Tucson’s newest folk music shop hopes to become much more than a place to retune your banjo or replace the strings on your mandolin.
The Sound Post: Tucson Folk Center wants to create a hub for Tucson’s folk community.
In its studio space in the historic Labor Temple in Barrio Viejo, musicians can join weekly jam sessions or play concerts, all admission free.
Pop-up string change clinics and workshops are part of the plan, alongside the usual instrument sales and repairs.
You can learn all about the Sound Post when it hosts its grand opening on Saturday, Aug. 31.
The celebration comes three months after the shop opened in June in a building that also houses a tattoo parlor and vintage shop.
Tucson banjo and fiddler Ralph White, folk singer Ted Warmbrand, fingerstyle guitarist Bennie and country bluesman Hank Topless will perform beginning at noon Saturday. Admission is free.
Cameron Newcomer Mannor, a luthier at The Sound Post: Tucson Folk Center, repairs a guitar on Aug. 24.
The Sound Post is a passion project for its three owners — Lili Steffen, Cameron Newcomer Mannor and Chris Keefer. All three cut their teeth at The Folk Shop, which has been a folk music staple in Tucson since 1986.
“This is our passion,” said Mannor, who for the past year has performed with Keefer, a banjo player, in the No Label Jug Band. “We love the Folk Shop, but we saw a different avenue to be more community oriented.”
Sound Post buys, sells and trades used and vintage guitars, amps, banjos and other string instruments, including dulcimers, and repairs them. Each of the owners has a specialty, from Mannor’s focus on acoustic guitars, banjos and mandolins to Steffen’s expertise with violins. Keefer does some banjo repairs, but Mannor said his colleague mostly works in sales. The shop also is collaborating with the Tempo Music and Arts Academy in Marana on music lessons and instructor exchanges, Steffen said.
The Sound Post is in Studio C at the Labor Temple, 267 S. Stone Ave. For details, call 520-222-6897 or visit tucsonsoundpost.com.
Ryanhood is a two-man independent folk rock band formed in Boston, Massachusetts, and currently based in Tucson, Arizona. Here they are performing the Allman Bros. classic "Jessica."
