Keith Caryresonator mandolinminstrel banjo
    Keith Cary is a musician, instrument builder and repairman living in Winters, California. He builds both traditional stringed instruments, like mandolins and minstrel-age banjos, and more experimental instruments, like resonator mandolins made from bedpans, tin can fiddles and roasting pan lutes. He repairs a wide variety of instruments, including acoustic and electric guitars, violin family instruments and bows, steel guitars, and strange antique constructions. He specializes in string bass repairs. Lately he's been dabbling with Hammond organs and Leslie speakers.

    As a musician he appreciates and plays a wide variety of music and instruments. From a young age he has listened to both jazz and folk music. He regularly plays string bass, mandolin, clawhammer banjo, cello, guitar, fiddle, harmonica, Hammond organ and various eccentric instruments of his own making. He's played classical music, old and new jazz, old-time string bands, Hawaiian, rock and roll, free-form improvization, and lately, Hank Williams karaoke.

    He has recorded or performed with John Tchicai, Jolie Holland, Robert Crumb, Robert Armstrong (and the other Cheap Suit Serenaders), John Vanderslice, Barry Melton, Vatrina King, Linda Book, The Joy Buzzards (with Bill Scholer and Bob Armstrong), and The Alkali Flats, among others.

    He and some of his instruments can be heard on The Joy Buzzards, available at CDBaby,http://www.cdbaby.com/joybuzzards  and on Jolie Holland's Escondida.
    He has built oddball custom instruments for Joe Craven, Elaine Buckholtz, Bob Armstrong, Jimmy Bordsdorf, and a lot of other people who he's forgetting right now.


    Keith also does instrument building workshops for children and families at such venues as The Crocker Museum, in Sacramento, The Lodi Public Library, The Winters Joint Unified School District, The Davis Joint Unified School System, The Davis Waldorf School, Lakeshore Elementary School in SF, and the UC Davis Arboretum, among many others. His favorite instrument to build with kids, 2nd grade and older, is a flower pot banjo, made from black plastic flower pots. It takes two to three hours to build and is fully playable. He has taught music to kindergarteners at John Clayton Kinder School in Winters for many years.
    He can be reached at 530-795-3173 or at [email protected]  or [email protected]