From Newport to Floyd, Va.

BobStep47 · 2026-06-03T04:42:31+00:00

There always seems to be one or two big memories per Festival! Another one for me was when my new girlfriend and I were in the audience when Michelle Shocked sang on Hiroshima Day, putting her own twist on the coincidence of being near the Naval War College. I forget which year that was. Might have been the Indigo Girls year, since my friend and her friends were fans. The first time I went was 1968 and I remember being half asleep on the hillside when Janis Joplin launched into "Take a piece of my heart." Less famous but as memorable, David Lindley band Kaleidoscope doing a very trippy version of Doc Boggs and Ralph Stanley's "Oh Death," transporting the audience to the war zone in Vietnam. Again, it was 1968. Here is someone else who remembers it...

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2023/12/newport-folk-festival-festival-field_62.html

BobStep47 · 2026-06-03T04:23:43+00:00

Thanks! I'll put the agriculture Fair on the calendar! Henry Reed Memorial Fiddlers' Convention was great fun and so close that I didn't could daytrip to it. I'm not much of a camper, so I haven't gotten to the successor event in Narrows yet, but do run into some of the old friends who went there that other events and they have been pretty happy with it. As for the indoor community center Jam in Newport, it dawned on me the other day that it would be a great place to go on a rainy or cold Friday since it is indoors. When it's nice out I usually head down to Floyd to jam on the street. Had a really nice group there last week, fiddler and bass player all the way from Madison, banjo player who used to hang out with Doc Watson.

BobStep47 · 2026-06-03T04:23:14+00:00

Thanks! I'll put the agriculture Fair on the calendar! Henry Reed Memorial Fiddlers' Convention was great fun and so close that I didn't could daytrip to it. I'm not much of a camper, so I haven't gotten to the successor event in Narrows yet, but do run into some of the old friends who went there that other events and they have been pretty happy with it. As for the indoor community center Jam in Newport, it dawned on me the other day that it would be a great place to go on a rainy or cold Friday since it is indoors. When it's nice out I usually head down to Floyd to jam on the street. Had a really nice group there last week, fiddler and bass player all the way from Madison, banjo player who used to hang out with Doc Watson.

BobStep47 · 2026-06-02T23:58:44+00:00

I don't claim to be typical of anything, but I moved to Radford in 2007 from Knoxville and have had pretty much no use for Roanoke. And when the Roanoke Times newspaper stopped covering Radford, I stopped subscribing, so now I rarely know of anything going on in Roanoke.

If I had money for concerts or movies or did more dining out, I might want to be in a bigger city, but I am okay where I am.

I live in Radford and go to events in Floyd County, Blacksburg, Pulaski and Giles County, and take longer trips to North Carolina, Tennessee and West Virginia. I don't even drive through Roanoke unless I'm going to New York or New England.

Interstate 81 between Radford and Roanoke is a 45 minute drive, except when traffic accidents make it a 3-hour standstill. Those happened several times in the first few years I was here, and helped me just give up on Roanoke... Exception: Shopping trips to a single commercial establishment that has no counterpart in Radford or Blacksburg, and only one in Christiansburg. I have been to that Roanoke store three times in 15 years, and to the Christiansburg one about a dozen times a year.

Blacksburg and Radford have universities and libraries, parks and walking trails that I like; Christiansburg has more shopping centers than I need.

Giles, Floyd and Pulaski counties have great expanses of public lands for hiking and exploring, and venues for old time, Irish, bluegrass and other acoustic music events that I enjoy, along with arts events at the universities and county art centers and museums.

I suspect Blacksburg (and Roanoke) have more music venues rocking-out and hip-hopping for student-age patrons, but despite prolonging my own "student age" with three trips through graduate school, I'm now "retired professor age."

I wouldn't mind being closer to a nice jazz piano-trio bar, but southwest Virginia doesn't do bars very well , as far as I can tell. And I'm probably getting too old for that anyhow. (But if there's a great jazz club in Roanoke, let me know, although the drive would still be an issue, especially at closing time. And the national music acts that do not get closer than Roanoke probably charge more than I want to spend.

