With the porch project coming to close (except for the poor work done by our concrete steps contractor) I have had some time to get back in the shop.
This mando should be in the white this weekend and make an appearance at the Bluegrass festival the following weekend.
Infinity A model Mandolin under Construction
Folks, the Greater Downstate Bluegrass Music Festival at the Crowne Plaza in Springfield, IL is just around the corner and a great lineup awaits. The festival runs Friday, Nov 11 through Sunday Nov 13, 2011. You’re too late for reduced price advance reserve seating, but you can still get your tickets for $55 general admission and $60 for reserved seating for the weekend. Evening shows run $25 each.
Playing Friday are The Link Family, Donna Ulisse & Poor Mt. Boys, Michael Cleveland & Flamekeeper and Dailey & Vincent.
Dailey and Vincent
Saturday shows include The Harmans, Balsam Range, Rhonda Vincent & Rage, The Boxcars and Dry Branch Fire Squad. The Harmans and Dry Branch Fire Squad also finish out the festival with the Sunday morning show.
Of the nine groups playing, three won awards at the 2011 IBMA awards show last month. The Boxcars won Instrumental Group of the Year and Emerging Artist of the Year (what’s that one all about),
The Boxcars at IBMA Awards 2011
Balsam Range won Song of the Year for “Trains I Missed” and Michael Cleveland and Flamekeeper won Instrumental Recorded Performance of the Year for “Goin’ Up Dry Branch“. In addition, Adam Steffey (The Boxcars’ mandolin player), won Mandolin Player of the Year (2 in a row now) and Michael Cleveland took home his Fiddle Player of the Year trophy. Michael Cleveland has won the Fiddle Player of the Year award so many times now that I think he might just bring the trophy back to the awards show with him and reuse it.
Michael Cleveland and Flamekeeper via. Ted Lehman's Blog
Be sure to set aside some time to come out and enjoy the show. In addition to the performances will be jamming. The 10,000 square foot jamming area is large and loud. There are some more intimate rooms if you can find them but the majority of jamming takes place in the wide open spaces. Many folks come out to the festivals solely for the jamming. If your timing is right you might even find some of the touring pros jamming with pickers from all over the Midwest playing tunes from Bill Monroe to Flatt and Scruggs to the Steel Drivers.
See you at the festival.
Crowne Plaza, Springfield, IL
3000 South Dirksen Pkwy, Springfield, IL 62703 - 1-800-589-2769
Kathryn Marie Dudley, a professor of anthropology and American studies at Yale, wrote a grammatically poor yet decent opinion piece published in the NY Times Tuesday. Please disregard her attempt to slight those blaming Obama for attacking American business. She writes, “The law that investigators enforced in the August raid is indeed flawed — but not for the reasons critics cite.” Then ‘forgets’ to include what were the actual reasons for the raid on Gibson and not on Martin, Taylor, etc. who all use the same ‘illegal’ wood from the same source. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/26/opinion/are-guitar-makers-an-endangered-species.html
She outlined a problem that many luthiers currently live with… they are all holding material deemed illegal by the Lacey Act.
New legislation is being introduced by Congressman Jim Cooper of Tennessee called the Relief Act. Although this act does provide relief for some issues of Lacey, it does not go far enough to help most luthiers. Here are the main provisions of the act:
The first two provisions have some merit. The third is ridiculous.
The first is great for you guitar and antique furniture owners. If this legislation passes, your guitars, furniture or any other finished product owned before May 22, 2008 are no longer illegal. By the way… did you know your guitar with an Indian Rosewood fretboard is illegal? Yes… if you piss off the right USFW agent, they will confiscate your guitars and whatever else they deem necessary and you will be up for a felony, fines and imprisonment. Joy!
Provision two is good in that if the legislation becomes law, a bunch of us will not be up for a $500,000 fine, 5 years in prison and a felony charge for owning wood that is illegal according to the Lacey Act.
Provision three is really pointless but could allow some bureaucrats to hire more government lackeys to $100k+ jobs and do nothing but sit around and decide who is a bad person. The Lacey Act makes it illegal for Americans to have in possession woods that were not legally (in another country) harvested, transported or whatever. A wood source that is not forbidden is the main cause of the raid on Gibson.
While these provisions are a great start for you collectors and immediate concerns of luthiers, they do not address that fact that a lot of luthiers are sitting on tens of thousands of dollars worth of wood deemed illegal by the 2008 Lacey amendment. So, the Relief Act may take away prison, fines and felonies for us, it does not deal with the retirement accounts we have in the form of lumber.
“What do you mean?”, you ask. Well, if a luthier were to build an instrument using these woods deemed illegal by Lacey, after the Relief Act passes, that instrument would still be illegal under Lacey. This means that using, selling, transporting, eating, looking at, burning, etc. any lumber from the retirement account is illegal.
What will luthiers do with their illegal retirement accounts? Maybe a government bailout is in order? (cynicism implied)
In a recent article on cnn’s website, “Guitar enthusiasts are angry because not only is production of the famed guitars now in question, but under the Lacey Act, anyone owning or selling one of Gibson’s guitars could also be arrested for obstruction of justice.”
Anyone who believes that they are safe because they are an individual, or small-time dealer, or collector is living in dreamland. Anyone who thinks that because they own a guitar, mandolin or any item made of wood or animal or even space debris is safe, is dreaming. In the US, most of our items come from China. China does not observe the LACEY Act nor any other US EPA/USDA/USFW regulation placed on US citizens and business. If you buy anything made, in part, of wood from China it is most likely produced from a source or using a practice that our tradesmen in the US cannot legally acquire or process.
Contact your congressmen now and let them know that foreign laws are foreign laws and we should be focused on enforcing our own laws; even ridding ourselves of a lot of laws currently on the books. The LACEY act needs to be postponed until it can be rewritten by representatives with more knowledge on the issues.
This is not a battle over ‘GREEN’ practices. This is a battle over whether you want your wooden items fabricated in the USA by Americans or in Asia and India. How many jobs need to be shipped overseas before we wake up? If we do not use resources to produce goods here, another country will.
There are a few predictions in this post. One prediction is: China will not come to your rescue when we (the US) are so regulated that we can no longer use the sun for light.
Stay tuned. In my next post I personally take possession of the sun, all of its power and decide who gets how much!
(Substitute the word ‘my’ with “the government’s” and ‘I personally’ with ‘they’).
The porch and other obligations have kept me from building the small group of mandolins I started earlier in the year. With IBMA week right around the corner I have decided/gotten permission to quickly complete one F5 before the conference.
Finding a hundred hours between now and then will be difficult but then who needs all that sleep anyway? I do have Tim helping out in the shop. So, it should be an interesting build and we’ll see how it goes.
