Congratulations to Steven Ware, of Waco, Texas, the lucky winner of a 2011 Golden Era Deering Banjo valued at $4,000, in the 4th annual Strings for Dreams Bluegrass Raffle. The drawing was live streamed from the IBMA Foundation’s Facebook page at noon Eastern Time on Monday, May 13. Over $16,000 was raised in the fundraiser raffle benefiting the IBMA Foundation.
“I just cannot overstate the joy and elation I feel upon having won this beautiful Deering banjo!” Ware said. “I fit the stereotypical ‘never won anything before’ guy stereotype!”
A banjo player for more than four decades, Steven said he heard the instrument first on “Earl Scruggs’s Foggy Mountain Breakdown 45 record—not the 1949 version, but still my favorite version back then when I was a kid,” he recalled. “I also heard Earl play on The Beverly Hillbillies television show. I began playing at age 15 with several lessons, and then just picked it up on my own after that. I’m about to turn 60, so that’s about 45 years of playing. I haven’t played professionally, but I have been on stage several times for local programs and nursing home visits.”
If he had to choose, Ware’s favorite banjo player of all time would be Earl Scruggs, “and after that, Little Roy Lewis and Lewis Phillips, Alan Munde, Tom Adams, Richard Underwood, Sonny Osborne, Barry Crabtree, and Mike Lilly—a few off the top of my head, in no particular order,” he said.
Steven has loved bluegrass since his dad took him to his first bluegrass festival in 1974: Rod Kennedy’s Quiet Valley Ranch in Kerrville, Texas—where he was “first irrevocably drawn to the banjo by Little Roy and the Lewis Family. Yes, they would be singing songs about Jesus with a hard-driving banjo, and winning over a crowd at least partially comprised of inebriated fans!” he remembered, smiling.
Steven said he entered the Strings for Dreams Bluegrass Raffle “to support the music that I love, but also, of course, to get a shot at winning my favorite Deering—the Golden Era!”
Steven Ware teaches math at a technical college in Waco. “I have a lovely wife and the world’s greatest kids,” he added. “And about winning—I am humbled and thankful, is all I can say!”
The Strings for Dreams Bluegrass Raffle is the annual spring fundraiser that supports the work of the IBMA Foundation, which supports programs and initiatives fostering the growth of bluegrass music. The Foundation helps donors create a legacy for future generations of musicians and fans by connecting resources to projects that focus on bluegrass music-related arts and culture, education, literary work, and historic preservation. For more info on the International Bluegrass Music Assoc. Foundation, go to https://bluegrassfoundation.org.
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