If you came here looking for some "herb" or looking to get your yard landscaped, then Google has mislead you.  Considering how many banjo pickers come from Earl Scrugg's home state of North Carolina, it's a wonder some feller didn't already make off with a cool band name like "Bogue Sound Grass Company".  Instead, fate reserved that simple, profound moniker just for us.







It all started one day at Manning Brothers General Store when I stopped in to get me a moon pie and a Coca~Cola.  It was a cold winter day and Mr. Henry had the coal stove glowing red, so I sat down on the bench beside the stove to rest a spell and eat my moon pie.  About ten minutes later this old feller walked in and sat down.  After a few minutes he looked over at me and said, "You want to buy a mandolin?"

I said, "No. Don't know how to play a mandolin."  A few minutes later he leans over and says, "You want to buy a guitar?"  I said, "No. I don't know how to play a guitar."  After a few minutes he says, "Well what do you know how to play?" and I says, "I pick the banjer."

He finished up his Coca~Cola and then the old feller asks, "You got a banjer?"   I said "I got one at home."  So then he says, "I tell you what.  You go home and get your banjer and I'll go home and get my guitar, and I'll meet you back here in twenty minutes."   Twenty minutes later he showed up with his guitar and his grandson who also played the guitar.  Turns out, Mr. Henry's new stock boy who came in to work after school knew how to play the mandolin and had it under the counter.

If I remember right, we started off with Cripple Creek and Banjo in the Hollow to get the "feel" for each others style.  Before long we were into the more complicated stuff such as Slimey River Bottom, Julie Anne, Reubens Train, How Mountain Girls Can Love, Dixie, Glendale Train, East Virginia Blues, Fireball Mail, Foggy Mountain Breakdown (the bluegrass national anthem), Clinch Mountain Backstep, Doing my Time, Molly Rose, Folsom Prison Blues, Lonesome Road Blues, I Wonder Where You Are Tonight, John Henry, Salt Creek, Martha White, even some good old stuff from The New Riders of the Purple Sage (you fellers that wanted to be hippies in the 70's remember them) and some tunes by the legendary Roby Huffman from Johnston County, NC and of course, any self respecting bluegrass band will take you back to the church house with them good old gospel tunes such as I'll Fly Away, Will the Circle be Unbroken, and House of Gold.

An hour later we had drawed us a sizeable crowd.  Mr. Henry liked all the business we brought in so much that he didn't even charge me for the moon pie and Coca~Cola.  He said it was "on the house" for all the fine music we played and for the crowd we brought in to his store.

That was nine years ago, and basically I'm still picking the banjer for moon pies and a Coca~Cola.


My banjo is a 2006 Huber Truetone VRB-3 "Vintage" with a Mahogany neck, Rosewood fnger board with mother-of-pearl "wreath and flowers" inlay, antiqued binding and resonator rings, and a bronze tone ring.  My banjo weights 13 pounds.  I prefer the Lakota Leathers American Bison craddle strap and I use an original Snuffy Smith banjo bridge handmade by Snuffy before he passed away.  I prefer ghs medium weight phosphor-bronze banjo strings, Sammy Shelor stainless steel finger picks, and the ProPik medium size delrin thumb picks.  My custom mother-of-pearl truss rod cover was made by Ron Coleman in Georgia.







Bogue Sound Grass Company
Located in North Carolina's
Bogue Sound region.

"
There ain't no sound like Bogue Sound."





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