The First Quality Music Blog

The Whiskey Bent Valley Boys, a local group known for their high-energy performances of classic bluegrass tunes, stopped by today before heading out on a tour of the surrounding states. They were absent their fiddler, but they grabbed some instruments off the walls and agreed to play for us.

You can learn more about the Whiskey Bent Valley Boys, and check out their schedule of performances, at http://www.whiskeybentvalley.com

Aaron Thomas was in the showroom this week from Washington, IN and was kind enough to try out one of the new Sullivan Historic Vintage-35 Banjo Prototypes. We debuted this Banjo at IBMA and will have more information on it in the coming weeks – for now, the sound speaks for itself! He’s a great picker and in the video below performs a wonderful and unique version of “What a friend we have in Jesus”. Thanks for stopping by, Aaron!

Shady Grove was in town for the National Quartet Convention and stopped by to see us. Shady Grove is an excellent group with wonderful vocal ability. JC joins Tim Moxley and Gerry Hall for an impromptu performance of the gospel tune Help is on the Way. Check it out!

Today we had a few friends of ours stop by and, like many other days, a little impromptu jam broke out in the Banjo room. I was handy with a camera this time, and thought I’d share a little bit of what goes on at First Quality Music every day. Here we’ve got Malcolm Moger, an excellent Banjo player from Springfield, Virginia, and Shari Mabe from New Haven, Kentucky. Shari is a teacher at New Haven School where she tells us she’s formed a Guitar Club for 6th, 7th, and 8th graders that’s been operating since 2006. We weren’t able to get the information of the other guitarist before she left, but we thank them all for dropping in and letting us record them! A group of great musicians, check them out in the video below!

I was walking around the building today when I got to really thinking about the history written all over First Quality’s walls. When you walk into our showroom, you’ll notice that behind the instruments our walls are covered in hundreds of signatures from visitors and musicians from around the world.

We thought we’d showcase a small portion of the more ‘famous’ signatures on our walls – and invite you to drop in and check it out for yourself!

The girls of Gold Heart and Dad Trent stopped into First Quality while on their way to the Bluegrass Festival  in Henderson, Kentucky.   Wow!!!  Can these girls pick and sing!!  It’s Analise on mandolin, Jocelyn on guitar and Shelby on fiddle.  We appreciate Analise  pickin’  a tune on our Old Growth Gibson Mandolin, I’m pretty sure she liked it!  Heck they even let the me pick a tune with them before they had to go (I appreciate it).  Thanks to the Gold family for sharing their wonderful music with us.   Hope you enjoy the videos, be sure to check out these girls when they’re in your area you’ll love them.

Pete Webb with the group Late for Supper stops by and visits us on a regular basis.  He was checking out one of the new Sullivan Clawhammer Jam banjos and he picked us My Old Kentucky Home.  Thanks  Pete.

Daniel Martin stopped by for a little tune up on his Bill Sullivan Recording King model banjo.  I got him to pick one for us before he left,  burn it up son! You can check out the “Bill Sullivan Recording King” tribute banjo on firstqualitymusic.com.

Good friend and Guitar picker Matt Phelps dropped into the store today, we got him to pick us a rendition of “Home Sweet Home”.   Matt’s picking his First Quality Custom Advanced Jumbo.  You can check it out a guitar like the one Matt’s playing at First Quality Music’s website.

Our friend Curtis Burch stopped by today and we asked him to fill everyone in on the 1st Annual Newgrass Festival happening just north of Bowling Green, Ky.  You can get additional information by visiting their website.