Banjo players should be grateful that master luthier Robin Smith did a poor job of loading his family’s upright bass on top of his friend’s Corvair back when he was a young fifteen year-old kid. At some point while driving home from a gig in rural Pennsylvania, the big double bass fell from the top of the vehicle and ended up with a busted heel and neck. His father’s response to him was, “You broke it; you fix it.” Which is exactly what Smith did, surely having no idea that this accident would lead him towards becoming one of the most respected banjo luthiers in the world. It would be many years before he began building instruments for globally revered musicians such as Bela Fleck, Steve Martin, Alison Brown, Scott Vestal, Chris Pandolfi, Noam Pikelny, Jayme Stone, Jake Schepps, and countless others. It was that bass repair at fifteen years old, however, that provided Smith’s first experience working on a musical instrument. Smith says the mended bass “was not a good-looking fix, but it’s together today… As a matter of fact my grandson is playing it up in New York state.” While that first crack at instrument repair may have been more structurally sound than aesthetically pleasing, the same can’t be said of Smith’s work today.
Whether it’s the mahogany-rimmed Heartland banjo he’s built for Bela Fleck, the custom 24-fret, two-octave neck he built for Noam Pikelny’s $60,000 prewar, top-tension Gibson PB-7, or the sleek, innovative designs of the Stealth banjos he builds for Scott Vestal, Robin Smith makes works of art from metal and wood that also happen to sound beautiful in the hands of some of the world’s most talented musicians. However, in keeping with the serendipity of that first bass repair, Smith never set out to be a master banjo builder. Instead, life just kind of steered him in that direction as a natural result of his humility, dedication, and open-mindedness. Smith’s first real job for an instrument manufacturer was for the venerable guitar guru Marty Lanham of Nashville Guitar Company, though it wasn’t a very glamorous job in the beginning. Smith was hired to paint Lanham’s kitchen. Well, the work wasn’t quite that menial; it also turned into Smith building cabinets and basically renovating the entire room. Once he finished that task, Lanham said, “Ok, come on out in the [guitar] shop. You’re gonna start working out there now.”
While Smith had worked on guitars a bit in his youth doing repairs for friends or simply taking apart cheap guitars to see how they were constructed, he hadn’t considered actually becoming a luthier. It was working in Lanham’s shop for four years that provided the foundation for his future as an instrument builder. Smith says of Lanham, “We just got to be good friends. I started working for him, and he showed me how to do everything from the ground up – how to sharpen chisels, how to cut braces, how to bend sides, all that stuff.” In addition to learning the craft of luthiery from a master builder, working with Lanham also gave Smith his start as an independent builder in a roundabout way.
Lanham not only built his own custom guitars but often did repair work on extremely valuable vintage instruments. His shop was busy. Often people would come into the shop with more modest instruments, such as imported Yamahas and such, looking for repair work. Lanham would typically have to turn these customers away because he was so heavily booked with vintage repairs. One day, however, Smith said to him, “Hey Marty, I can do that myself. I have a two-car garage at home; I can make it into a shop.”
Lanham told Smith to print up some business cards and promised to hand them out to customers who came in looking for repairs on more humble instruments. Lanham was true to his word, and to Smith’s surprise, the business exploded. He began getting more than enough repair work and even began building guitars himself. However, he wasn’t wholly comfortable building his own custom six strings, in part because he didn’t want to step on his mentor’s toes. “That world is real competitive,” says Smith of the guitar market, “ and, actually, I was kinda competing against my good friend, the guy who showed me how to do this.”
It was celebrated banjo player, Scott Vestal, who is responsible for getting Smith into the banjo world. Vestal came to Smith with the design for his innovative Stealth banjos and asked Smith if he would be willing to build the futuristic looking instruments with tunneled fifth strings and tiny violin-like pegheads. Smith was happy to oblige. The reputation Smith earned building Stealth banjos, due both to his craftsmanship and his willingness to explore new designs, suddenly put him in high demand. Speaking of his work with Vestal and the Stealth banjos, Smith says, “Once the world found out I’d do custom stuff like that, it was like, ‘Bar the door, Katy, ‘cause here they come!’”
It wasn’t long before he heard from Bill Stokes who was interested in building his Timeless Timber banjos, made from lost lumber that was found at the bottom of Lake Superior. The old growth timber salvaged from the depths of the great lake resulted from sunken logs lost on timber hauls in the 1800’s. The wood was pulled by tugboat on its way to the sawmills way back then. Some of the growth rings indicate that the trees were three to four hundred years old. Given how frequently people talk about old wood sounding richer and warmer in vintage instruments, there was a great deal of interest in this centuries old wood. Two of the people interested in these Timeless Timber banjos were Bela Fleck and Alison Brown. Smith made banjos for each of them.
