Over the last eight years, Pisgah Banjo Co. has become one of the top builders of openback banjos in the United States. Founder Patrick Sawyer (formerly Heavner1) started the company in 2012 with the goal of providing affordable, quality banjos with the old-time community in mind.
The company’s stated mission on its website is “to create affordable, professional quality, handcrafted banjos using 100 percent native Appalachian hardwoods.” Aside from more common woods like maple, walnut and cherry, Pisgah also uses persimmon in its instruments. You won’t find ebony on the company’s fingerboards and headstock overlays. Instead persimmon and Richlite are used. Richlite is an eco-friendly paper-based composite material that has the look of ebony or rosewood and is far more sustainable.
Sustainability is at the heart of Sawyer’s business plan. In addition to using local materials, the Pisgah Banjo workshop is entirely solar-powered. Sawyer studied renewable energy in college, and even worked in the solar industry for five years prior to becoming a full-time banjo builder.
This whole thing started when Sawyer, 33, began playing banjo when he was in college, although he says he had dreams of playing the five-string when he was in sixth grade. His first banjo was a cheap resonator banjo. After about eight months of playing, he was ready for an upgrade. A poor experience attempting to order a new instrument from a well-known builder led Sawyer to learn to build his first banjo in 2005 from local luthier Charlie Glenn.
“He had several banjos for me to try and I was impressed by his shop,” Sawyer says. “Having done some woodworking with my father restoring furniture and making reproduction colonial pieces, I was intrigued by the banjo making process.”
Sawyer asked Glenn to show him how to make a banjo. With the knowledge gained that day, Sawyer went home for Thanksgiving break and roughed out a banjo neck and went back several times to Glenn for suggestions and information on fretting setup and other details.
“I finished it up over Christmas break and had now something in which I built with my own hands that I could play, be creative with and interact with other pickers,” Sawyer says. “It felt awesome to build something that brought me so much joy, not to mention the joy of process while building it. I was hooked from there and simply could not stop building banjos.”
Sawyer was born and raised in Morganton, North Carolina, located in the foothills of the Blue Ridge mountains. He graduated from Appalachian State University with a bachelor's degree in geography with a focus in community and regional planning, minoring in Appropriate Technology, which dealt with renewable energy, specifically solar technologies.
“My ultimate idea was to end up with a job as a planner for sustainable communities,” Sawyer says. “After graduating college, I worked at the John C. Campbell folk school in Brasstown, North Carolina, as a student host, where I was able to take crafting classes every week in exchange for being on call 24/7. I mostly did blacksmithing and took the occasional chair making class. After the Folk School, I hiked the Appalachian Trail for six months in its entirety and landed in Asheville, North Carolina, because that is where my girlfriend at the time was living.”
Aside from his personal connections and job opportunities in Asheville, Sawyer says the city was a “pretty cool place” to live.
“I tell folks you can’t throw a rock downtown without hitting a banjo player or a brewery,” he quips.
Although Sawyer didn’t pick up a banjo until he was 18, he was far from a newcomer to playing an instrument. He had originally gone to Appalachian State to pursue a degree in music.
“I was a relatively accomplished classical and jazz trombone player in high school,” he says. “It just seemed like the next logical step. Shortly after arriving at college, I quickly realized that I didn’t fit in with the music students and simply lost interest. I just felt like folks were taking music too seriously to the point of hysteria.”
As Sawyer’s interest in pursuing a degree in music was waning, he took a class in Appalachian Studies that sparked his interest in the regional culture and music, which led him to old-time.
“I realized music doesn’t have to be so rigid and serious,” he says. “I didn’t have to go and practice four hours a day in a cubicle. I quickly got my hands on a fiddle and promptly started to try my hand at fiddle tunes. I was having a very difficult time because I didn’t have the tunes in my head. I borrowed my friend’s banjo and found I could pick out the tunes easier and sound more like I knew what I was doing. This is the beauty of banjo. You can sound really good in a short period of time once you figure out the rhythm.”
Sawyer started going to a local old-time jam in Boone and was hooked. After a few years of playing banjo and getting tunes in his head, learning the fiddle came easier.
While his passion for playing old-time music had grown strong, learning to build his first banjo sparked another passion that led to the creation of two companies to supply quality banjos to players at an affordable price.
Pisgah Banjo Co. (PBC) employs four full-time workers, plus Sawyer. During the company’s biggest production year, the PBC crew built 330 banjos. Sawyer says the company plans to build 450 this year, and potentially more each subsequent year as PBC hones its processes and maintains quality.
