If You're Going to Play, Play Handmade
If You're Going to Play, Play Handmade
Every morning, before he goes to his job at Technicolor, Christian Stanfield goes to his backyard workshop and spends two hours building made-in-Memphis musical instruments. He builds on his lunch break, then again when he gets home from work, spending hours every week in a room that's about the size of a modest walk-in closet.
In this tiny room near the U of M, Christian makes some of the prettiest acoustic instruments in the city from scratch. He's sands, glues, cuts, finishes and tunes until he's got a perfect guitar, banjo or ukulele.
He's running out of space, so he's had to go up, hanging banjo bodies and ukulele necks in progress from hooks on the ceiling. He thinks he's found the magic number for how many projects he can take on at once (four).
While his guitars sound incredible, and the shiny gold "Blingjo" is pretty cool, my favorite thing that Christian makes is the banjolele. It's sort of the lyger of the instrument world - part banjo, part ukulele. He let me play one when I visited him last week, and it sounds like a much louder, slightly twangier version of a ukulele.
Currently, Christian and his wife Vera have about 30 acoustic instruments between them, many that Christian has built or repaired. It seems a little excessive until they tell you about their band, the Side Street Steppers. They play vintage (and vintage-sounding) music - think jug band, blues, swing and country.
Here's Christian and Vera, playing in their living room (she's playing a banjolele):
The Side Street Steppers are currently working on their debut record, "Memphis Stomp". The record is keeping with Christian's DIY ethos - every piece of it will be made by Memphians. It's going to be recorded by Scott Bomar and all of the pressing, marketing and design will be done by Memphis companies. The project is also being partially funded by Memphians through a Kickstarter campaign.
If you'd like to check out more of the Side Street Steppers, they've got a few videos (including one made at Earnestine and Hazel's) up on YouTube. If you'd like to check out Christian's homemade instruments - and if you play acoustic music, you should - visit his (and his partner / mentor Tommy George's) website, George Banjos.
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