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         In order of appearance from top to bottom:

     Wooden West African Kora
                Banjo in a Bag
            The Mouse Fiddle
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         Wooden West African Kora

Back in 2002 I received a grant from the Prairie Lakes Art Council to build an experimental wooden West African Gourd Harp.
It turned out OK, but there were a series of design flaws, so it was gradually dismantled and the parts used on other projects. Well after 20 years of it sitting around in several pieces, I  fixed the design flaws and finally got it all hammered back together again.  

The sides are made of highly figured Walnut.

The neck is made of highly figured
hard Rock Maple.

The handles are made of light colored Walnut.

The bridge and tail-piece are made of highly figured hard Rock Maple.

The top and back is made of Western Cedar.

                 Miraculous Achievements!!!

   One afternoon one of the guys from Music Mart called and said…“Uh, TJ, we got something here for you to look at.” When I arrived at the store I was handed a plastic bag with THIS thing inside it. He said a lady with Blue Hair walked in and asked if this could be put back together. It was such a curious looking pile of wreckage that I agreed…if only to find out what it had once been!

When I called the lady later that day…she informed me that it had once belonged to a long since deceased relative and that she had remembered him playing it when she was very young. I’m a chronic sucker for nostalgia…so I got right to it. And…believe it or not… nearly every single tiny part had been saved and was used again. I think the only parts I had to add were the strings and the skin head. It looks as if the poor old thing had spent at least some time under water and then baked in an attic for several decades. It’s a Banjo/Ukulele… and they were pretty common around the turn of the (last) century.

I never met the Lady with the Blue Hair…but later reports indicate that she was very pleased with the results.   

    A friend of mine used to play this nice old Violin. It sounded pretty good but certainly wasn’t a Stradivarius. And its condition and tone did not improve when he accidentally backed over it with his pick-up truck! He brought it home to his shack in the country… put it up on a shelf for the rest of the Winter and the next Spring he donated it to me for the parts.

When I popped off the back…there inside was the coziest little Mouse Nest…made of the finest English Wool…for his old wool sweater had been next to the Violin on the shelf and this Mouse had made out of it quite possibly the warmest Mouse Nest in all of Southern Minnesota!

You can still see the remains of tiny seeds that were eaten. Tiny turds and urine are not visible…though quite evident! And despite the fact that a little bit of the F-hole had been nibbled on…the Violin was easily repaired. And the following Autumn it’s new owner didn’t mind at all the ever so slight “Mousy Aroma” that wafted out of the sound holes…for the old Violin actually sounded better after it had been Run Over and Moused On!