Traditions: Ohio Heritage Fellows; 102; Doug Unger interview, part 2 of 6

Q: Why did you start playing the banjo?

DOUG: Well, I fell in love with the music and uh, and the instrument and had to do it, had to try to lean how to play. It was hard for me ‘cause I was an artist visual, so music was not my skill but, I just loved it and wanted to uh, enjoy it, so I had to play. Restating: Um, I fell in love with the banjo and traditional music and the beauty of the instrument and the beauty of the tunes and I really wanted to uh, play... to really enjoy it, so I got my first banjo and started to learn.

Q: Tell me about uh, how did you start... what made you say I want to make a banjo or even a mandolin? What was the seed?

DOUG: Um, friend of our family’s had lent me a very valuable banjo and it... I had it for a year or a year and a half and I was convinced I could talk him out of it. It was an old Fairbanks. And I couldn’t. And the last I heard it was gonna be left to me in a will. But he told me, you’re an artist, make one. And I thought, what, ‘cause I was uh, used to painting and drawing, not making something that was sculptural. I never even took a sculpture class. But the interest was there and I couldn’t afford a good ol’ banjo as a poor student.

Q: So I... you told me you borrowed one?

DOUG: Yea, for over a year. And uh, I kept calling this friend and saying, should I bring it back and he goes, no, just keep it enjoy it, I’m not playing it. And um, so I fell in love with it um, and it’s beauty and started to find out how wonderful it was, it’s history, and became almost an historian on the banjo and the makers.

Q: So did you take a banjo apart to figure out how to make a banjo?

DOUG: Um, I... I... had one, a new one, and just looked at and tried to figure it out and did line drawings of it, proportion and... and then I had to secure woods and I had to go find out where to get those woods. There was... when I got interested in it there was no information at all on building a banjo. The only thing out there was Pete Seeger’s(sp) book which I got and read it from front to back so many times. Eventually, I found some wood uh, I found people who had saws. I had to uh, knew nothing about pearl or couldn’t even by pearl. Uh, I made the first fingerboard out of a about a hundred pieces of ebony that I got at a craft store. It was amazing, I couldn’t believe I did that, but that’s how I sort of got started. And I made the first one and then I thought the... the second one could be a lot better and I was finding out more. I learn—learned where to buy fingerboard and wrote to the Vega Company and learned a little bit about pearl. All the while, I was starting to go to festivals and looking at old banjos and became absolutely enamored with them. And, as an artist I wanted to immerse myself in the craft of it too and playing and building I didn’t really separate the...

Q: Most of us would have walked away and said, I don’t... you know, I don’t even know where to begin on making an instrument, but you persevered. Restating: Most of us would have walked away, but you persevered and deciding you were going to build a banjo. What is that about you?