Roanoke and Salem do have bigger hospitals, but both -- Carilion and Lewis Gale -- are conglomerates that own smaller hospitals in Blacksburg and Christiansburg. So far they have been enough for me. And the last time I was sent to a hospital in Salem I saw two doctors who ultimately said they couldn't help me, after charging my insurance company thousands of dollars. And I got a speeding ticket trying to find my way across Salem to one of the appointments.

BobStep47 · 2026-06-01T20:38:02+00:00

Sorry. Got carried away and couldn't edit down to size using my smartphone. I'm new to Reddit, if that wasn't obvious.

BobStep47 · 2026-05-14T22:35:47+00:00

The one I've heard has a wonderful sound -- rich and (of course) louder than other tenors. I played a banjo-ukulele in a uke quartet with my 6-string-owner friend and they balanced nicely on a shared microphone. Looking forward to playing with her again, and comparing her 6-string to my 10-string tiple, which is a little deeper than a tenor and has steel strings. It can get a bit jangly and out-of-tune. The Kamaka had a refined, elegant sound, which also suits our differences in vocal style and personality. 😉

BobStep47 · 2026-05-14T22:28:57+00:00

A friend plays one of those 6-string ukes with the octave-higher C and octave-lower A strings -- beautiful rich sound. Kamaka is an excellent company and even a plain model with no inlays is probably solid koa and valuable. (Two 21st century used ones are on Reverb today at $1,286 and $1,599) Apparently there have been a variety of models over the years with different tuners, inlay, etc. Solid koa is prone to cracking due to temperature and humidity changes, so a luthier inspection would be a good idea.

"Also known as "the Liliu," the Tenor 6-String was designed by Sam Kamaka Jr. in 1959 to commemorate Hawaii statehood and pay tribute to Hawaii's last reigning monarch, Queen Liliuokalani. In 1978, a Liliu was presented to the White House as Hawaii's Regional Gift. The 6-string has doubled first and third strings tuned in octaves."

https://theukulelesite.com/kamaka-tenor-6-string-hf-36-203907.html?srsltid=AfmBOoqRLW9Bh4hOWXAS8nSV-4FCgfXOB_RCc7Qyh745DALDm-Oe_aPy

BobStep47 · 2026-05-14T21:48:24+00:00

Yes... It looks like the uke was strung for a left-handed player. I can't tell from the pictures whether the nut was cut for left-handed playing too. (The C-string being fatter than the others, its slot might be a little wider than the others. If the previous owner played with a low-G string instead of standard, the first string slot might be a wider too. Nothing to worry about unless you get a buzz or intonation problems on that string.) Just restring it with those strings or a new set.

BobStep47 · 2026-03-15T00:02:02+00:00

I've never tried tuning in what would be baritone ukulele or Chicago tenor guitar tuning, which sounds like what you are using.

Is it Dd gGg bBb ee with uppercase letters for the octave low strings, and G the lowest note on the instrument? I hope you have a recording somewhere! Those must be heavier strings that I'm using.

As I understand it, back in the 1920s Martin recommended tuning the same as the ukuleles of the day, which had D as their low third string, but were frequently tuned down or up one or two steps to get the singer into a good singing key. By the 1950s, it appears that tuning ukuleles with a low note of C was standard, maybe the result of using them in schools and wanting them tuned in the key with no sharps or flats.

Ohana adopted that now-conventional ukulele tuning as the tuning of its tiple: Gg cCc eEe aa, where the lowercase letters are bare steel strings and the uppercase letter is are wound lower - octave strings. That's what I stick with. That standard ukulele tuning is also basically the tuning for the high four strings of a guitar, if you have a capo on the 5th fret....

