Pisgah Banjos is excited to announce another chance to win a very unique and historically significant custom banjo! Raffle tickets are $20 each and all proceeds will benefit the Arnold Shultz Fund, a grant  program dedicated to people of color pursuing traditional old-time and bluegrass music. This year $10,000 of these funds will be designated for the Black Banjo Reclamation Project to support a gourd banjo building workshop. The goal is to sell 2,000 tickets and raise $40,000 in total.

Click here to purchase raffle tickets, beginning February 1. Ticket sales will end on March 6. 

The raffle prize will be a custom built Pisgah Banjo, made from 200+ year-old heart pine salvaged from Pleasant Retreat, a historical plantation located near Appomattox Virginia. The plantation where this wood was salvaged is also located half a mile from where Joel Walker Sweeney grew up. Sweeney, a banjoist and minstrel performer, is known for popularizing the banjo in white culture in the early to mid-1800s, and has credited his teachers as slaves on a nearby plantation (very likely Pleasant Retreat). Pisgah Banjos chose to benefit the Arnold Shultz Fund as a way to help reappropriate the history of the banjo. They hope this encourages the banjo community and beyond to discover the early American history of the banjo and folk music born on slave plantations and influenced heavily by early American Black culture. The heart pine was donated by Craig DuBose and was salvaged from the roof structure of the main living quarters at Pleasant Retreat.

The month of February was chosen to coincide with Black History Month. Tickets are $20 each and there is an unlimited quantity. The more tickets you purchase, the better your chance to win. Tickets will be placed in a bucket and a name drawn in March via Facebook live.

Last year the Pisgah Banjo Company raised $26,740 and exceeded their goal of selling 1,000 tickets. Because of the strong support in 2021, the goal for 2022 will be 2,000 tickets and $40,000 for the Arnold Shultz Fund.

Banjo Specs:

Scale: 25.5″

Rim: 12″ walnut w/wood tone ring and heart pine rim cap

Neck: heart pine

Fingerboard: persimmon

Peghead: slotted w/persimmon veneer

Head: REMO Renaissance w/PBCO logo

Tailpiece: Pisgah Hawktail

Bridge: walnut/persimmon, Mulherron

Hardware: aged brass

Tuners: high quality brass, Gotoh

Strings: PBCO clawhammer medium gauge

Valued at $2,500

More info here: https://www.pisgahbanjos.com/product/arnoldshultzraffle2022/

Return to the February 2022 issue of The Cornerstone.