I started out playing guitar, two or three years earlier than the banjo, but I didn’t get very far. A poor teacher and a poor guitar ended my first attempt. That was when I lived in Kentucky. As a boy, I’d grown up around bluegrass but it wasn’t until later, when I moved to Colorado in 1956, that I really got into playing music.
In this lifetime there were two things that inspired me to build banjos, besides playing. First, I grew up intrigued by building with metal and wood. My mother was in the antique business in Kentucky and I would go looking for treasures of the past with her. In the process, I became interested in antique firearms to the extent that by the time I turned 14, I was a professional gun trader. It was during those years in the trading business that I fell in love with the use of wood and metal as an art form and began learning vintage design techniques with those materials.
Builder Hometown:
Boulder, CO
Builder Website:
https://www.omebanjos.com/
Artists who play these instruments:
Clarence Hall Jerry Krahn David Jones, Frontier Ruckus Johnny St. Cyr Shanti Curran Tim O'Brien Kort McCumber, McCumberland Gap Bob Buckingham Ruth Moody, The Wailin Jennys Mike Gentry Chip Arnold Seth Taylor Chuck Hughes Darrell Scott A
Models Offered:
Grand Artist, Artist, Custom, Vintage, Professional
There are currently no guitars from this maker in stock. Please view our
current inventory here, or request us
to find you one from this maker.
I started out playing guitar, two or three years earlier than the banjo, but I didn’t get very far. A poor teacher and a poor guitar ended my first attempt. That was when I lived in Kentucky. As a boy, I’d grown up around bluegrass but it wasn’t until later, when I moved to Colorado in 1956, that I really got into playing music.
In this lifetime there were two things that inspired me to build banjos, besides playing. First, I grew up intrigued by building with metal and wood. My mother was in the antique business in Kentucky and I would go looking for treasures of the past with her. In the process, I became interested in antique firearms to the extent that by the time I turned 14, I was a professional gun trader. It was during those years in the trading business that I fell in love with the use of wood and metal as an art form and began learning vintage design techniques with those materials.