Makers of the USA

“I was always like a record store hound since I was in elementary school and so I started working record stores and I worked at weird indy stores. Yeah, like underground music they're cool back in the 80s. And yeah, and but those stores often had like a strong kind of roots music component as well and by chance I heard a recording that been a field recording of a fiddle and banjo player made in the 40 or 41 and I just put it on because I had to keep something playing in the store right. I wasn't really paying attention because it was busy and then a few songs played and I was like man what is this. I had heard bluegrass and stuff like that before, but this didn't sound at all like that. It was like way more acerbic and emotionally direct. It really had a coarseness to it that probably appealed to my ears because of all this sort of harsh underground music I'd listen to. But the other thing that was interesting to me about it was that they were both African American musicians. I didn't really know what it was and if it had been just sort of filed in the blues section, yes. Whoever filed it didn't know, either. And, you know, I knew there were some customers in the store, who are really into like, 78. Collecting and really, really rich music collecting. And so I played it for one of them. And he's like, yeah, that's pretty good. And I was trying to get a feel for what it was. He didn't say much. And then he came into the store, like a few weeks later, and he says, Hey, Pete, you still listen to that country music? I was like, Is that what that is? Like? I didn't really know because I didn't quite sound like anything I'd heard. So it's sort of the idea of African Americans playing this music that I always thought it was kind of the most cracker fire music out there. It was a revelation. And then I'm just curious. I started reading more about the history of that music and then the instrument specifically. I found out that the banjo itself was an African American instrument originally. I found out pretty quickly, at least at that point, it seemed that none from that earliest period of history had survived. I was just so driven to learn more about it. I realized to hear one play, I had to make it myself. So that's what got me started,” said Pete Ross.

Kristan was shocked about how much Pete knew about the history of this beautiful instrument and who knew the banjo had a connection to Baltimore.

“The earliest commercial maker was here. The instrument was played by African Americans here as well at the tobacco plantations on the eastern shore. I was sort of exploring my identity, somebody from a state that doesn't carry a lot of cultural identity in the minds of the rest of Americans. But I was sort of discovering like, this is the place where these things happened, right? But it was a southern state that even though didn't join the Confederacy, the economics here grew around mass force labor to Kansas, growing tobacco here, right. And it was important that wasn't forgotten either. So I started, like, how much do you identify with that? Well, not really. But it's also I didn't grow up in Baltimore. I grew up in Maryland. So that all played in my mind. I had spent some time in high school in Baltimore come up here to see the punk bands and all in the little crappy little clubs and abandoned buildings. So I got to know the lay of the land. As you grow closer DC as DC having more intensely gentrified, the sort of more blue collar surroundings, and Baltimore, just like, I felt more comfortable with it. Like I said before, you know, it's sort of the perfect place to have sort of delete that kind of bohemian lifestyle because you don't have to devote so much of your lifetime,” said Pete.

Kristan learned more about Pete’s mentors, musicians he crafted banjos for, his time growing up in Maryland, the step-by-step process on how he crafts his banjos and so much more.

To learn more about Pete’s craft visit his website and Instagram.

Photo Credit: Matt Sprague

If you enjoyed this Makers of the USA episode, please leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Facebook. Please check out Makers of the USA's YouTube channel, Facebook and Instagram. Thank you all and stay safe and healthy.