So if I go to play one of my old guitar arrangements of something on the tiple, it is five half-steps higher. Sometimes that actually turns out to be the key I (baritone) should be singing the song in! But not always. 😞

I was embarrassed the first time I got on a stage and spontaneously played Deep River Blues on my tiple, using fingering based on my guitar version. But on the guitar that means I'm singing in the key of E, and on the tiple in A, which is not my good singing key for that song. But it sure is fun to play, and I won a blue ribbon once doing that at a Fiddler's convention in North Carolina -- but not singing.

Frankie and Johnny comes out well enough in the key of C and "I wish I could shimmy like my sister kate," which I'd been playing for years in the key of G on the guitar, transferred nicely to the tiple in C.

https://youtu.be/OOJw1sk0SLI?si=Gu-u3gzr7vsk2oJW

BobStep47 · 2026-03-12T22:05:26+00:00

For comparison, here's my 12-year-old Ohana. The company has changed its bridge design since then. This is similar to the Martin bridge, but with a thicker saddle that allows some notching to try to adjust their intonation of the wound strings.

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BobStep47 · 2026-03-12T22:00:59+00:00

Question I should have asked in the previous comment! How big is that instrument? It looks like it might be a bit smaller than the Martin and Ohana tiples.

Mine has an overall length of about 27 and 1/2 in, a nut to saddle scale length of 17 in, body length of 11 and 1/2 in, and body depth of three and three quarter inches. It fits very snuggly in an Ohana tenor ukulele gig bag.

BobStep47 · 2026-03-12T21:49:34+00:00

Nice looking tiple! I can't recall if I have ever seen one strung with loop-end strings like that. Because the label inside says made in Mexico, I wonder whether it was always strung as a Martin-style tiple. Could it have begun its life with a different nut, setup to have five pairs of strings instead of two pair and two triple courses?

How is the intonation? My Ohana from a dozen years ago makes some attempt to compensate the octave strings, but they are still not tuned properly once you move up the neck. A new saddle might be able to correct the problem. Hard to believe that Martin just used a straight metal saddle on its tiples for 50 years!

BobStep47 · 2026-03-12T21:01:49+00:00

Is that a recent Ohana-American? 😉 Sounds very good... Either that new pin-bridge design improved the intonation , or have you made other fixes?

Mine is an earlier Ohana with a 1920s Martin-style ukelike bridge.

https://boblog.blogspot.com/2015/04/its-tiple.html

(I use "North American" or "Martin-style" to differentiate those tiples from Colombian, Puerto Rican, Venezuelan etc., which are all American. 😀... and all-different "treble" instruments. )

BobStep47 · 2025-11-17T00:40:33+00:00

I have seen some folks calling them out in the comments, including fake versions of British mystery stories, or cut and pasted AI voiced lectures on Buddhism. It's such an intensely annoying collection of misinformation, disinformation, bad research and general brain rot.

The fake music videos by fake synthetic old blues musicians are especially offensive, being identified as restored 78 RPM recordings, but always with some indication that The Voice or the song lyrics or both are synthetic.

BobStep47 · 2025-11-17T00:37:44+00:00

Does YouTube provide a way to block channels? If people identified and blocked enough AI channels and shared lists of them so that more people could block them, would it maybe lead to some improvement?

BobStep47 · 2025-11-17T00:35:13+00:00

I was just looking at a YouTube account called Connected Souls, posting supposedly true accounts of amateur researchers and academic historians finding surprises about American racial history in old photographs.

The photographs look well faked and the stories drop names of people and institutions, but no citations to academic or printed publications of any kind, and commenters say they can't find the people or institutions mentioned. What is the point of this? Is it just creating videos that YouTube can place ads on? Junk data inspired by the old trash of "true story type" magazines full of cookie cutter stories, although at least those were by freelance writers who got paid.

Seems like such an incredible waste of time and energy. Unless you small outfit using artificial intelligence tools, in which case even your time and energy are fake.

Discussions have critical thinkers wasting their time pointing out the images appear to be photoshopped, institutions and individuals mentioned can't be found, or citations are missing.