“We are in the process of building some specialized machinery to make some processes quicker and more accurate,” Sawyer adds.
Sawyer says he enjoys every aspect of the banjo building process, and he’s constantly tweaking things to improve efficiency.
“If there is something I’m frustrated with, I will change that process to make it easier on my employees and myself,” he says. “I do the setup on just about every banjo that goes out the door and handle the quality control. I mostly enjoy coming up with new designs and process ideas to make things more efficient and higher quality.”
Sawyer finds his inspiration in the construction and building techniques of the banjos built around the turn of the 20th century.
“Early on, I was attracted to the original Vega and Fairbanks banjos, as well as the tools and methods that were available at the time,” he says. “Upon research and conversations with historians, those banjos were being built in large quantities, 1,000 per year, using steam power, belt driven machinery. It was the height of the Industrial Revolution, and they really had their production methods figured out. My fascination with machines, tools, history and production go hand-in-hand with banjo building.”
Likewise, Sawyer says he’s drawn to turn-of-the-century aesthetics and construction, and he tries to incorporate those features within PBC’s mission of using sustainable materials.
“We want to make a ‘player’s banjo,’” he says. “Something affordable yet beautiful and durable and won’t just hang on a wall all the time. I feel we have mostly accomplished that and plan to further that mission.”
Sawyer prides himself in not playing favorites when it comes to PBC banjos and their configuration, such as rim size, tone ring, wood, scale and other features.
I like every banjo we build,” he exclaims. “As a rule, I don’t make myself a banjo. All the options we offer are acceptable in the old-time world and would not offer them if I didn’t think it sounded good or wouldn’t fit in an old-time setting. I’m also not above any banjo we build and will take anything out of our shop to play.”
That attitude also allows Sawyer to constantly test different combinations of scale, wood, head, bridge and other setups.
“I also feel that a lot of builders make just one ‘sound’ or just have one setup that they themselves prefer,” he says. “There are so many opinions and preferences that players enjoy, it’s hard to say that one setup or combination is the ‘best.’ It really depends on what mood I’m in as to which banjo I pick up and play. This is why we have a lot of repeat customers, because they know we can build them several different instruments with completely different tones. This is the beauty of the banjo. The sky’s the limit with the combination of options we offer. Things would be boring if I just made one sound or only played one banjo with the same voice all the time. It’s nice to mix things up.”
Sustainability touches every aspect of PBC’s business, from using local woods and materials to powering the workshop with renewable energy. When it comes to his reasons for only native Appalachian hardwoods, Sawyer bristles at the inquiry.
“A better question is why do people use exotic hardwoods? You don’t need to at all and it contributes to all that is wrong with the wood industry,” he says. “Deforestation of the rainforest and sensitive parts of our world should be in question, not my use of Appalachian hardwoods.”
Even so-called “sustainably sourced exotics” still come from the other side of the world, Sawyer argues, involving the use of fossil fuels to transport.
“Using local anything is in itself more sustainable, and I would encourage any woodworker to use native woods to their area,” he says. “Southern Appalachia has an amazing resource and plethora of instrument-worthy hardwoods. Also, from a historical standpoint, early American and Caribbean banjo builders didn’t source their wood from halfway around the world. They used what was local. Using local materials is the ultimate tradition and most sustainable. I hope to encourage this for any builder until it’s the norm. I have no idea why I’m still in the minority on this opinion.”
Sawyer believes that sustainability and renewable energy should be important to everyone.
“Being able to build banjos with a zero-carbon footprint was a plan from the very beginning and now it’s a reality,” he says. “I simply want to set the example of how I want the businesses that I support to be and to encourage renewable energy as much as possible. We only have so many resources on this planet and need to use them wisely. Solar is the perfect solution and I am proud that we have achieved this goal. If I can do it, any business can as long as you value sustainably.”
Sawyer has developed a business model for Pisgah Banjos that aims for a 50/50 split between supplying banjos for retail sale and custom orders.
“There will always be a market for banjos that people want now and for banjos that folks will wait six months for,” he explains. “We love both our retailers and are custom banjo customers. It’s just a way for us to diversify our market and try to accommodate the banjo community. We hope to increase our retail market in the near future in order to fill a vast void in the quality affordable banjo market.”
One thing that sets PBC apart from other builders is by offering spunover rims, a fairly rare offering in today’s banjo market.
