Childhood fascination turns into lifetime skill for concertina maker
Story and photos by Elaine Hobson Miller
Bob Tedrow has been fascinated with concertinas since he was a child. He first saw them in cartoons, watching Geppetto the toymaker play one in “Pinocchio,” and Bashful in “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.” He sat up and took notice when Bob Hope played one while singing to Jane Russell in the movie “Paleface,” although he admits he may have been more attracted to Jane than the instrument.
“I had an absurd interest in the instrument as a child, but I didn’t complete my first concertina until the late 80s,” says Tedrow, a newcomer to the town of Ashville. “It was rather more of a concertina-shaped object, actually. It was quite a few years until I began to get the hang of building nice instruments.”
Tedrow repaired this concertina for a man in Japan, who found him on the internet
A concertina is a free-reed instrument that consists of expanding and contracting bellows with buttons usually on both ends. Free-reed, says the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, is “a reed in a musical instrument … that vibrates in an air opening just large enough to allow the reed to move freely.”
The body is built from seasoned hardwoods, and the bellows are made of vegetable-tanned goat leather and neutral-Ph cotton mat board. “The levers, springs, etc., are made of various metals suitable for the task,” Tedrow says. As for the cotton mat board, that’s just “a sexy word for cardboard, but nice cardboard.”
It’s a precursor to the accordion, invented in the 1820s in England and used today in England, Ireland and Scotland. “It has 60 steel reeds, although it can have 120,” Tedrow says. “Each reed is tuned to a different pitch, and the concertina is fully chromatic. By pressing one of those buttons and moving the bellows you allow the concertina to produce a specific note, hopefully musical.”
Tedrow, 70, has built about 75 concertinas since that first one, selling them in his Homewood Musical Instrument Company for 30 years and now on the internet, too. Somewhere along the way, he also became fascinated with repairing stringed instruments, the area in which his shop specializes.
“My fascination is with the mechanics of an instrument,” he says. “I like fooling with the parts. I’m attracted to their nuts and bolts, with the process of building or repairing. The process never ends, either, because there’s always another one to be repaired.”
Homewood Music has been a fixture in that Birmingham suburb for 30 years. For the first 25, it was across the street from Homewood Park on Central Avenue but moved a bit closer to the heart of downtown Homewood on 28th Avenue South about five years ago. The shop buys, sells, repairs and restores stringed instruments – and a few concertinas. Tedrow has customers as far away as Japan due to his internet presence. “There are almost no shops like this anymore,” he says. “We’re a throwback to the early 1900s.”
“Luthier” is the formal name for what Tedrow and each crew member does. It’s hard to find luthiers like his three employees, who play and fix instruments. “I was working alone when Jason (Burns) wandered in more than 20 years ago,” he says. “He’s far better than me at repairing. Michael (Clayton), who has been with me for six years, has a sum of knowledge I can call on. Matthew (Williams) is the new boy, he has only been with me a few years.”
Matthew Williams (left), Michael Clayton (seated) and Jason Burns are the three luthiers on staff
Tedrow is from a small town in Colorado and moved to Homewood in 1987 because his wife, Klari, wanted to go to law school. “I did not marry a lawyer, I raised one,” he says. Klari, who is quite adept at playing a concertina Tedrow built for her, is now an immigration attorney. “We bought 60 acres in Ashville about two years ago, and we’re building a house there next to the small cabin we live in.”
Homewood was a great place to raise their three kids, who are upset because “we sold their house.” But he and Klari needed some space for their four dogs, which she runs through A.K.C. agility trials.
A real estate agent showed them several places, but they found their Ashville paradise on their own. “We bought directly from Derrick and Amy Heckman,” he says. “The property never even went on the market.”
When he lived in Homewood, Tedrow drove a 1928 Model A Ford back and forth to work. He occasionally drives it around Ashville now. “I have taken it to the town square a couple of times, where it marks its territory with several drops of leaked motor oil,” he says. “I also drive it to our mailbox at end of the road.”
His musical talent probably came from his grandmother and mother. The former was a “real good jazz piano player,” and his mother played guitar, mandolin and other stringed instruments. “Grandmom taught me to play the ukulele,” Tedrow says. He picked up other instruments on his own. “If we define ‘play’ generously, I play the guitar, banjo, bass, ukulele, mandolin, clarinet, saxophone and concertina,” says Tedrow. “I’m trying to learn the tambourine.”
While he played lots of bluegrass banjo in the 70s in Colorado, now he just plays a bit in the shop with visitors and customers. “I also play Irish tunes with my wife and a few close friends,” he says.
