I wrote an ironic waltz about a rodeo,
a long, long time ago. Here’s a verse:
Here’s lovely LouAnn, she’s the queen
of the show
Her bodice it glistens with golden lame
All the bronc riders know her
but she saves what she can
For the oil man she’ll marry someday.
It’s a Rod-e-o
It’s a Rod-e-o,
It’s a wild and a westernish
O-de-o
Come a ti-yi-yay
Come a ti-yi-yo
It’s a rod-e-o,
rod-e-o show.
It was kind of corny, and I never sang
it outside my house, but it had a lovely melody and a hypnotic
cadence. It comes pre-programmed into this mandolin, assuming you
know what strings to fret.
I came across an amazing bunch of what
I now know to be African mahogany one time, while picking through a
stack of Philippine mahogany at a lumber yard. Philippine mahogany
often goes by the name ‘luan” and at the time was much cheaper than
clear pine (about a buck a board ft.) and was a good stable
alternative for trim that would be painted , particularly outdoors,
as it has excellent water resistance. It’s so cheap that it’s used
as the veneer skin on underlayment plywood, the cheapest of the
cheap. The boards are somewhat nicer that the rotary cut veneer, but
could best be described as beige in color, and not of much use to
woodworkers.
But I came across several boards in the
stack which were too heavy, too red in color, and which rang
melodically as I moved them around in the stacks. Just under 12”
wide, they had remarkable ribboned figure, and no cup at all. I
bought as much as I could based on what I had in my pocket, and on
the fact that, lumber storage was not a feature of the house I lived
in at the time.
I used it, over the years, in several
projects, a couple pieces of furniture, and when I first learned to
hand cut dovetails, I made a fully dovetailed chest in which to store
the more precious items in my antique tool collection.
Flash forward a few years, and I don’t
have much left, but its density and figure make it perfect for the
back of a mandolin, being wide enough to do in one piece, it carves
beautifully (with sharp enough tools) and it rings like a bell. The
flashy figure, the “calico” binding of purpleheart and holly, and
the fact that it was found in a stack of “luan,” made the name
that I gave it as I worked inevitable.
LouAnn.
Here are sound smples recorded by the terrific mandolinist, Mike Plunkett:
November 10, 2011
nevfahs
Redhead Mandolins 