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Coming up, a Cleveland honky tonk quartet could move to Nashville, but they ain't going to do it.

We show you how and why this craftsman is bringing worldwide attention to Athens, Ohio.

And a bluegrass master gives up touring the country to pursue a higher calling.

hello.

And gather round for applause.

I'm Ideastream Public Media's Kabir Bhatia.

Do you like this hat?

I almost left it back on the prairie.

My producer Dave is glad I didn't because we've got a great show of country music for you.

Loaded with folksy wordplay.

We kick things off with Northeast Ohio's country, honk the band's leader Thora Platter, recently sat down with my Ideastream colleague Amanda Rabinowitz for applause.

Performances.

I know that you have a background in business, but music's been a part of your life for a long time.

And when the pandemic came, that kind of give you an opportunity to explore music a little bit more.

Can you talk a little bit about that?

Sure.

That's it's the reason I came to northeast Ohio from Buffalo originally.

I had a day job and I always did music part time.

And during the pandemic, at the start of the pandemic, I lost that job and was kind of faced with, well, do I really dig in and do music full time or go back to do that or try and find something?

So I just jumped, you know, feet first, headfirst, whatever.

And at the end of 2020, I just kind of dug into it and started going full speed.

There must've been a time or two when you saw me or I saw you in the cross smoke Billboard music.

They twisted, twisted fate.

Let us go our separate ways.

I'm gonna love it.

Makes on stream.

There must have been a time or two when you saw me.

Or I saw you running down that road.

Broken hard hearts.

Then when it finally came, the best bar of love comes out of ash burning brightly.

Right on from the spark See, we go round and round.

The love is off The market's down.

Even making all my dreams come true.

Here we go Round and round saving up to settle down.

And I've been waiting my whole life for you.

But I know that country song started out as kind of an, you know, an outlaw country cover act like Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings.

But it didn't take long for you guys to start writing your own songs.

Yeah, over the years we had played together and had this idea and definitely we incorporated the band in 2021, but we had that idea a few years before that and we'd played a bunch of shows and put it together as that and as something we could just, you know, perform with.

And then we started writing songs and the rest is this album and the next one too, you know?

Yeah, The heart of Country Honk is your Backbeat Tom pre-Bush.

He's on bass and you have drummer Freddy Perez.

These guys have played together since high school.

And you know, what does that mean to have a rhythm section that's been together that long?

Those guys were some of the first people that I met when I moved to northeast Ohio through a couple of other musical friends that they had all grown up with.

And I saw that rhythm section play countless times when I was playing in other bands, and we were always all friendly.

And so when I had the opportunity to start hiring them, I just jumped at it.

So it's really been great because they're established.

They're set to known each other since they were teenagers, so they speak their own language and I keep trying to write the song Rumble Baby around my floor.

But words don't come no matter how I strum and can't even find their chord.

It turns out you need to write a love song.

You need Sugar Maid, Sweet G Lowdown girl.

She made my heart unfurl that put that hurt on me.

Well, nothing seems to come easy since you didn't warn me no more.

Romeo and Juliet by Juliet Ball turns out to be the kind of love song you need.

Sugar make sweet love all girls obey my heart Unfurl never hurt I'll be for you See avoid in this region For a band like country Honk And you talk about, you know, Great Lakes versus Nashville area.

Can you talk about a band like Country Hunk fitting in here in Cleveland?

I'm biased to it, but I think that we're really approachable band and our fan base definitely is is wonderful.

And I the reason that I would maybe ever say there was a void is because like people come out and they want to, you know, put boots and hats on and they want to see themselves the travel down to to Nashville, too.

And we're not better than any Nashville band like we can.

We could definitely go down there and hold our own.

And we have a lot of friends that play down there, but we also get to sleep in our own beds, you know, every night until we start getting on the road a little more.

But yeah, I think this, this fanbase up here, like people are starving for it to have acts that are, that are home based and they can come out and see, you know, a couple times a month.

Did you ever have a thought of moving to Nashville?

Yes, like everybody.

But I miss the window.

I feel like the time to move to Nashville was in 2010 to 2012 because I and a lot of my friends moved down there at that point and they're really successful.