When he moved to Homewood, he went to a pawn shop in downtown Birmingham and told them he wanted to repair their instruments. “Sometimes people pawn instruments that need repair or restoration,” he explains. He opened a tiny shop across the street from the park. Then he walked into the office of the superintendent of music education for Birmingham city schools, Dr. Frank Adams, and got the job of repairing their stringed instruments. Later, he started repairing instruments for the education division of the Alabama Symphony Orchestra. Eventually, he had to expand his shop.
Despite his early musical training, he originally wanted to be a forest ranger. He met his wife at Colorado State, where both were in the forestry school. “I played in a bluegrass band with her brother,” Tedrow says. “We soon discovered there weren’t many jobs in forestry, and none in banjo playing. Occupational therapists were in great need, however, so I went back to school and got a degree in that field.” He worked as an OT in Colorado and North Carolina before coming to Birmingham. Although licensed as an OT in Alabama, he has yet to practice here. “I found that I was far more valuable to the state with a banjo,” he says.
For several years, he played Mr. Mom while Klari was in Cumberland School of Law. At the same time, he was doing repairs for those pawn shops, the City of Birmingham and the ASO. He continued to accumulate skills and tools. “I’m entirely self-taught, which just means I did things wrong for a long time,” he says.
At some point he decided to concentrate on one thing he could do as well as anybody. The concertina was an orphan instrument, meaning few people in the USA played one, as far as he was aware. “I never met anyone who did for many years, not in Alabama, anyway,” he says. “So, I bought one and took it apart. The first one I built I made the bellows section from a pair of my daughter’s discarded leather pants. In fact, I sat in church one day, having developed that concentrated stare where it looks like you’re listening, but your mind is far away. I figured it out that day: The bellows are like origami.”
It takes a long time to learn repairing well enough to make money at it, to be good and fast, Tedrow says. “Restoring vintage instruments is an entire other field than putting strings on a guitar,” he says. “It’s an art. You want it to look like the original, without devaluing it.”
When someone points out that what he does could be considered a play on the words, “occupational therapy,” he agrees. “I use the skills I learned as an OT when I teach guitar, banjo, ukulele, etc. I try to analyze how each student will best learn. Some learn best with their auditory skills, some students are cognitively oriented while others learn best with a physical approach.”
Bob and Klari Tedrow and their dogs have taken to country life in Ashville
Sometimes he or his staff will find a secret note in a vintage instrument they are repairing, a note left by the builder while the instrument was under construction. For example, “I’m sorry,” was carved into a “Mossman” dreadnought guitar from a luthier in Kansas in the 1980s. “The builder knew that one day in the far distant future a luthier like our Jason Burns would have a tricky job repairing this guitar,” Tedrow says. “He was apologizing in advance from 40 years ago. It was a note through time. Very clever and thoughtful.” A vintage violin contained a note in Latin that translated to, “In life I was silent, in death I sing.” Tedrow says that was the wood speaking.
In the windows of his shop, facing both inward and outward, are photos of artists and their instruments, ordinary people, some of them customers, most of the photos taken by Tedrow for publicity purposes.
He has a designated photo spot with several backdrops, special lighting and props. Photography is a hobby, he says. Facing outward in the windows are a couple of vintage photos of musicians from the towns he has lived in. “I like to think they are remembered,” he says.
Inside, violins, mandolins, banjos, ukuleles and guitars, acoustic and amplified, hang from the walls of his shop. Some are awaiting repairs, others for their owners to claim them. A glass display case shows off concertinas made and repaired by Tedrow. Tools such as lathes, saws and sanders give the appearance of a carpentry shop, and in a way, it is, because they usually have to make the broken parts they are replacing.
“My favorite job is working on vintage guitars,” says Jason Burns, 45, who started learning his craft as a teenager working on his own guitars. “Of course, I have learned a ton over the years from Bob and other luthiers.” He plays the guitar, ukulele, banjo and the upright bass.
He calculates that over the last 22 years, he and Tedrow have spent 46,000 hours together, and Burns cannot imagine what life would be like without his boss and friend. “He’s a wealth of knowledge about way more than musical instruments,” he says of Tedrow. “He’s the guy who showed me how to become a better person, how to stay married and even how to tie a tie. The list could go on and on. The world needs more people like him.”
Matthew Williams, 26, got into “all of this” because he couldn’t afford the guitars he wanted. “So, I thought with my woodworking background, I could just build them,” he says. “It turns out that’s easier said than done.”