“I am pretty proud of our spun rims,” Sawyer says. “We happened to develop a way to make these that are affordable, durable and sound amazing. Spun rims have a direct link to the drum industry pre-1860. Cladding your drum in metal made it last longer and protected it from dents. The same can be said for banjo rims today. You don’t have to worry about scratches or dings when you take it to a festival. Also, the metal forces the sound to project more which in turns makes a spun rim more responsive to play.”
Pisgah Banjo Co. offers three options for metal cladding: stainless steel, copper and brass. They are available in both 11- and 12-inch rims, with the option of also adding a Dobson-style tone ring. Sawyer says the company makes and sells 50/50 wood rims and metal spun rims.
For those interested in custom orders (or for those who like to dream), Pisgah offers a custom Banjo Design Tool on its website that allows you to pick out each aspect of your commissioned banjo. In addition to making it easier for customers to submit orders, it also streamlines the process for Sawyer.
“Before the design tool, I spent so much time answering emails and now because of the design tool, it’s all self-explanatory for our customers,” he says. “I have a rule to answer every email in 24 to 48 hours and can now do this without spending all day at the computer. I can actually get more work done. Customers like how easy it is to order a custom banjo without weeks of back and forth questions and answers. We are currently expanding our banjo design tool with more options and pictures.”
“Balsam Banjo Works was initially a way for us to recover quickly from a huge investment in producing banjo hardware,” Sawyer says. “This stuff is not cheap to make and being able to sell it lets us recoup our investment in a short amount of time. It also allowed us to pass our savings on to our banjo customers and make our banjos more affordable in keeping with our mission. There were also very few American made banjo parts on the market and wanted to change this.”
Starting Balsam Banjo Works also allows Sawyer to collaborate with other banjo builders and network within the industry.
“I know or am friends with just about every builder out there,” he says. “It’s fun for me and I like being able to help out other builders and fill a need for American-made hardware that doesn’t break the bank.”
Making his own hardware helps with the company’s cash flow and allows Sawyer to be creative and offer unique hardware.
“It simply allowed Pisgah Banjos to grow quickly,” he says. “Having made good relationships with machine shops, also gives me more resources to collaborate with machinists to design new hardware that is efficient to produce.”
Having that collaboration with other builders, machine shops and others is important to Sawyer, but he says it’s also a historical tradition in the banjo building industry.
“Makers sold each other hardware all the time 100 years ago,” Sawyer adds. “Although there is something to be said about having unique offerings, I feel I can overall help the banjo community by offering American-made hardware and accessories to builders and players. I would just get bored if I isolated myself and my hardware only to me. I’m excited to see builders using Balsam hardware because they are supporting American-made and being part of a long tradition. I understand firsthand how difficult it is to source quality affordable hardware, and I’m proud that I can produce and provide it.”
Sustainability is at the heart of Sawyer’s business plan. In addition to using local materials, the Pisgah Banjo workshop is entirely solar-powered. Sawyer studied renewable energy in college, and even worked in the solar industry for five years prior to becoming a full-time banjo builder.
This whole thing started when Sawyer, 33, began playing banjo when he was in college, although he says he had dreams of playing the five-string when he was in sixth grade. His first banjo was a cheap resonator banjo. After about eight months of playing, he was ready for an upgrade. A poor experience attempting to order a new instrument from a well-known builder led Sawyer to learn to build his first banjo in 2005 from local luthier Charlie Glenn.
“He had several banjos for me to try and I was impressed by his shop,” Sawyer says. “Having done some woodworking with my father restoring furniture and making reproduction colonial pieces, I was intrigued by the banjo making process.”
Sawyer asked Glenn to show him how to make a banjo. With the knowledge gained that day, Sawyer went home for Thanksgiving break and roughed out a banjo neck and went back several times to Glenn for suggestions and information on fretting setup and other details.
“I finished it up over Christmas break and had now something in which I built with my own hands that I could play, be creative with and interact with other pickers,” Sawyer says. “It felt awesome to build something that brought me so much joy, not to mention the joy of process while building it. I was hooked from there and simply could not stop building banjos.”
Getting Hooked
“My ultimate idea was to end up with a job as a planner for sustainable communities,” Sawyer says. “After graduating college, I worked at the John C. Campbell folk school in Brasstown, North Carolina, as a student host, where I was able to take crafting classes every week in exchange for being on call 24/7. I mostly did blacksmithing and took the occasional chair making class. After the Folk School, I hiked the Appalachian Trail for six months in its entirety and landed in Asheville, North Carolina, because that is where my girlfriend at the time was living.”
Aside from his personal connections and job opportunities in Asheville, Sawyer says the city was a “pretty cool place” to live.