And I think going into it now, it's it's a little scary when you get down there.

It's it's and I'm anybody could call me out for being a bigger fish in a small pond up here for sure.

But there was a point down there where East Nashville was really swinging.

And it was it was great.

And I feel like it was right around then and now.

Everybody should just keep moving to Nashville.

That's fine, you know?

But now it's great.

I love that.

I love the city.

I love everything about it, and everybody should visit that.

And they should visit Austin and Chicago, New York City and everything.

But I think we have something really special here in Cleveland.

It's just much smaller.

Yeah, well, I'm glad you didn't move to Nashville to I didn't have a heart and I couldn't feel the move.

I wouldn't have to fall apart each time I'm missing you and telling you find me crying when the day is through.

I wish I didn't have a hard but I do.

And I wish my feet will get tired from walking the floor.

A thousand memories go by without you anymore.

Anymore than my self.

Right down to the room below.

Oh, I wish I didn't have a hard to let go.

You're not from Ohio.

You're actually from Buffalo.

And you really found a home here in Cleveland.

What was it about Cleveland that kind of captured your heart?

Yeah.

When I first moved to northeast Ohio, it was a stepping stone.

I had a day job that was able to have me move around, and so I got out of the Buffalo to get to Ohio and thought, I'll check it out for a couple of years.

And my end goal was definitely to either move west or to Nashville or to Texas or something like that.

And after being here for three or four years, I really fell in love with northeast Ohio and everything that it has to offer.

And we're a little closer to everything else and not as much snow at least where my house is.

So it was really great to be welcomed into the music scene, too.

Here in town now is the year that we're coming out.

Made a move so I could drink all day, each fall in the water, you know, with I'll see another day.

It's so hard to choose.

And I wish I didn't have a hard but I do.

I wish I did now.

Ha.

But I do.

there's more chat with your platter and music from country.

Honk when you watch a pause Performances in its entirety on demand with the PBS app.

uh.

we're walking down a country road to Athens, Ohio, where a legendary luthier makes handcrafted magic.

Don Rusty is the founder of Red Diamond Mandolins, and his fingerprints are all over some amazing instruments.

I moved to this farm a little over 40 years ago.

I've been out here about 41, 42 years.

Moving here.

There was a machinery shed that.

That will make a nice shop.

I think I got kind of interested in.

In guitar, in high school.

It was during the folk revival of the fifties and sixties, and I was interested in that music and trying to learn that.

My name is John McRae.

I own and operate red diamond mandolins here in Athens, Ohio.

I graduated college in 66 and that was around the start of the Vietnam War.

So I wound up in the Navy.

I was in Vietnam.

I was on an aircraft carrier.

I got out of the service in 70.

I decided to use my GI Bill and go back to college.

I came to Ohio University.

I enjoyed not only, you know, going to college, but I loved the area.

I saw a lot of the county and a lot of the southeast Ohio, and I've been here ever since.

My sister in law had a mandolin, so I was looking at that and I don't have a lot of space.

I mean, a lot easier to build a smaller instrument.

So that's how I got picked, the mandolin.

I was thinking about a name that I could put on the peg Ed and I was reading a book about a fellow who in the 1800s was traveling in Europe hunting Stradivarius violins, and one of the names of the Stradivarius violins was the Red Diamond.

I said, That's a shame.

I'll use that.

I've been building for close to 50 years and seen how instruments come through to the audience.

And there's an instrument that seems to for bluegrass music really project out a sound.

And that's the Gibsons of the early twenties.

They were signed by Lloyd Law.

Don McCloskey is one of those guys that was always on this search for the secret formula to the best sounding mandolin and in my opinion, he found it.

What sets Don's mandolins apart from the rest, in my opinion, is the constant pursuit of the golden era sound.

And when I say that, I mean the mandolins of the early 1920s that were manufactured by Gibson.

He's come up with this really interesting process of measuring the flexibility of the top and back of some of those legendary mandolins, and then using those measurements to kind of guide his own building process.

When I build mandolins, I start out with the sides, I make the blocks, I bend the sides and glue them up into a rib assembly.

