Just in time to ring in the New Year, the mermaid banjo was strung and ready to play.

She’s surprisingly resonant, with just the balance of tone with percussion we’d hoped for.  Bluegrass banjos, with their hard resonators and snare-drum-tight heads, tend to be brash and sharp; old-time banjos tend to err in the opposite direction, with large pots and loose heads to create a sound that’s more thump than tone. Amber had chosen this pot in the hopes of a goldilocks-like compromise between the two that would suit her light, melodic clawhammer style. The 1898 Stewart Thoroughbred she has been playing is a light, small pot “Lady’s” instrument that plays smooth and fast, but doesn’t have much volume or horsepower.  It’s great for sitting around the house, but not so great for dances or larger sessions, and not responsive enough to capture hammer-ons above the fourth fret, or notes played under a bar above the fifth fret.

A few sample tunes: Martha Campbell, Comin’ Down From Denver and Walk Along John.

Like the John Hartford Deering banjo, the Mermaid has a wooden tone ring, for a warm sound. It also has an internal ring resonator, a feature spotted on a friend’s vintage Bacon-Day, an instrument with a great vintage sound. So for the Mermaid, we specified East Indian rosewood for the tone portion of the pot, and walnut for the rear of the pot and resonator. Mark Hickler of Arizona built the pot. The result is great projection and tone without a lot of hammering, and without an unwieldy, slippery 13” resonator to hang onto.

We chose a walnut neck and ebony fingerboard; Amber ordered a nice sharp volute, which I believe is mostly because it’s a fun word, and a similarly crisp cutout at the fifth string peg. The neck shape was based on her Stewart, which is a small, comfortable neck.

Then came the fun part…decoration. Maple accents for the pot, and a strip of striped inlay. A maple heel cap. Mystic Martin inlays for the fingerboard, because she dislikes distracting fingerboard inlay, and this set was an elegant compromise. The headstock’s proportions are based on a Guarneri violin, with banjo-appropriate ornamentation added.

And, of course, a mermaid. She was conceived as a small decoration to match a heel-carving scheme, later deep-sixed, containing flora from Ozark springs, but she soon took on a personality of her own. What sort of mermaid might live in the half-light of Ozark cave mouths and boiling springs, in the wide, deep green river grasses, in the watercress, in water that’s so mineral-rich it practically glows in saturated aquas and greens? What sort of mermaid has quicksilver minnows and sly muskrats for friends, and has the dark of the underground river for her refuge? We tried to imagine her–she’s cave-fish pale and rainbow-trout sparkly. She’s also holding an unusual fern called a walking fern. Walking ferns actually have a fairly wide range, throughout the Ozarks, Appalachians, the St. Lawrence and Mississippi River valleys and parts of Wisconsin, but they aren’t seen too often. In the Ozarks we’ve seen them in the microclimates around the mouths of caves and where the bluffs leak water, always surrounded by lush growths of mosses and other ferns. They get their name from the fact that the tip of each leaf, if it touches earth (or rock, or moss, or…), will grow the base of a new leaf, creating a long chain of fern. I created her (and her ferns) out of several varieties of shell, including white, gold, black and pink mother of pearl, sea snail and some paua abalone. The shell is accented with thin copper wire, an idea we picked up from the Stewart, which has lovely wire inlay detail on the headstock.

The Mermaid and her banjo were great fun to build and are looking like great fun to play as well. Up next: a set of matching customized tuner knobs decorated with flora and fauna.