"So my craft is music, I am a creator, I'm a composer, a bandleader. Those are like the main things that I'm focusing on but play the trumpet. I've been playing for about 15 years and how I got into it. I used to play the drums, I used to bang on pots. First, I used to bang on pots and pans when I was growing up. My mom and dad were still together and then I went to elementary school, the first instrument that I wanted to play was the drums. I had focused on that instrument for a whole year and I felt like by the end of the school year, I still didn't get anywhere on the instrument. I didn't really progress. I didn't see any progress. So I had this talent competition...I had this music teacher in elementary school named Mr. Freeman, and he said, you know, go ahead, do the talent competition, like even helped me out, you know, practice on some music for the talent competition. So I did it. And then I just did awful, did an awful job, and then there was like this older kid that ended the whole talent competition that also played drums, and he won. So wow, that broke my heart. I was like, how's that? Oh my gosh, not even just that he won. I was definitely happy for him. But the fact that I did, I thought in my mind that I did a terrible job in front of hundreds of people in my elementary school at such a young age. I was like six, seven years old. I just stopped playing the drums and then took a summer off of music in general. Just like playing a lot outside and then that September, whatever year that was that I went back to elementary school probably like third grade. I was probably eight years old. I had the choice to pick between saxophone and trumpet. still wanted to, you know, be involved in music. I think the main thing that made me do that was because last year when I was playing drums, I was getting butterflies, like, you know, five minutes before band rehearsal, I would always get these butterflies in my stomach. I didn't even know what they were. But just like the kind of nervous, kind of passion like really hard passion feeling of like, something that you are just getting into, but you really love it and you still don't even know what it is. Right? So I still had those butterflies next year. So I was like, oh, yeah, definitely got to still make music and trumpet just had fewer keys on it. A trumpet only has three vowels. The saxophone has endless keys. So I just thought it would be easier to play trumpet, honestly. And it wasn't, definitely wasn't, I couldn't take the instrument home, I couldn't, I couldn't read the instrument and take it home until I made a sound on it in school. So I would come in early every day for like two whole weeks trying to make a sound on the horn and I finally made a sound on the horn after two weeks and he allowed me to take it home. I lived in apartments, you know, all my life for you know, a lot of my life, especially after I started playing the trumpet because I was just living with my mom and my brother. My mom and dad split up like a little bit before that. But, uh, you know, people in apartments are, you know, they're not trying to hear a young kid playing the trumpet when they got whatever they got, not knowing that, like, you know, these hours that I'm putting in these apartments are really changing and affect my life for the, for the better. It was crazy, because anytime that I would, this was definitely an example of my mom's love, advocacy, and hard work, and strength, as a single mom as a single black mom in Baltimore. You know, anytime somebody in an apartment building, you know, would knock on the door, whatever, she would just curse them out. You know? And I would keep practicing," said Brandon Woody.

Brandon is a highly talented trumpet player who grew up in the heart of Baltimore. He went from learning trumpet in middle school to performing with trumpet playing legends and now starting his own fashion line with major national brands. Kristan learned about Brandon's life growing up in Baltimore, the milestones in his music career that got him to where he is today, and even the struggles he went through being a black musician.

To learn more about Brandon Woody's craft, visit his website and Instagram.

Photo Credit: Megan Elyse

If you enjoyed this Makers of the USA episode, please leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Facebook. Please check out Makers of the USA's YouTube channel, Facebook and Instagram. Thank you all and stay safe and healthy.

“I'm able to make color by working with glass and the glass that I work with is fused dichroic glass, which I work in a kiln. But what really got me started was I had a pair of earrings that my Mom had given me years ago and I lost one. I was inspired to make a match for that earring at the same time that I was looking for a new way to find work to walk through my day,” said Alison.

Alison was a commercial banker in Northern Virginia and she found that a nine-to-five job wasn’t her calling. Her mother gave her a book called The Artists Way by Julia Cameron and this really opened her eyes to get into a more creative hobby which has now turned into her full-time job. She also has a family filled with creatives and she never thought she would go in a similar direction as her family members.

“I never considered myself that person until I went through this process and that broadened what I was going to look for, as far as work. So then I started thinking, well, maybe I could write the great American novel, or I could, you know, make a line of note cards, and it just started me on a different path. So it wasn't a big stretch when I did lose that earring and I was driven to make a match for it. As I was doing that, and I started the process of learning how to make fused glass, I would wear my work, because that was the point. People started asking to buy the work right off of me. So I listened. And I went, you know, I, I did a few things that my banking background helped me with, I figured out the cost analysis of the process. Was this something that I was going to be able to actually make a living at? The answer was, yes,” said Alison.

