When you're extremely bored....

[B381]

As some know I have been working 12 hour days for several in a row due to this hurricane. For the past 7 hours I have been sitting on, (babysitting) a flooded area....which, leads to boredom.

So, I started pondering things and doing research. This was an interesting factoid:

THE ORIGIN OF THE MICHAEL KELLY NAME
Who is Michael Kelly?

We get that question a lot, so we thought we would answer it right here. The founder’s name is Tracy Hoeft; we will let him explain the brand name:

“When founding this guitar company I wanted it to have a family name. My motivation was all about accountability and commitment. I had seen other founders with their name on their product and the crazy amount of commitment they had to their products; I wanted to assure that for this line of instruments.”

“However when your name is Tracy Hoeft you do wonder, ‘Who would want that on their headstock?’ An idea hit me. Since the goal was a commitment I could never forget, I decided to name it after my then very young children. Michael was only 6 and Kelly 3 at the time. I knew if I named the brand after them, I would never be OK with anything less than great. So Michael Kelly Guitars was born. My daughter, Kelly, would tell you now that a better name would have been Kelly Michael Guitars, but being 3 at the time, she didn’t get a vote.”

[MikeZito]

VERY cool!

There is nothing like using the love of your kids to keep you honest.

[Roger Moss]

Interesting how these things come about. Too bad they're not better instruments...

[Steve VandeWater]

I've always wondered who Michael Kelly was. Now I know. Thanks!

[gspiess]

Boredom often leads to a wealth of worthless knowledge. Well done.

[BillyEllison]

This is so cool. I have never been interested in this brand but this makes me like them. I will look into them more now that I know that. I could never do that with my kids names though. Mostly because I named my oldest Gibson so that names is already taken by a company. My youngest name might work though (Gavin). I really want to build my own mandolins if I could find a luthier school near me I would use my G.I. Bill and go there in a heart beat. I considered using my own last name but Ellison is to close to Ellis. So i'm not sure. Anyway thanks for posting this. I like learning things like this.

[JEStanek]

There are many who swear by them for reliability as stage mandolins and their affordability to replace.

Fun fact. A Gibson is also a shoe (my beloved Doctor Martens Gibsons) and old bowl back mandolin cases were often called clown shoes!

What's in a name? Ha!

Jamie

[gspiess]

I always thought he was Ned's brother:

[MikeEdgerton]

Actually a few years back Morgan-Monroe had a hilarious explanation of their name that has disappeared from their website.

I like the fact that Michael Kelly is named after the founder's kids.

[B381]

Actually a few years back Morgan-Monroe had a hilarious explanation of their name that has disappeared from their website.

I like the fact that Michael Kelly is named after the founder's kids.

See......more research and a few Google pages....

March 25, 2016

THAT WAS THEN...

Legend has it, generations ago in the hills of southern Indiana lived a man named Morgan Monroe who was a musical craftsmen that shaped the local hardwoods into the finest stringed instruments around, and in the process he turned the local timber supply into national folklore. Finding just the right grade of tonewood from the forest was always an all day affair for Morgan Monroe and it was not uncommon for him to search from sun-up to sun-down for just the right materials. After he hand selected the perfect timber it was then cut, cleared and dragged many miles by a team of horses through the forest where it was finally stacked and cured until it reached the optimum point to begin its metamorphosis from a mighty tree to a musical instrument.

The aroma of sawdust permeated the air and the sounds of his handtools could be heard emanating from the valley as each instrument was shaped and formed until it was unique and one-of-a-kind. Ol’ Morgan Monroe combined quality and pride in his work and never let an instrument leave his workshop until he certified that it was “perfect”. Then, and only then, was an instrument worthy of the name Morgan Monroe.

In those days the quality of your product was a direct reflection of who you were as a craftsman and nobody was more committed to achieving the perfect partnership between beauty and tone than Morgan Monroe.


THIS IS NOW...

Nowadays, as the simple life of that early luthier gives way to superhighways and high-rise apartments, the tradition and commitment to detail and tone hasn’t. Still in place at the heart and soul of every Morgan Monroe instrument is the philosophy that you’re only as good as the quality you keep.