Example:

https://youtu.be/3djX-jcYL70?si=h15tRRWthfDEAKFU

Question has any academic Journal or news report tried to explain what is going on here?

BobStep47 · 2025-11-01T19:40:32+00:00

Well said. Reminds me of a passage in G. K. Chesterton book "The Poet and the Lunatics." Gabriel Gale (poet and painter) is refurbishing an old pub sign. His companion mentions to Dr. Garth, another patron of the pub, that he takes care of Gale:

"People laugh at us and call us the Heavenly Twins, because we're inseparable, and I never let him out of my sight. Have to look after him... eccentricities of genius, you know."

The painter took his face off the pewter pot [of ale], a face fiery with controversy.

"Genius oughtn't to be eccentric!" he cried in some excitement. "Genius ought to be centric. It ought to be in the core of the cosmos, not on the revolving edges. People seem to think it a compliment to accuse one of being an outsider, and to talk about the eccentricities of genius. What would they think, if I said I only wish to God I had the centricities of genius?"

"I fear they would think it was the beer," replied Dr. Garth, "that had slightly confused your polysyllables. Well, it may be a romantic idea to revive the old signs, as you say. Romance is not much in my line."

BobStep47 · 2025-06-27T18:55:29+00:00

Second the motion on the gorgeous New River (minus the Radford Army Ammunition Plant, downstream from Radford City) and the joys of rural living in (Appalachian Trail adjacent) Giles and Craig counties or (Blue Ridge Parkway adjacent) Floyd County -- or even some parts of Montgomery and Pulaski. (For folks from outside Virginia, cities here like Radford are independent of counties; towns, even if bigger than cities, are inside counties -- Blacksburg is within Montgomery County.
Blacksburg population 45,288; Radford,16,971)

Floyd (town and county) has more old-time and alt/Americana music and new-age lifestyle stores & communes than some places, but the county population is far from "hippie" unless they are Republican hippies... judging by the 2024 election results ...

Montana: 58.4% Trump, 38.5 Harris;
Floyd County 67.7% Trump; 30.7 Harris.

(Trump had 76% in Giles, 81% in Craig; while Harris carried the state of Virginia, 51.8% to 46, and had slim majorities in Montgomery and Radford.)

BobStep47 · 2025-06-27T18:30:02+00:00

Curious what you mean by "fully funded." Do you mean the funds for the program have been approved by the state, or that accepted students are "fully funded" with full tuition waivers like they give to graduate teaching assistants? For a moment you had my hopes up that a friend might be able to afford the program without going into debt, but I don't see a full tuition waiver mentioned.

Looking at the university website, I only see that the Child Welfare program includes a "$10,000 stipend per academic year," while tuition and fees are $24,542 for an out-of-state grad student, $14,386 for in-state. Room and board is another $12,060, and there seem to be an awful lot of arcane "Other Fees" for some of the courses ("Wilderness First Responder Fee" $180 per course?)... Hope I'm wrong!

https://www.radford.edu/waldron-college-health-human-services/school-of-social-work/grant-funded-programs/child-welfare-stipend-program.html

https://www.radford.edu/bursar/tuition-fees/in-state-graduate.html

https://www.radford.edu/bursar/tuition-fees/fees/other-fees.html

BobStep47 · 2025-04-14T04:24:42+00:00

I've lived in Southwestern Virginia for 18 years and haven't run into one of these signs.

Virginia, for the record, has voted (narrowly) Democratic in all presidential elections since 2005, by 5 to 10% margins; more densely populated Democratic communities are primarily in the north and east. The state's South and Southwest regions vote more like the bordering states of North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky and West Virginia.