That's the first step.

And I even put the linings in that allow the tops and the backs to be attached to the side.

Then I'll.

I'll carve tops.

Next the tops will be carved and glued on.

And at that point I'll voice it.

To some extent that means make it of a flexibility and it will produce a good sound.

It's a combination of the art shape, the flexibility, the species of wood, and many other things that produce a sound.

Once that's done and the neck is fitted in the back on, which makes the rib assembly, the body assembly very rigid, and then you can put the neck back in it and set your angle and finish up the neck.

You'll get a fingerboard, you, you'll get a peg head for mounting tuners and decoration of the pink head.

It's traditional for a good mandolin to have a darker finished.

It's a sunburst, they call it.

So it's a shaded finish from a bright sun in the center, golden to a darker edge.

Once the instrument is completely done, you put strings on it.

I was building mandolins in mid-seventies.

It turned out that there was a company here in Athens that did instruments there, and it was called Stuart MacDonald.

And then I got into product design with them.

I was able to do things there because of my prior building experience and the things that I was doing there.

I was able to bring home and and better do my building for bluegrass and a lot of other styles of music.

The F five mandolin is what's desirable.

It's beautiful.

The design is incredible.

It's attractive.

A lot of people buy kind of on reputation.

If I build instruments that really please other people, I get customers.

People are excited about playing music.

They want to, they want a good instrument.

They they love it and and they share with their friends.

I think Don is helping to strengthen the arts in Ohio by building the best instruments possible.

And I would consider Don's mandolins to be some of the best in the world.

You see him across the bluegrass scene.

Alan by be a really great bluegrass mandolin player, plays his mandolins regularly.

Josh Pinkham, another amazing kind of world renowned mandolinist, plays Don's mandolins, and it makes sense that his mandolins are some of the best in the world because he is a sensitive person.

That way, you know, he can see what you need and what you're looking for in an instrument and wants to make a product that that fills what you need.

It almost feels like a family relationship when you purchase an instrument from Don.

I own two red diamonds, and when I look at every nook and cranny and corner, everything is just perfect.

There's not a single thing out of place.

And it's really interesting to kind of look at a mandolin and then hear the sound that comes off of the lows are rich and sustaining the highs aren't too shrill.

They're very glassy and bell like.

So it's it's really interesting to play a red diamond compared to some of these other mandolins.

There's life in every single note all across the fingerboard.

Not only is he building the best instruments that he possibly can, he's bringing attention from around the world to central and southern Ohio through the kind of craft that he's chosen in his life.

And I think that's really important because it it brings fresh musicians and fresh perspectives to this region.

And then they take a little bit of Ohio back with them whenever they take one of his mandolins.

And as I started building mandolins, I started learning to play mandolin, too.

By plane, you're able to understand musicians that you're building for.

I played with a couple of guys regularly right now.

We've played together for 40 years, probably music has allowed me to buy a farm, raise a family and love what I do.

There was a term back in the 60 is that I latched on to it's called Right Livelihood, and it meant what you're doing, you know, in your working life has to be right you know contribute to the the planet.

The world, the neighbors, and not be destructive.

And I think that building instruments and playing music is right livelihood.

I was able through both Stuart MacDonald, employment, Stuart MacDonald and my building to do do well you know, to to have a good life and it.

Here's a sales pitch for something you don't have to buy.

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It's free.

It's our weekly arts and culture newsletter, The To Do List.

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Okay, So remember a few minutes ago, we saw that story about Don McNasty and his mandolins.

Well, the other guy we heard from is quite the musician himself.

Hayes Griffin.

You can find this Columbus musician online doing what he loves best next to making music, teaching it.

How do they hear, my friend?

Today marks the beginning of your bluegrass guitar journey.

Bluegrass guitar is responsible for some of the most successful and technically accomplished country rock and metal musicians out there.

My uncle is the first one that really introduced me to the guitar.

I don't come from a musical family, but Uncle Bob played guitar in his church praise band and knew all the basic chords and around the time I was getting to be eight, that's when I started to develop my own musical tastes and really want to listen to music.

And my uncle saw that and kind of cultivated the interest.

And before long a guitar just showed up at the house and that was, that was it.

I graduated from New England Conservatory in 2012 and immediately got a job touring and honestly, I got tired of the road life.

I couldn't really handle being gone for 300 days a year, and in the midst of touring, I was actually able to teach some workshops at festivals in that I found out that I actually loved teaching more than maybe playing music live in front of people.

I got a bigger kind of rush from sharing knowledge and seeing someone have the light bulb turn on.

So naturally, a way to stay home and not tour was to teach via YouTube.

Hey there, music maker.

In today's video, I'm going to unpack one of the most essential tools for any guitarist out there Triads.

It can honestly be really intimidating.

I think the YouTube format versus a one on one student, I know it might seem weird, right, because you're exposed being in front of another person, but on YouTube, you know, you get a lot of negative comments.

You get a lot of people who are in a bad frame of mind whenever they happen to see your video.

So you kind of have to be able to absorb that or deflect that and really see the people out there who are leaving you comments in your videos that are genuine and maybe asking questions, you know, you have to be able to filter the the hate out of there.

But once I was able to kind of like orient myself in that landscape, it's really via the comments section or people emailing you when they find the link in your description.

To me, the Guitar club was a necessary next step after starting the YouTube channel because so many people were interested in more of a close relationship in connection with me, I completely stand by my ability to play the guitar well and deliver valuable information to these people.

I just as someone who went through a conservatory, there is this like pomp and status that comes with being an educated musician and I guess my bluegrass background has kind of maybe humbled me in the other direction where it's like I, I'm confident in what I know and I know that I can show up to any gig and deliver something valuable.

But I think that mindset intimidates beginners, quite honest.

It's either Gen Z kids who have no money whatsoever to pay for free lessons, so they're watching YouTube or retirees with, you know, some disposable income and the time they never had to learn the guitar.

They're not there for that whiplash style conservatory professor that scream and Adam and throwin cymbals and stuff like that You know they they're there to have fun and I want to give them part of that.

I started on guitar.

I play a little bit of a three finger banjo, like bluegrass banjo.

That was my second instrument, but really fell in love with the mandolin when I was in my mid-twenties.

I think the mandolin is a brighter, more distinct solo voice than the guitar.

It stands out of a mix more the human ear hears treble frequencies as louder than lower frequencies, so the mandolin just cuts through a mix.

And I was always a bit of a shy kid.

I always wanted to be in the background, but was always observing and being like, I think I can do that.

Guys do it, you know?

So the mandolin almost kind of gave me that, that voice.

I think when I picked it up, I was like, I can be the lead voice now.

Once I started to see the connections between hip hop, bluegrass, classical and, you know, West African drum music and stuff like that, you know, it was it was really that kind of light bulb eyes on kind of thing.

And I was like, I have to share this with people because if you treat music like a language, then genre doesn't matter.

And I think that's actually the kind of mission of my YouTube channel.

AM My guitar club now.

People see bluegrass when they get there because that's what they expect.

But I'm trying to show them that it's a lot deeper and a lot more than that.

So I think that's kind of my educational mission With YouTube and the whole video delivery service.

I can reach more people with that and hopefully show them that things aren't quite as stark and divided within the world of music.

Thanks so much for checking this lesson out, my friends.

I really appreciate you tuning them.

We'll catch you in the next one.

You.

hold on to your joysticks.

On the next applause, Etomi How do your.

check out Super Mario Brothers in symphony form.

We're bringing an entirely new audience into the classical music world.

Plus, a British born black composer gets his due at Chamber Fest, Cleveland.

All that and more in the next round of applause.

I reckon we're going to sunset this round of applause.

Partners.

I'm apparently cowboy in chief Kabir Bhatia leaving you with more music from country Honk.

This instrumental comes from the fastidious mind of the band's guitar player, Anthony Papa Leo We conclude by saying and hearing the tune Bob's Your Uncle Bobs your uncle.

Production of applause and ideastream.

Public media is made possible by funding by Cuyahoga County residents through Cuyahoga Arts and Culture.