“Ok, that’s just another feather in my cap,” Smith said to himself after having the opportunity to meet and build banjos for these world-class musicians. “Now I got Scott Vestal, Bela Fleck, and Alison Brown. That brings in this whole other world.” Amazingly, Smith had managed to turn a job painting a guitar builder’s kitchen into a business building instruments for virtuosic musicians in only a handful of years. Such things don’t happen strictly by accident. No doubt, Smith’s naturally pleasant personality, dedication to his craft, and strong work ethic are the reason these opportunities kept coming his way.
At this point, Smith had solidified his reputation as a builder and had developed relationships with both talented musicians and talented entrepreneurs. Beyond being the builder for both Stealth and Timeless Timber, Smith also began building the highly respected Kel Kroyden banjos for American Made Banjo Company as well as the full line of the well-regarded Kat Eyz banjos. He is also one of the most sought after luthiers to repair vintage banjos or build custom conversion necks for pre-war Gibsons and other valuable instruments. Somehow or another, even among that workload, Smith finds the time to build his own line of banjos, now known as Heartland Banjos. It was working with Bela Fleck on a custom Heartland banjo where Smith came upon an important innovation.
After having worked with Smith to acquire his Timeless Timber banjo, Fleck came to the luthier’s shop with a banjo he really liked other than the fact that the sound was too bright. After tinkering and trying several tone rings, different heads, and different setups to sweeten the sound, Smith simply couldn’t find the tone Fleck was searching for. According to Smith, Fleck came to him after exhausting all other possibilities and asked, “Well, what can we do? I like the feel of the neck; I love playing it, but it’s not my sound.” When Smith suggested changing the rim, Fleck mentioned that he loved mahogany and inquired if a mahogany rim was possible. Smith said, “Sure, let’s give it a try,” and proceeded to build a three-ply mahogany rim in lieu of the traditional maple rims that are standard issue for bluegrass banjos. Smith says when Fleck picked up the banjo and played it he said, “This is it! This is what I want.”
Fleck, who might be as demanding a musician as exists in the banjo community, speaks of Smith in glowing terms. “The necks and banjos he has made for me are perfectly made… He has done a lot of great work for me, and has taken the time to understand what I am looking for. Rather than having one style of set-up that you go to him for, he wants to know what you are looking for that you don’t hear.”
Working with Fleck and creating his new mahogany rim design took Smith in a new direction. He began working with younger players who were more progressive in their playing and were looking for designs that met their specific needs. While Smith can certainly build a traditional pre-war style banjo as well as anyone who as ever laid hand to wood, he never felt the need to limit himself to strictly those designs. Smith is happy to give players whatever they ask for or even work with artists to help them discover what it is they want.
A prime example of Smith’s willingness to experiment with new designs is the work he’s done for Punch Brothers banjo virtuoso, Noam Pikelny. Pikelny brought his highly valuable prewar Gibson PB-7 to Smith’s shop with some very specific needs. Pikelny, who was the first recipient of the Steve Martin Prize for Excellence in Banjo and Bluegrass, knew that he wanted an extra wide, radiused neck with 24 frets and two full octaves. This led Smith to develop a fingerboard that extends past the banjo’s neck/pot joint to hang over the banjo head an inch or so. He also shortened the heel of Pikelny’s neck so that he could more easily reach those frets way up the neck.
Pikelny was deeply impressed with Smith and grateful to have a luthier so willing to experiment with ideas and designs custom-tailored to his individual playing. He had this to say about Smith:
“His workmanship is just great, and I’ve always been impressed with his open mindedness, his willingness to experiment and take my feedback seriously. When I asked him to build a 24-fret neck that overhangs the body, he didn’t blink. I’ve been lucky to have many musical collaborators over the last decade whom I owe a great debt of gratitude to for their impact on my playing and sound. I put Robin in this group as well; the relationship between a player/luthier is quite important, and I’m so grateful for the time we spent together when I lived in Nashville. In fact, losing easy access to Robin has been a real complication of my move to New York.”
Fleck and Pikelny are not the only boundary-defying players to sing Smith’s praises effusively. Jayme Stone is a celebrated Canadian five-string player whose fearless exploration of the banjo has led him to experiments combining traditional Appalachian sounds with African music and traditional folk forms the world over. “Robin made necks for both my 1935 Gibson TB-1s,” says Stone. “Robin’s workmanship is impeccable, but more importantly, he’s always warm, jovial, generous, informative and hard-working; one of those people that’s always there when you call and glad to be of service. We’re lucky to have him in our community, and I feel fortunate to have his fine craftsmanship in my hands everyday.”
continued in the print edition of the February 2012 Banjo Newsletter