He says he “annoyed himself into a job” by buying “project” guitars, going into Homewood Music and getting Tedrow, Burns and Clayton to tell him how to fix them. “I did this for years, and after they got fed up answering my questions, I asked them for a job. After two years they finally relented, and I started coming in a few days a week and learning how to repair guitars on the job. It is without a doubt the best job I’ve ever had, and I look forward to seeing everyone each week.
Michael Clayton, 48, is a nurse by trade who started working on his own guitars about seven years ago after a bad repair experience at a different store. He watched videos from famous luthiers and followed all of Jason Burns’ repairs on Instagram.
“I happened to meet Jason about six years ago because, as fate would have it, our kids ended up on the same soccer team,” he says. “We became friends, and he invited me to the shop on my days off. I came down to watch him work and to learn from him, and that’s when I met Bob.”
He began working there “little by little,” he says, until he ended up “sort of” in an apprenticeship. “I’ve worked there for six years now and in that time, Bob and Jason have become my dearest friends.”
He describes Tedrow as “a bit of a force of nature,” adding that he’s also kind, intelligent and plays almost everything with strings. “Whenever someone comes in, he immediately greets them and everyone, I mean everyone, gets what we call the ‘Bob Show,’” Clayton says. “He’s one of the most engaging and charismatic people I’ve met. I have learned a great deal about luthiery and also life while spending time with the both of them (Bob and Jason). In short, they broke the mold.”
A man, a parish, heavenly intervention, a community and a bell
Story Paul South Photos by Sam Marston and Graham Hadley
If Zuzu Bailey’s line in the 1946 holiday film classic, It’s A Wonderful Life is true – that “Every time a bell rings, an angel gets its wings,” a small Catholic Church in Cropwell helps get a heavenly squadron cleared for takeoff every day.
Our Lady of the Lake Catholic Church’s 750-pound bell has become not only part of a parish, but of a community. It’s much more than heavy metal.
It’s a ringing result of one man’s idea, the support of his priest and parish and a heaping helping of Divine Providence.
Just ask Sam Marston.
It may have been 2017 when Marston, a 76-year-old retired airport food service manager, got the idea for the bell at Our Lady of the Lake Catholic Church.
Sam Marston and the bell
“The church didn’t have a bell tower, and I like bell towers,” he says.
After meeting with the then-priest at Our Lady of the Lake, Marston pledged seed money from his 401k for the bell and its tower.
But until 2019, thoughts of the bell fell silent. The former priest retired. And what’s more, Marston’s wife, Glenda, was battling cancer.
In 2019, buoyed by an enthusiastic response from new OLL priest, the Rev. Bill Lucas, Marston began to reach out to churches in Philadelphia and Washington, looking for bells from closed parishes.
None were found. Then, he discovered Bell Castings, a firm in Loudon, Tenn., and its owner, Todd Lower.
The church found its bell – a 1934 model crafted by the Missouri-based McShane Company – in a roomful of ringers. Founded in 1856, McShane is America’s oldest church bell company.
The parish began a fundraising effort. While Marston’s pledge, funded by a government required minimum distribution was financial, both Marston and Lucas believe a higher power was at work.
“It had to be something Divine,” Marston says. “I couldn’t have come up with this. It was just something that came together. My whole thought process was to do something really, really special with this donation.
Marston, a cradle Catholic, had always loved bells. “It makes the whole church experience rich. Ringing before Mass and after Mass is like a celebration.”
Initially, donations for the belltower project came at a trickle. Rev. Lucas was not optimistic.
“We set a budget that was much higher than what we had before … So I said, we’ll leave it to the parish and if people give enough money, we’ll build the bell. But I didn’t think there was any way we would ever get to the level we needed to get to build the belltower.”
Marston confessed to doubt as well. “When the money stopped coming in, yes I did have doubts,” he says. “I tried to put it out of my mind, but I’d go out and see the bell sitting on the ground.”
Then, after one Sunday Mass, came a miracle. A donor wishing anonymity quietly handed Lucas a check for the majority of the needed funds.
“All of a sudden, there we were,” Lucas says. “We had the money for the project. Some people would say we got lucky,” he adds. “But I prefer to say Divine Providence.”
He adds, “If you believe in Divine Providence, the whole story of our parish is that way … You can see it at work. But it’s certainly true of the bell.”
Marston agrees. “I really do think it was Divine intervention, because there were so many things that could have stopped it.”
Through friend Carl Wallace, Marston connected with structural engineer Bob Barnett, and Barnett foundBirmingham architect TimLucy who had done work for other Catholic parishes in the past. It seemed a match made in heaven.
