must.  I still don't own a smart phone, but have an 18 to 20 dollar flip top TracPhone which at the moment is about all I need for emergency usage while we are on the road.  My bride reminds me from time to time how long it took myself to upgrade from rotary dial telephones phones to tone dial.  I am way behind times on some technologies, although I do fairly well on the computer and digital photography.  I do plan to upgrade to a smart phone because of new technology recently installed in our home.

Gary's custom banjo sounded fantastic having that ole pre-war rattle or growl as I call it and he knows his away up and down the banjo neck too.  He gets excellent tone out of his banjo for sure and evident that he has been playing for many decades!

While I thought I was recording Gary, I told him I wanted to relate a story about a musician which I called Cowboy (now deceased) and didn't want to record the conversation and hit the pause button, but in reality I started recording since you have to depress the record button twice to record.  Pressing the record button the first time, allows you to adjust the input levels as needed.  Anyway, we all had a tremendous laugh over the story and Gary knew Cowboy as I called him very well.  I will not publish that story, but we will keep it in the ole memory bank instead......grin if you must!

Gary asked me what the "grin if you must" meant and I told him that I try and write some humor into my short stories and I can just about visualize the person reading the story and getting ready to grin, laugh or crack a smile, therefore I usually type "grin if you must."

After taking a few pixs, we went into my basement woodworking shop area and I had the stuff already laid out that I planned to give him and sure he could use the ebony slotted banjo fingerboards, mahogany neck blank with a dual action truss rod already installed and band sawed side profiled, pieces of Honduras Mahogany scrap wood which he could use for end blocks, etc.  I had a couple original pre-war Gibson Mastertone pegheads (sans the overlays) that I used to make metal templates and metal templates for doing the style 6 Mastertone banjo pegheads along with various aluminum and wood templates for the neck profile.  I also gave Gary the pre-war Gibson template for the neck shape which I have a scan of it on my Inlay Patterns page which is a catchall page of various things about pre-war Gibson banjos, etc.

I gave Gary several jigs made for positioning a neck blank for shaping using hand tools, rasp, etc.; one jig for holding the neck while band sawing the wood away next to the binding and a jig for sanding the heel radius using the drill press and a 3 inch diameter sanding drum.

Gary said he was hoping that I had a Gibson pre-war flathead tone ring to give him and we both did a real big grin on that one!

Below a couple pixs of Gary Pressley:

Below is pix of Joe High:

After figuring out the mistake I made with the TASCAM DR-05, I recorded Gary Playing his "banjer" on the tune Whoa Mule Whoa which is in .mp3 format hyperlinked here.  Joe said that Gary playing that song was his wife Crystals favorite song on the banjo and liked it better than Raymond Fairchild's version of it.

In closing, we had a great visit and look forward when Joe and myself can visit Gary at his place in Indian Trail, NC.  BTW, Joe left with one half stalk of my Venison Cajun Blend Summer Sausage and some other goodies not to be left out!

Web page published by Bill aka Mickey Porter on 07-27-18.