That same wilderness that Morgan Monroe lived and worked in has changed very little over the years, much like the work ethic that made him famous. Its been said that in 1929, after the last original descendants moved from the area, the Morgan-Monroe State Forest was established and now encompasses more than 24,000 acres of Indiana’s finest hardwoods.

Today when you pick up a Morgan Monroe instrument you can tell from the first note that the high standards he set long ago will never go out of style and the more things change....the more they stay the same.
This is what legends are made of...

...this is Morgan Monroe.

Welcome Home.

[MikeEdgerton]

Yup, that's the one. Don't take that one to the bank.

[MikeEdgerton]

This guy was so famous they named two counties after him in Indiana.

Morgan and Monroe

[JeffD]

Many years ago there was a brand of radios called XAM. They are collectible now I suppose. The radios were actually manufactured by others, but sold under the XAM brand.

The story of the brand name was that the original owner spelled the name of his cat backwards.

[MikeEdgerton]

Here I thought he spelled the name of my grandson backwards.

[George R. Lane]

See......more research and a few Google pages....

Me thinks he was slightly tone deaf.

[Dave Fultz]

I invented a boredom game I call Teddy Roosevelt. I often look up stuff in Wikipedia. A couple times a day sometimes. So let’s say I am bored and I have Wikipedia open on a page about King Hammurabi. I see how many clicks it takes to get to Theodore Roosevelt’s wiki page. So I might click on what city he was in, then explorers, then American explorers, them America, then government, then presidents, etc.

Maybe I’ll change it to Micheal Kelly next time for a challenge.

[Roger Moss]

I invented a boredom game I call Teddy Roosevelt. I often look up stuff in Wikipedia. A couple times a day sometimes. So let’s say I am bored and I have Wikipedia open on a page about King Hammurabi. I see how many clicks it takes to get to Theodore Roosevelt’s wiki page. So I might click on what city he was in, then explorers, then American explorers, them America, then government, then presidents, etc.

Maybe I’ll change it to Micheal Kelly next time for a challenge.

In the 80's and early 90's I would spend entire days at the library researching whatever topic had come up the day before that I was unfamiliar with. Now I do the same thing on my couch and Wikipedia is my primary source. Very convenient but sometimes I miss the pleasure of spending countless hours with my head buried in actual books.

[MikeEdgerton]

The library is still there. Just sayin'.

[Roger Moss]

The library is still there. Just sayin'.

Yes but I can't get around like I used to. An excursion outside is too much of an ordeal to undertake for pleasure.

[Jess L.]

Yes but I can't get around like I used to. An excursion outside is too much of an ordeal to undertake for pleasure.

Yep. I totally understand.

[LadysSolo]

When I was a kid we had an Encyclopedia Brittanica at home, I would just pull volume off the shelf, open it up, and start reading on whatever topic I opened to. I still find myself remembering things that I would have no reason to know. Makes me wonder if the information is from my random readings from when I was a kid.

[Willem]

When I was a kid we had an Encyclopedia Brittanica at home, I would just pull volume off the shelf, open it up, and start reading on whatever topic I opened to. I still find myself remembering things that I would have no reason to know. Makes me wonder if the information is from my random readings from when I was a kid.

I thought I was the only one...

[Timbofood]

I thought I was the only one...

Nope! I find myself being the fount of generally useless trivia often, it comes from reading the encyclopedia and of course myriad other sources.

[Roger Moss]

When I was a kid we had an Encyclopedia Brittanica at home, I would just pull volume off the shelf, open it up, and start reading on whatever topic I opened to. I still find myself remembering things that I would have no reason to know. Makes me wonder if the information is from my random readings from when I was a kid.

Me too. And the dictionary. And Audubon books. And National Geographic. And...

[MikeEdgerton]

I'm pretty sure it's not that unusual if you were old enough to remember when your family got their first television set. You pretty much read what was available. The encyclopedia set we had was from 1936 and there were things in there that were pretty harsh. You gravitated towards the books that could keep you occupied. Children then probably weren't much different than children now. They just had to look farther for the intellectual stimuli. You couldn't just change the channel or go to a different website.