April 22nd, 2024

Good morning friends,

    After returning from my month-long stay in Europe late Tuesday evening, I had one day off and was back at work Thursday, Friday, and Saturday…and it was glorious! I had received a message while I was away from my friend and old time banjo phenomenon, Adam Hurt. He was going to be visiting friends in Penn Yan and wanted to stop at the store to help his friend find a new banjo. I couldn’t have been more pleased. What a fantastic way to get back into the mode of American vintage instrument work. Adam and I go back many, many years before I open the store when I was still working out of the house on East Avenue. Back then, as I remember, I received somewhat distressed phone call from a gentleman in Minnesota. He said to me, "Mr. Bernunzio, I am the principal cello player for the Minneapolis-St. Paul orchestra, and for some reason, my young son, Adam wants to play….of all things…the banjo!". He went on to say that his son had seen an instrument on my newly launched website and he wanted to try it out and perhaps purchase it. They were planning to drive from Minneapolis to Rochester, New York to try out some of the instruments that I had in stock. When they arrived, this shy,13 year-old boy, pointed to a Fairbanks Whyte Laydie banjo that I had on the wall and asked if he could try it out. He already was a magical player at 13. He could play better than most people I had heard. Today of course Adam Hurt is known as "the clawhammerist"….and is perhaps the "tastiest" old time banjo player that I know. So it was, with great delight, that I arrived at the store and spent the day with Adam and our friend Peter Bell looking at old banjos and finding one that was exactly right for Peter.

      Now that the sun is setting  later in the evening, I don’t mind commuting back-and-forth from Penn Yan. It’s a one hour drive, but it is so beautiful and this time of the year, the colors are changing every day as green life returns to the land. So I came back-and-forth Thursday, Friday and Saturday as we were very, very busy at the store. It also gives me a chance to delve into some historical podcasts. I’ve been recently listening to a three part series on the history of Sudan and the ongoing conflict that is mostly glossed over by the traditional news sources. There is so much to know about this world we live in. This is the way I like to spend my time, acquiring a bit more information about the world around me so that I can at least think a little bit more intelligently about things. Knowledge is power and ignorance is very costly.

With peace,

John Bernunzio

The lake temperature is warming up, which means fishing season is right around the corner.