Handmade Tunes Didgeridoos Among Offerings At Magical Musical Instrument Sale

Didgeridoo.

It’s not the latest virus to follow Ebola’s headlines, a computer game or a punk band. It isn’t an animal byproduct, a microbrew or a yuppie sport utility vehicle.

It’s the world’s oldest musical instrument - manufactured in part by termites - and the center of Sandra Mathews’ creative world.

Mathews got into building the throaty wind instruments just for the Coeur d’Alene Cultural Center’s Magical Musical Instrument Sale on Saturday. She’s been playing the long tubes - one end flared, one coated with a thick helping of beeswax - for about two and a half years.

This seems a good way for her to earn Christmas money for her two young children, she said.

No trade secrets shared here. Suffice it to say that her didgeridoos are not made of the same material Australian aborigines have been using for 50,000 years. Down under, termites start the process by eating out the inside of bloodwood or stringy bark trees.

A “termite dige” as they are called, is quite expensive. Mathews is marketing the more affordable mass music model. Children love them.

“It’s a simple instrument to play,” Mathews explains. “You don’t have to be able to read music, you just have to be able to breathe and ‘plttttt,”’ she said, imitating the sound children make when they stick out their tongues and blow air through their mouths.

An anthropology student at North Idaho College, Mathews also plays in a band, “Moments of Clarity,” and teaches didgeridoo-making in local schools through the Citizen’s Council for the Arts. She waxes enthusiastically about efforts to make the didgeridoos part of everything from ethnic music to symphonies.

There’s even a didgeridoo virtuoso: an Australian named Alan Durgin, whose goal “is to bring the didgeridoo to the world.”

Nick Schilling’s creative efforts are less global, but no less enthusiastic. He just wants to build excellent guitars.

A former house builder and furniture maker, Schilling’s life unintentionally metamorphosed into Nichols Guitar Co. “I’ve always worked with wood,” Schilling said. “I repaired enough guitars that should have been thrown away that I decided it would be easier to build them myself.”

It’s the classic man-finally-meet-savocation story. “A lot of my passion is music. Once I resigned myself to that passion, my life got a lot easier,” Schilling said.

He started building electric guitars two years ago. He’s on serial number 50. Not all efforts earn his label.

“There’s a lot of firewood in there,” Schilling said with a smile. There is success among the strings. A guitar player for country singer Reba McEntire has two Nichols guitars, for example.

But Schilling isn’t looking for production. He wants to develop a couple of really great models and just handcraft the best.

Doug Porter pulls up a stool to taste the wares, so to speak. “Custom builders take a lot more care, have tighter tolerances so (their) guitars have a sweeter sound,” Porter says after a riff.

“You don’t get that with a production guitar unless you pay $10,000,” Porter added. “And then it’s questionable.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo