But first, for Daniel Graham, working with his hands has always been a way of life.

An artist whose creativity spans a variety of mediums, the Georgetown College professor brings imagination, skill, and tradition together through the art of lutherie, crafting instruments that tell a story, all while teaching his students how to craft and discover a story of their own.

[banjo playing] [banjo playing] I've made them out of everything.

Gasoline cans, sardine tins.

I've made them out of wood.

I've made them out of metal.

I've made them out of gourds that grow in a garden.

I've made them out of human bones.

And that's the beauty of it, I think.

A Daniel Graham banjo has something weird in it, always.

Something unexpected or some little unique piece.

A banjo is a moniker or a stand-in for its owner.

If you see one that's handmade with a pocket knife and a hatchet, it means something different than someone that has all the tools at their disposal.

I do see a banjo in almost every object.

And there's also an aesthetic choice, like seeing an object that has some history or wear and tear on it, I think is really beautiful.

They each have their own identity, so they sound like what they're supposed to sound like.

Rather than trying to create an object that sounds like a standard, these get to be created to sound like themselves.

This aesthetic that I have where I try and make things as, not say as complicated, but as unique and interesting as possible.

Well, I get a lot of pushback from traditionalists, which I'm totally fine with.

I think you can live in harmony with that.

I would much rather have people that disagree with me than people that just applaud, right?

I don't think that's interesting.

[grinding buzz] It was part of growing up to take things apart, figure out how they work, and to make things for ourselves.

I realized how much I loved the hard labor of things.

For three years, I laid hardwood floors.

Loved every minute of it.

I loved coming home sore and tired.

But that's what got me into woodworking.

And then even after college, I studied under Dennis Sitka in Washington, DC as an apprentice to his furniture shop there, and then took over as a craftsman at that shop.

[hammering] [banjo playing] In 2018, I had a really hard year, and I was struggling with healthily monitoring my emotions and my habits.

And I needed something.

I needed a hobby separate from art-making or what I was doing.

So, I started to play guitar, and it was absolutely gross.

It was big and clunky.

I didn't like it.

I didn't like how it felt.

And so, I thought, "Well, maybe I'll make a guitar."

And I had a good friend of mine that said, “Don't make a guitar, make a banjo.” I said, “Well, if you make a banjo and it's slightly off, it's a quirky, fun banjo.

And if you make a guitar and it's slightly off, it's just a really crappy guitar."

But as soon as I held a banjo, it felt like home.

It was expressive.

It was the Wild West of instruments.

They can be big or small or made out of cans or made out of anything.

I started just strumming every day, and it helped me breathe better.

It helped me regulate my emotions throughout the day.

[banjo playing] It's really hard to describe him as a teacher.

He might say, “It would be more interesting or more dynamic if you do this.” But whatever you want done, he'll make happen.

[sawing] And so, you don't want to tilt it down when you like to think of it as flat.

Whenever Daniel shows us how to do things, he makes it super digestible.

I have no background in woodworking whatsoever.

I was super intimidated at first, and I still am.

So, I usually say I like to push my students off a cliff while holding their hand.

I think education is about curiosity and creating a need for answers.

They go out, and they have this need to find an answer, and they know how, rather than just knowing a bunch of stuff for a test.

I was going through it.

Semester was hard, a lot of drama.

And Daniel Graham just came up to me and started talking me through why he picked up banjo.

And so, I picked up banjo, and I was dying to have one.

I almost paid him for one.

And he was like, “No, let me just show you how to make one, and you can make it however you want to make it.” [banjo playing] I'd never really worked with my hands a ton.

I'm a religion major and a communication media studies major.

To come into a place where my body, not just my mind, connects to what the product is and the process.

Something that brings me great joy to watch them as a student that is trying to find their own way in this world, and they make a banjo.

They make something about themselves, and they get to play it and hear it and resonate with who they're becoming.

It's something really quite beautiful.

Knowing that I don't have to make it perfect to do it well.

So, to me, it felt like a safety net being able to do it how I wanted to do it, because it didn't seem like as stressful of a threshold to me.

Every time I pick it up to anyone else, it just looks like, “Oh, that's an instrument.” But when I pick it up, I don't just see the wood.

I see, like sitting at a table, filing it and all the work that went into it.

It's just taught me to take things slower and to enjoy the process rather than reaching the goal itself.

It's just so cool to work on it for so long and dedicate so much time to it.

And then it just plays like an instrument that you would buy at a store.

The cherry that I used for my neck is actually old bookshelves from the library at the college, which I thought was pretty cool.

And one of my fret markers is the old gymnasium bleachers.

I think it'll be really cool to leave here with that, with the part of the school with me, but also to share the walnut wood that we all have on each of our banjos.

It's a really great process just to prove that you can do it.

Looking at it, I wouldn't have guessed before I started this class that I could have made a banjo.

It's been really quite powerful to see this idea of the banjo spread at Georgetown amongst a group of friends that they really have never had exposure to this instrument.

And they had this preconception of what a banjo was, that it was made for hillbilly music or bling-da-ling-da-ling music.

And then they find themselves defending it, being like, “No, this is something different,” and it means something more.

[banjo playing] Clawhammer banjo comes from the shape of your hand, and it's shaped like a claw.

So, your thumb stays prominently up.

And so, as you stroke, you strum the strings and pluck the fifth string, the top string on a banjo, with your thumb.

And so, it's different than bluegrass banjo, which wears picks, and you will pick and make rhythms with the right hand while you make chords and movements with the left hand.

Clawhammer banjo is much more melodic, and it's much more about strumming and keeping a rhythm while moving the hands together.

There's something larger about a banjo that it's a home for a misfit.

It's a home for the other.

It's a home for people that don't have a home.

People that played the banjo were rural Appalachians, people that had nothing, slaves, soldiers, farmers.

And the basis of that is what built a split to country music, to bluegrass music and all these other forms of music that we identify in our country.

I think the hardest part of making an instrument for me is saying goodbye.

It's like, “I thought I made this as a companion.” It's like my kids.

I raised them to go out and change the world.

I didn't raise them to live in my basement.

So, I didn't make these just to hang on a wall.

I made them to go out and to help other people or a companion for someone else.

[banjo playing]