Junk Mountain @ Clatter

15 South Broadway,Frostburg MD 21532

17 July, 2021

Description

Skilled appalachian musicians delight and impress playing instruments they made out of junk. “I use gourds, coffee cans, beer cans, cigar boxes, gas cans, cookie tins, frying pans, copper pipe, and anything else I can find that will make a sound for my instruments,” said instrument maker Jim Morris. “I prefer using hand tools to build these instruments because it connects me to how instruments would have been made hundreds of years ago. It’s a slower, almost meditative process that I find quite satisfying.” Jim Morris has been making music for most of his seventy years. He discovered oldtime music when he moved to Hampshire County, West Virginia around 2005, and it led to an interest in making music in a different way, by building musical instruments. His first source of inspiration was a banjo made from a frying pan made by Gus Cannon; Cannon had made the instrument as a young teenager and taught himself to play on it before going on to Cannon’s Jug Stompers. Morris also saw a cigar box fiddle in an engraving of a Civil War encampment, and set about to recreate what he saw. “My first homemade instrument was the cigar box fiddle,” Morris said. “Then I found that taking an item that was destined for the landfill and making it into a playable musical instrument was extremely satisfying for me.” Now he and bandmate/friend Josh Haza play these instruments as part of a rolliking show that is rolling into Clatter Cafe on July 17. See you there!