Upper framework
The link to Barnett came in true Logan Martin style, when Marston and Wallace discussed the bell project over glasses of wine during a sunset pontoon cruise.
“(Sam) was willing to make the financial commitment, but he just didn’t know how to take the next step,” Wallace, author of the popular Facebook blog, “Lake Ramblings”, says. “I’m an engineer, and I just happened to know Bob Barnett who lives on the lake … and has his own structural engineering company. My simple part was, ‘Sam, let me get you in contact with Bob Barnett and get y’all hooked up.’ And Bob jumped all over it. He hooked up Sam with the architect. He had worked with (architect Lucy) on Catholic projects before.”
Ground broke on the bell tower on Nov. 9, 2021. But it was not an easy rise to the heavens. Soft St. Clair County soil required digging deeper and reinforcing the foundation with concrete. The bell, gleaming gold against a bright blue winter sky, was raised on Jan 13, 2022.
“You talk about exciting,” Marston recalls.
The electronically programmed bell rings every hour on the hour between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m., as well as five minutes before and at the end of each Mass and at funerals. The bell, Lucas says, has impacted the parish in a positive way.
“It’s made people more reverent,” Lucas says, “because when the bell rings, then you focus on the Mass. You focus on prayer and worship. Just like during the Consecration when we ring the bells, it’s a reminder to people where we are and what we’re doing.”
Lucas adds, “I didn’t really understand that when we were going through the project. But since we’ve had it, it’s opened my mind to the benefit of having the bell and helping people’s faith.
In a small way, Wallace says, the bell project has enriched life on the Cropwell end of the lake, especially as the tower was under construction.
“It’s almost the anticipation of it was greater than the final project,” Wallace says. “It’s not real loud. You can only hear it if you’re in the area. People see it when they drive by. It has become an instant landmark, maybe more so than the church itself.”
There’s something more at work here.
“The tradition of it, I think, is noteworthy,” Wallace says. “A church bell ringing is a great thing.”
The bell is a reminder of faith for people, regardless of their spiritual persuasion, Lucas says.
“Sometimes they’re Catholic, sometimes they’re just believers. They hear the bell, and it reminds them of that,” Lucas says. “This is a very religion-friendly area, and I think the bell speaks not just to Catholics, but to everyone of faith. It gives them a reminder that God is there and to take Him more seriously.”
While Marston was the driving human force, the community, priest and parish all played a part.
“It was a relay, and there were a lot of runners,” Wallace says. “It’s a very interesting thing that just happened to happen to happen.”
While at this point, folks in Cropwell may be unsure about Hollywood’s Zuzu Bailey theory on angel wings and chiming bells, the feeling Sam Marston gets with every clang is crystal clear:
“Joy,” he says.
At the end of the day, the story of the Our Lady of the Lake belltower transcends one man’s dream, or money, a bell or bricks and mortar, Lucas says. “I think it does come back to that Divine Providence. If we’re open to that, and we’re willing to be molded by that, then God can use that for His glory and the building up of the Church and building up of faith, if we’re open to it.”
And in what some may see as another ring of Divine Providence, the bell chimed for the first time on Feb. 1, 2022.
EDC develops road map to St. Clair County’s future success
For some, talk of five-year plans conjures visions of a small gaggle of decision makers in a back room, setting a course for the masses.
But when St. Clair County’s Economic Development Council crafted the county’s growth blueprint for the next half decade, EDC Executive Director Don Smith made one thing plain: This is a countywide team effort. The council listened to hundreds of voices, folks from the incorporated areas to the farmlands, the lakefronts to the riverfront, corporations, small business owners and every entity in between.
“The EDC’s success is the result of the partnerships we create throughout the county,” Smith says. “That’s really the secret to our success. It’s not what the EDC does. It’s what we’re able to do by working with others.”
Springville’s downtown drawing new businesses, visitors
The recently approved new five-year plan was crafted after a series of public meetings across the county and input from hundreds of citizens.
“From that, we were able to create a vision of what we need to focus on achieving in the next five years,” Smith says, “The plan helps us to stay focused and to dedicate resources to make sure we achieve our goals.”
The wide-ranging plan focuses on six key areas – infrastructure development, marketing and communication, recruitment and retention, community development, leadership and tourism.
Some key areas include job creation, growing agritourism, including farm-to-table initiatives, and assisting municipalities in tapping into a deep pool of available state and federal grants through EDC’s Grant Resource Center.
