Last week we had news of a new book of fiction based on the popular Del McCoury hit, 1952 Vincent Black Lightning. Reading Mandolin Cafe this morning, we learned of another new novel with a bluegrass theme.

Valentine’s Fall is the latest offering from Canadian Cary Fagan, an award-winning author of children’s books, whose non-fiction writing and commentary also appears in a number of Canadian papers. He has authored a number of books for older readers as well, but this will be his first with a bluegrass twist.

The book, due October 1 from Cormorant Books, tells the story of Huddie Rosen, whose high school life is marred by the death of his best friend in a foolish stunt (Valentine’s Fall), and who discovers a love for bluegrass music when he moves from Toronto to live in Tennessee.

I would say that the author captures much of the spirit of the music in this brief passage from the book, inspired by hearing a recording of Bill Monroe playing Get Up John at the first Fincastle Bluegrass Festival in 1965:

“Monroe’s mandolin is backed only by Peter Rowan on guitar. His playing is very fast but not blistering, a cascade of vibrating rhythm, of changing doublestops and open drone strings, of the sound both delicate and rough that he could draw from his 1924 Gibson Lloyd Loar mandolin. He plays a series of variations, making the rhythm surge here, hang back there, suddenly thrashing his pick in successive downstrokes, touching the high harmonic note like a bell. It’s just the most alive, most human sound I have ever heard. You can feel the energy pouring from his hands into that small instrument. It’s as if he could go on for ever or might begin to falter, but he does neither, he makes the music rise like a wave, hold there, and then, in a touching anticlimax, quit. It would be like Glenn Gould’s Goldberg Variations or Pablo Casals’s Cello Suites if they had written what they were playing.

The thing about music is that you can trust it. It’s emotionally reliable. Playing or listening, it gives you what you need, when you need it. A lot of the time, that has seemed like enough to me. But it isn’t enough. That’s what I have sometimes failed to remember.”

Here’s a brief video synopsis of the story…

There is a preview of the book available online at the publisher’s web site. Pre-orders are also available online.

Serious students of the mandolin have long revered the name of Lloyd Loar, the Gibson luthier from the 1920s whose design innovations during his brief 5 year tenure are widely credited with revolutionizing their fretted instruments. Gibson’s most prized mandolins are still built to his specs, and vintage F-5s signed by Lloyd Loar command astronomical prices in the secondary market.

Bill Graham has written a lengthy piece for Mandolin Cafe detailing his visit to the site of Gibson’s old shop in Kalamazoo, MI, where Loar once roamed the halls. The facility is now the home of the Heritage Guitar Company and Graham interviewed Ren Wall, who had worked there for Gibson for more than 20 years. Like a number of other Gibson employees, when the company moved to Nashville in 1984, Wall remained in Kalamazoo to ply his trade with Heritage.

The article is full of details that will of interest to any fan of the vintage Gibson instruments, and the “old school” methods of manufacture still is use at Heritage. Graham also has a number of photos from his visit.

Here’s a taste of the article, describing his first arriving at the shop…

Loar had formal ties to Gibson starting in 1911 as a music composer, arranger and performer, Siminoff said. He may have visited Kalamazoo when the Gibson Co. made instruments at previous factory sites on East Exchange Place and East Harrison Court.

But by 1919 when Loar began his longest stint as a designer for Gibson, 225 Parsons Street was a modern, state-of-the-art factory building. By the early 1920s he was working at the plant fulltime in various roles, according to Siminoff. The F5 mandolin and other refined carved-top instruments that he helped design and build until his departure late in 1924 would change the musical world forever.

I came looking for what is and shadows of what was.

A worker was having a smoke break outside an arched entryway with a wooden door that says Heritage Guitar Inc. with a cutout of an F5 mandolin underneath. I told him I was looking for Ren Wall. Former Gibson employees started Heritage in 1985 in what Siminoff says “they always kindly referred to as the old building,” a place where Gibson built mandolins and banjos right up until they left in 1984.

“Ren’s here,” the gentleman said. “Go on in. Go down through this door, down the stairs and through the next door and look for him on the left.”

I did, and stepped into a large room with offices on my left, a guy gluing binding on a guitar on my right, sawdust and wood and instrument part shapes and equipment in front of me for a long ways.

Read the full piece at Mandolin Cafe.

Scott Tichenor, proprietor of Mandolin Cafe, shot us a note about some photos published yesterday on his site.

Cafe member John Fields posted several pictures he took of Bill Monroe on tour in England during 1996, which he had waylaid and only recently rediscovered. They show Big Mon with Richard Greene on fiddle, Lamar Grier on banjo, Peter Rowan on guitar and James Monroe on bass.

The photos show some damage from time, but do offer an interesting glimpse at some never-before-seen images of our dear, departed Patriarch.

See them all at Mandolin Cafe.

Our friends over at Mandolin Cafe are running a contest for the next month where the winner will receive a new Eastman mandolin.

The prize in Eastman’s new 815V F-style mandolin, which is made with a carved, red spruce top, flamed maple back and sides, and finished with an oil varnish.

Entry registrations can be completed online, where you can also read all the rules and regs for this contest.

The winner will be drawn on September 15.