“I tell folks you can’t throw a rock downtown without hitting a banjo player or a brewery,” he quips.
Although Sawyer didn’t pick up a banjo until he was 18, he was far from a newcomer to playing an instrument. He had originally gone to Appalachian State to pursue a degree in music.
“I was a relatively accomplished classical and jazz trombone player in high school,” he says. “It just seemed like the next logical step. Shortly after arriving at college, I quickly realized that I didn’t fit in with the music students and simply lost interest. I just felt like folks were taking music too seriously to the point of hysteria.”
As Sawyer’s interest in pursuing a degree in music was waning, he took a class in Appalachian Studies that sparked his interest in the regional culture and music, which led him to old-time.
“I realized music doesn’t have to be so rigid and serious,” he says. “I didn’t have to go and practice four hours a day in a cubicle. I quickly got my hands on a fiddle and promptly started to try my hand at fiddle tunes. I was having a very difficult time because I didn’t have the tunes in my head. I borrowed my friend’s banjo and found I could pick out the tunes easier and sound more like I knew what I was doing. This is the beauty of banjo. You can sound really good in a short period of time once you figure out the rhythm.”
Sawyer started going to a local old-time jam in Boone and was hooked. After a few years of playing banjo and getting tunes in his head, learning the fiddle came easier.
The Banjo Business
Pisgah Banjo Co. (PBC) employs four full-time workers, plus Sawyer. During the company’s biggest production year, the PBC crew built 330 banjos. Sawyer says the company plans to build 450 this year, and potentially more each subsequent year as PBC hones its processes and maintains quality.
“We are in the process of building some specialized machinery to make some processes quicker and more accurate,” Sawyer adds.
Sawyer says he enjoys every aspect of the banjo building process, and he’s constantly tweaking things to improve efficiency.
“If there is something I’m frustrated with, I will change that process to make it easier on my employees and myself,” he says. “I do the setup on just about every banjo that goes out the door and handle the quality control. I mostly enjoy coming up with new designs and process ideas to make things more efficient and higher quality.”
Sawyer finds his inspiration in the construction and building techniques of the banjos built around the turn of the 20th century.
“Early on, I was attracted to the original Vega and Fairbanks banjos, as well as the tools and methods that were available at the time,” he says. “Upon research and conversations with historians, those banjos were being built in large quantities, 1,000 per year, using steam power, belt driven machinery. It was the height of the Industrial Revolution, and they really had their production methods figured out. My fascination with machines, tools, history and production go hand-in-hand with banjo building.”
Likewise, Sawyer says he’s drawn to turn-of-the-century aesthetics and construction, and he tries to incorporate those features within PBC’s mission of using sustainable materials.
“We want to make a ‘player’s banjo,’” he says. “Something affordable yet beautiful and durable and won’t just hang on a wall all the time. I feel we have mostly accomplished that and plan to further that mission.”
Sawyer prides himself in not playing favorites when it comes to PBC banjos and their configuration, such as rim size, tone ring, wood, scale and other features.
I like every banjo we build,” he exclaims. “As a rule, I don’t make myself a banjo. All the options we offer are acceptable in the old-time world and would not offer them if I didn’t think it sounded good or wouldn’t fit in an old-time setting. I’m also not above any banjo we build and will take anything out of our shop to play.”
That attitude also allows Sawyer to constantly test different combinations of scale, wood, head, bridge and other setups.
“I also feel that a lot of builders make just one ‘sound’ or just have one setup that they themselves prefer,” he says. “There are so many opinions and preferences that players enjoy, it’s hard to say that one setup or combination is the ‘best.’ It really depends on what mood I’m in as to which banjo I pick up and play. This is why we have a lot of repeat customers, because they know we can build them several different instruments with completely different tones. This is the beauty of the banjo. The sky’s the limit with the combination of options we offer. Things would be boring if I just made one sound or only played one banjo with the same voice all the time. It’s nice to mix things up.”
A Sustainable Mission
“A better question is why do people use exotic hardwoods? You don’t need to at all and it contributes to all that is wrong with the wood industry,” he says. “Deforestation of the rainforest and sensitive parts of our world should be in question, not my use of Appalachian hardwoods.”
Even so-called “sustainably sourced exotics” still come from the other side of the world, Sawyer argues, involving the use of fossil fuels to transport.