Alison has made over 193 different colors into her glass pieces and she continues to think of innovative ways of growing her craft. You can find her website here and find her on Facebook and Instagram. Tune in to hear more about Alison's story.

Also, the featured musician of this episode is Joshua Eden who is originally from Vinalhaven. Here is his track Certain Kind of Love.

If you enjoyed this Makers of the USA episode, please leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Facebook. Please check out Makers of the USA's YouTube channel, Facebook and Instagram. Thank you all and stay safe and healthy.

When Nick Rossi was starting to learn the craft behind knife making in the late 90s, early 2000s, there were not a lot of places around that you could go and learn how to do this, there were only a few seminars. He said especially in Maine, there was not a lot to help move you along through the craft. The luckiest part of his journey was meeting knife makers when he got a job in a retail cutlery store. These coworkers offered to show him the mistakes he was making and examine what he was working on.

Nick was lucky enough to have mentors right from the start. When he was 15 years old, he got his first job at a knife store in Freeport, just wanting to help out.

“I have always been knife obsessed. I grew up in the 90s and there were a lot of action movies. These action movies had these knives that were kind of like stars in and of themselves. Right? For like an eight-year-old kid, it was like, oh my god, that is just so cool!” - Nick Rossi shares.

The very first knife he had made had a cord-wrapped handle and then he later got into the woodworking aspect of knife making. He saw a few people do woodworking before, picked up a few books, but felt like he was on his own. Again, it was trial and error for him. He loves uses wood sourced right from Maine for this portion of the knife.

Nick feels super lucky that his parents moved him to Maine when he was young. He believes that being in Maine has helped his business. He told me, “Maine has some of the best craftspeople in the world. All the jewelers, the metalsmiths and the potters and the good fiber artists out there, it’s kind of overwhelming. Being a part of that scene has really, really helped me and it's inspired me to reach for more. I'd say that that would be the big thing about me is just being surrounded by super talented people.”

To view Nick's work visit his website, Instagram and Facebook.

Also, stay until the end of the episode to listen to The Ghost of Paul Revere's track We Were Born Wild.

Big thanks to Erin Little for capturing Nick Rossi's wonderful craft.

If you enjoyed this Makers of the USA episode, please leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Facebook. Please check out Makers of the USA's YouTube channel, Facebook and Instagram. Thank you all and stay safe and healthy.

Ramona studied psychology in college and focuses on crisis and trauma counseling. She has set out to be a trauma and crisis counselor and that led her to practice reflexology. It calms the nervous system opening the door for other treatments to work.

She had a full schedule before the pandemic, seeing 15-20 clients a week. She shares that she was glad she picked up painting as giving all of her energy outward was taking a toll on her mental health. Painting was like self-care. She never considered painting professionally or creating anything that would be sellable. Who knew that not long after, her reflexology space would turn into her very own gallery.

“As far as the healing arts go, you know, I really did miss that connection that I had with my clients. Yeah, not being able to connect with them hands-on, not knowing how long I would be good again, and missing that connection. So originally, Ramona Allen healing arts was my Instagram feed for my reflexology practice. And I would post different things relating to health and wellness, mostly with holistic or alternative medicine. So I began to share my artwork on there thinking that it might inspire someone else may be to explore their creativity, not thinking that it would be something that would move into a career with sellable art.”

Ramona’s art began bringing joy, hope, and light to everyone in a dark time. People began reaching out to her and sharing what they experienced through viewing each piece. This gave her back the connection she was missing from having clients. What I've heard from others who know Ramona is that she is great at listening to their stories. She takes their story and turns it into a piece of art.

To view Ramona's work visit her website and Instagram.

Also, stay until the end of the episode to listen to Caroline Cotter's track II est Jaune.

Big thanks to Zach St. Ward for capturing Ramona's wonderful craft.

If you enjoyed this Makers of the USA episode, please leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Facebook. Please check out Makers of the USA's YouTube channel, Facebook and Instagram. Thank you all and stay safe and healthy.