“We had a lot of input from our smaller municipalities about the difficulty in knowing what grants are out there and being able to obtain those grants,” Smith says. “When you talk about a municipality that has a budget of $1 million, and they can get a grant for $200,000 for infrastructure or something else, that’s a major impact for them.”
The plan also envisions an industrial park to create more wealth along the county’s section of the burgeoning Interstate 59 corridor. Development along the vital transportation artery is a key component in the goal of creating 1,200 jobs over the life of the blueprint.
“That’s going to be a major priority for us over the next five years – to create more jobs along (I-59),” Smith says. “I think we identified 300 acres as being part of our goals. Those goals are very important because over the last 15 years, since I’ve been head of the EDC, we’ve achieved all of our goals. We put all of our efforts in making sure those things take place.”
The EDC is also looking at reinvigorating hands-on workforce development in partnership with local schools and Jefferson State Community College. The COVID-19 pandemic stalled those efforts.
Workforce Development
“There’s going to be a renewed focus on getting these programs – from K-12 to Jefferson State, to our employers – reconnected and utilized so that benefits our citizens, that benefits our employers, and it benefits our educators,” Smith says.
“We have a tremendous asset in Jefferson State Community College, and I don’t believe it’s being fully utilized by the citizens of St. Clair County,” Smith adds.
A heightened communications and marketing presence is also on the horizon. Competing counties, like Walker in northwest Alabama, have stepped up their advertising presence in the Birmingham TV market and beyond. Look for St. Clair County to do the same, along with a larger social media presence.
“One of the things we learned from the tourism initiative is there’s a desire to know what’s taking place in the community. So we’re going to take that focus and extend it on, not just tourism events, but all the successes and opportunities that a fast-growing community like St. Clair County offers to not only the citizens of the county, but outside of our county as well.”
Industrial and small business growth, combined with an exodus from crowded big cities like Atlanta and Birmingham, fueled growth of nearly 10,000 residents between 2010 and 2022, according to the Census.
Here is a brief snapshot of some other highlights of the five-year plan.
In infrastructure: As noted earlier, the development of the I-59 corridor is “absolutely a top priority,” Smith says. Obtaining more grants is near the top as well.
Marketing and communications: Greater use of the EDC website is expected to be a priority moving forward, Smith says.
Recruitment and retention has been the cornerstone of the EDC since 1999. A recent ribbon cutting for an industrial park in Moody illustrates that effort and will move the county toward such goals. “That’s going to continue, along with new manufacturing parks that are going to be identified and developed in the future,” Smith says.
In the area of leadership, the 17-year-old Leadership St. Clair County has been an incredible success, Smith says, connecting governmental and business leaders to develop relationships and to solve common problems and foster cooperation. The EDC hopes to conduct four Leadership St. Clair County classes in the next five years.
Smith praised county commissioners for supporting the EDC tourism initiative, which began in 2019. The county’s lodging tax revenue has increased by 87 percent since the push for more visitors began, an estimated $200,000 in additional revenue.
“With that, comes the opportunity for more hotels and more opportunities for short term rentals. Ultimately, it means that more folks are coming to the festivals we’re having and visiting the resources we have here.”
The county also gets a tourism bounce from nearby marquee events at Talladega Superspeedway and Barber Motorsports Park.
Ecotourism is also blossoming, as fly fishing, sailing, kayaking and other water sports grow on the Coosa River and Neely Henry and Logan Martin lakes and their accompanying tributaries.
A byproduct of the EDC roadmap to the future?
EDC staff, from left: Executive Director Don Smith, Tourism Coordinator Blair Goodgame, Retail and Marketing Specialist Candice Hill and Director of Industry and Workforce Development Jason Roberts
“Ultimately, as this county continues to grow, having cooperation between the County Commission and the municipalities is going to be paramount,” Smith says. “Otherwise, we’ll become fragmented and dysfunctional like many counties are in Alabama.”
Endeavors like the five-year plan help to build county unity, something much needed in a fractious national political and social climate.
“The EDC has trained specialists in different fields,” Smith says. “But we never want to be in a bubble, because then we’re not going to be focused on what’s important to the citizens and elected officials of St. Clair County.”
He adds, “The only way that we can know what’s important to people is to get them to tell us – to listen, to document it and then to publicize it and to hold ourselves accountable for meeting those goals.”
And those goals are crucial to St. Clair County’s success, keeping the main thing the main thing
“Just like any business, or any successful organization, when you write down your goals and you look at them every day, it helps keep you focused,” Smith says. “It helps best utilize your funds and ultimately, it helps bring you success in ways you don’t even dream of.”