“Using local anything is in itself more sustainable, and I would encourage any woodworker to use native woods to their area,” he says. “Southern Appalachia has an amazing resource and plethora of instrument-worthy hardwoods. Also, from a historical standpoint, early American and Caribbean banjo builders didn’t source their wood from halfway around the world. They used what was local. Using local materials is the ultimate tradition and most sustainable. I hope to encourage this for any builder until it’s the norm. I have no idea why I’m still in the minority on this opinion.”
Sawyer believes that sustainability and renewable energy should be important to everyone.
“Being able to build banjos with a zero-carbon footprint was a plan from the very beginning and now it’s a reality,” he says. “I simply want to set the example of how I want the businesses that I support to be and to encourage renewable energy as much as possible. We only have so many resources on this planet and need to use them wisely. Solar is the perfect solution and I am proud that we have achieved this goal. If I can do it, any business can as long as you value sustainably.”
Retail vs. Custom
“There will always be a market for banjos that people want now and for banjos that folks will wait six months for,” he explains. “We love both our retailers and are custom banjo customers. It’s just a way for us to diversify our market and try to accommodate the banjo community. We hope to increase our retail market in the near future in order to fill a vast void in the quality affordable banjo market.”
One thing that sets PBC apart from other builders is by offering spunover rims, a fairly rare offering in today’s banjo market.
“I am pretty proud of our spun rims,” Sawyer says. “We happened to develop a way to make these that are affordable, durable and sound amazing. Spun rims have a direct link to the drum industry pre-1860. Cladding your drum in metal made it last longer and protected it from dents. The same can be said for banjo rims today. You don’t have to worry about scratches or dings when you take it to a festival. Also, the metal forces the sound to project more which in turns makes a spun rim more responsive to play.”
Pisgah Banjo Co. offers three options for metal cladding: stainless steel, copper and brass. They are available in both 11- and 12-inch rims, with the option of also adding a Dobson-style tone ring. Sawyer says the company makes and sells 50/50 wood rims and metal spun rims.
For those interested in custom orders (or for those who like to dream), Pisgah offers a custom Banjo Design Tool on its website that allows you to pick out each aspect of your commissioned banjo. In addition to making it easier for customers to submit orders, it also streamlines the process for Sawyer.
“Before the design tool, I spent so much time answering emails and now because of the design tool, it’s all self-explanatory for our customers,” he says. “I have a rule to answer every email in 24 to 48 hours and can now do this without spending all day at the computer. I can actually get more work done. Customers like how easy it is to order a custom banjo without weeks of back and forth questions and answers. We are currently expanding our banjo design tool with more options and pictures.”
Supplying Banjo Parts
In addition to building banjos, Sawyer also started a company to supply banjo parts to other builders. Balsam Banjo Works was established in 2014, and offers a full line of banjo hardware, parts and accessories.“Balsam Banjo Works was initially a way for us to recover quickly from a huge investment in producing banjo hardware,” Sawyer says. “This stuff is not cheap to make and being able to sell it lets us recoup our investment in a short amount of time. It also allowed us to pass our savings on to our banjo customers and make our banjos more affordable in keeping with our mission. There were also very few American made banjo parts on the market and wanted to change this.”
Starting Balsam Banjo Works also allows Sawyer to collaborate with other banjo builders and network within the industry.
“I know or am friends with just about every builder out there,” he says. “It’s fun for me and I like being able to help out other builders and fill a need for American-made hardware that doesn’t break the bank.”
Making his own hardware helps with the company’s cash flow and allows Sawyer to be creative and offer unique hardware.
“It simply allowed Pisgah Banjos to grow quickly,” he says. “Having made good relationships with machine shops, also gives me more resources to collaborate with machinists to design new hardware that is efficient to produce.”
Having that collaboration with other builders, machine shops and others is important to Sawyer, but he says it’s also a historical tradition in the banjo building industry.
“Makers sold each other hardware all the time 100 years ago,” Sawyer adds. “Although there is something to be said about having unique offerings, I feel I can overall help the banjo community by offering American-made hardware and accessories to builders and players. I would just get bored if I isolated myself and my hardware only to me. I’m excited to see builders using Balsam hardware because they are supporting American-made and being part of a long tradition. I understand firsthand how difficult it is to source quality affordable hardware, and I’m proud that I can produce and provide it.”
1 EDITOR'S NOTE: Patrick and his wife are still in the process of changing their last name to Sawyer, so you may notice on the Pisgah Banjo and Balsam Banjo Works websites and elsewhere that his name is still listed as Heavner. Patrick told me they are in a "weird transition phase right now" and to go ahead an use Sawyer.↩
Great caring people too....got to hike with them some on appalachian trail!
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