Homegrown Music and Musical Instruments

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Marc Bristol and other Washington State grassroots musicians wail away on a gutbucket, washboard, and jug (the axe is a gag). For Marc's original homegrown music Column—which featured gutbucket, washboard, jug, kazoo, musical saw, and spoons "makin' and playin' "instructions—see MOTHER NO. 50. Inset shows gutbucket "notch and bevel ''details.

Even homesteaders need to relax and enjoy themselves from time to time, right? And almost everybody these days wants to cut his or her cost of living. So how about a little do-it-yourself entertainment?

And that's what this column is all about. Down-home music that you can make . . . and the instruments (which, in some cases, you can also make!) to play that music on.

 We may also publish some songs, discuss music as a potential home business, run discographies, bibliographies, and/or include whatever other do-it-yourself music topics you'd like to see. 

The important thing is that this is your column. If you like it, write to me and let me know. If you have some ideas for this feature, let me know that. I'm open to any suggestions or information you care to contribute. I'll even try to answer your questions about down-home music . . . but-both for the benefit of all MOTHER's readers and to ease my correspondence load-I'll deal with those questions, whenever possible, here in this column . . . rather than in personal letters. 

Address your correspondence— for this column and this column only—to Marc Bristol, 31722 N.E. 180th Place, Duvall, Wash. 98019.

The Festival of the Saws!

Back in the early part of this century, the beautiful, wailing sounds of musical saws were heard in many vaudeville shows and dance orchestras. Then along came all the various sophisticated (and expensive) Hawaiian, do bro, and pedal slide guitars, and the art of coaxing melodies from woodcutting hand tools was almost forgotten.

Today, I'm happy to report, musical saw playing is one "dying art" that's coming back to life! In fact, I had the unique pleasure-last Labor Day weekend-of attending the annual musical saw festival in Santa Cruz, California . . . a two-day gala event that was filled with the plaintive strains of the dual-purpose implement.

Santa Cruz was especially exciting because amateur "sawyers" played right alongside such record-cutting professionals as Margaret Steinbuch (I mentioned her in my column in MOTHER NO. 60), Moses Josiah, Robert Armstrong (who plays with the Cheap Suit Serenaders and recorded the theme for the movie "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"), and the festival's originator, Tom Scribner (who's played with the likes of Leon Russell and George Harrison ... and been honored by having a bronze statue of himself, playing a saw, erected in a Santa Cruz park).