<< Back 10/23/02 What you get is soul Bob Gernandt’s passion is combining art and music into one creation By Dawn Gilchrist-Young Further information about Bob Gernandt and the instruments he builds can be found at his website, www.gernandt.com. Gernandt’s instruments can also be found at Dusty Strings in Seattle, Cotten Music in Nashville, and The House of Musical Traditions in Tacoma Park, Md. Closer to home, he shows his work at Merlefest, as well as at the Darnell Farms Strawberry and Tomato Festivals. Bob Gernandt can be reached at 828.488.1144. I have always believed that if someone practices an art long enough and with enough passion, then that art becomes more than just second nature. Instead, the artist enters into the very nature of what he or she does, becoming an almost tangible part of the created object. Bob Gernandt, a practitioner of the ancient art of lutherie, is a living example of this belief. Gernandt, 45 years old and a 25-year resident of Swain County, grew up on a Pennsylvania farm with a do-it-yourselfer father who built or fixed anything necessary in his wood and metal shop, and so he was introduced early in life to a creative self-sufficiency. This exposure to inventive independence continued as he took as many art, drafting, and woodworking classes as he could while still in school, along with playing drums. It might have been obvious even then to an observer that he would eventually be drawn to work that demanded a synthesis of the three —art, wood, and music — into a profession that he would come to practice with love and reverence. However, Bob Gernandt did not begin the quest to combine these passions until he moved to the Appalachian Mountains of Western North Carolina and was introduced to the dulcimer. What first brought him to these mountains — and what continues to hold him here — is his love of the natural beauty to be found in the region. When Bob isn’t crafting instruments in his orderly woodshop (beneath a poster of bluegrass icon and patron saint, Bill Monroe), he applies an equal amount of passion (and secrecy) to fly-fishing the streams and rivers of the region. And because he practices lutherie with a patience resembling that of a Zen master (or maybe that of the fisherboy “Gus” in David James Duncan’s The River Why), and only produces 18 to 20 instruments a year, Gernandt is able to create instruments that are of the highest possible quality that are built to the specifications of the individual customer. Incidentally, producing instruments one at a time allows Bob and his wife, Allyson, (a skilled silversmith jeweler), to live in a way that achieves a calm, measured sanity that is increasingly rare and anomalous in a society that too often measures success in terms of output and quantity. Maybe people who are drawn to work such as lutherie are born with a deep desire for quality, or maybe the perfectionist’s urge and long range view comes with the work itself. In either case, Bob Gernandt possesses such an aesthetic drive. When he tells the story of how he became a luthier, he first tells that he played the drums he loved so much in high school for 10 years before falling in love with the mountain dulcimer. Then in 1977 he helped a friend build a mountain dulcimer from a kit. While he enjoyed the work, he could see ways improvements could be made. So he began to look for information on lutherie, but discovered there was a real dearth of information at the time. But he began to build anyway, using the trial-and-error method even older than the art he sought to learn. Because he was self-taught, he was freer to be creative, using woods and creating shapes that were both innovative and experimental. His goal, even then, was to create instruments that simultaneously improved the sound and beauty of the product. And for 10 years after making that first dulcimer, Gernandt could usually be found with a dulcimer nearby, if not in his hands. After giving away a number of mountain dulcimers as gifts, he began to sell them, along with creating and selling guitars. Further, just as in creating the mountain dulcimers, Gernandt taught himself to play them, primarily by listening to classic mountain and Irish dulcimer songs. And it was through playing that he really began to find his own niche as a maker of a more unusual kind of instrument. He spent time playing music with Celtic musicians, and through them he was introduced to what was then, in the mid-1980s, a “mystery instrument” — the Irish bouzouki. Because he wanted one badly, and because at the time he only knew of one bouzouki maker — Stefan Sobel, who created very expensive instruments — Gernandt decided to make one for himself. By happy coincidence, it was also about that time that he learned of the International Guilds that openly share information about lutherie. The rest is, in a sense, history, but in this case it’s the history of how a person evolves from an impassioned amateur to an equally impassioned artist and craftsman. From creating, selling, and repairing dulcimers, guitars and bouzoukis that are considered works of art (with customers such as Al Petteway and Darrell Scott), Gernandt moved on to mandolins, citterns, and, the culmination of his years and experience with experimentation, the mandocello/cittern. At Gernandt’s home, the surroundings parallel the beauty of his instruments. It is, he says, his connectedness with nature that continues to feed the enthusiasm for the craft so evident in his work. Sitting with him and his wife in their quiet living room, one sees the deep green of late summer trees through every window. Among these trees are the local woods — maple, cherry, and walnut — that he has used for years. At first, he used them because they were economical, and he wanted to experiment with nontraditional woods. But he continued to use these woods (as well as the far more traditional rosewood and spruce that he orders from lutherie suppliers) because of the extraordinary tones the wood produces, not to mention the beautiful grain of a curly or quilted maple, or flame cherry, or walnut with dark rainbow hues. Once more, it is the aesthetics of sight and sound that have allowed him to continue creating innovative instruments since 1977, and it is also the same set of aesthetics that has guaranteed him the loyalty of his customers. Almost as remarkable as the passion Gernandt has maintained for his art is the quality that seems to im-prove with each in-strument. His experimentation with body shapes and sizes, sound holes, different woods, and the many other variables of the luthier’s craft result in the construction of innovative stringed instruments that are imbued with a dedication to tone and appearance. Each of these is an object that delights the senses. When picked up by a musician, the typical reaction is to strum the instrument, hold it at arm’s length, and then articulate the all inclusive, universally recognized, “Wow.” This reaction to his art is the direct result of Bob Gernandt’s obsession — that the instruments, through his hands alone, are created for maximum playability, tonal balance, and a beauty that feels intrinsic because it is intrinsic. Just as the nature of the woods he chooses for his instruments enter into the music they produce, so his nature enters into the product as well. That’s why musicians familiar with his work hold an unusual belief. In playing musical instruments Bob Gernandt has created, they feel they are playing the soul of a master luthier.