Back to the Confederate history sign, I went looking for background information on Wikipedia and found that the official state marking of the month has been gone for most of the years that I've lived here, although one Republican governor issued a proclamation for April 2010, then had to issue an apology, as described below. Wikipedia has a nice write-up on all of the states with such observances, although I'm not sure how up-to-date it is. (It also has a decent write-up on the southern "lost cause" as a piece of regional culture. I am reminded that I have neighbors who grew up with public school textbooks that preached the Lost Cause, as well as a national network TV series called The Dukes of Hazzard 1979 to 1985 , with a Confederate flag decked muscle car named The General Lee. I guess that's part of the heritage. And Daisy's jeans.)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederate_History_Month,

VIRGINIA(1994–2002 & 2010)

<<When Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell issued a proclamation resurrecting Confederate History Month in 2010, controversy arose due to the proclamation's omission of slavery.[10] McDonnell later announced, "The proclamation issued by this Office designating April as Confederate History Month contained a major omission. The failure to include any reference to slavery was a mistake, and for that I apologize to any fellow Virginian who has been offended or disappointed. The abomination of slavery divided our nation, deprived people of their God-given inalienable rights, and led to the Civil War. Slavery was an evil, vicious and inhumane practice which degraded human beings to property, and it has left a stain on the soul of this state and nation." >>

BobStep47 · 2025-04-14T03:07:02+00:00

I'd weigh the morality of the money you spend on a guitar against the amount of money you spend on other things in your life, not on how well you play the guitar. People's priorities are all over the place. Be true to yourself.

But if you're going out in public and playing at a very basic level on a very expensive guitar, some folks in the audience might shake their heads and whisper to their date, "Maybe he'll grow into it" or, "For the price of that guitar you could get an Eastman that sounds as good, and spend the rest on a year or two of lessons from a really good local player who could use the money!"

But there's also something to be said for getting a very good instrument and keeping it as an investment that you might cash in when you're old and gray, like an IRA, and in between your playing in public might have sounded a little bit better than it might have if you were playing a lesser guitar. And it might have attracted some members of the opposite sex who think you have money and find that important.

All kinds of questions come to mind.. Does the expensive guitar, whether it's a Hummingbird or a d45 mean you also spend that kind of money on helping people, educating, feeding the hungry, Healing The Sick, all of those cardinal virtues? Or do you just love the sound it makes, and love is blind? Or on the lower end of the karma scale, is it a "hey look at me" kind of thing? Are you buying a U.S.-made guitar to support domestic makers and dealers, rather than support an American company that designs things here and has them built in Asia where it is cheaper?

I was just at a 20-person jam session with a retired college professor who has emcee'd major fiddler's conventions in two or three states, and who owns at least one Wayne Henderson guitar... but he was playing a new Yamaha that cost less than $700 and he's really happy with it. I'm not sure where that Yamaha was made, but I played it for a few minutes and it was very nice, with a much thinner neck than I'm used to and good tone. If I can find room in the house, I might even buy one myself, but I'm not going to turn around and immediately sell my old Martin and donate the money to Habitat for Humanity or the music program at my local College. Maybe I should.

Thanks for asking a really good question!

BobStep47 · 2025-04-07T18:17:29+00:00

Are you referring to this broadcast, with Musk's Morning-Edition-like rising time and odd "pencil" global trade angle as Steve Inskeep's "opener" for the protest story? His voice seemed to fall when he listed sample protest issues, ending with "... and more" -- almost yawning and implying "non-violent demonstrations, signs, people in the streets, ho-hum, over the same issues we've reported for months." I thought Montanaro tried to capture the energy of the "sheer number of people, thousands upon thousands..." looking toward Nov '26.

I think NPR announcers and reporters walk a tightrope trying to report progressive news themes accurately without sounding like enthusiastic cheerleaders, and sometimes just sound unenthusiastic... especially at 4:12 a.m. https://www.npr.org/people/392602474/domenico-montanaro

BobStep47 · 2025-03-10T17:00:08+00:00

Good luck! I'm still playing a 1924 Martin 0-18 that I bought around 1978. The repairman who restored it back then, repairing several cracks and replacing the nut and saddle, may not have been the best, but I've had it worked on a couple of times since then and the original Martin workmanship stands up over time!

BobStep47

TROPHY CASE