The old adage about selling snow to the Eskimos is true about Galway man Tom Cussen. The leading Irish banjo- maker is now exporting the instruments to the home of the instrument, the southern states of the US.
Mr Cussen, who lives outside Clarinbridge, at Slieveaun, is making instruments for musicians from San Francisco to Stockholm from a tiny workshop attached to his Co Galway home.
"There is also great demand for banjos in Germany, and this is due to the number of bluegrass music groups there and the continuing popularity of the Irish ballad group The Dubliners, who have toured regularly in that country since the late 1960s," he said.
Recently this banjo-maker and musician, who is also a founder member of the Irish traditional music group Shaskeen, returned from a musical instrument-makers conference in the home of country music, Nashville, Tennessee.
"I suppose you could say it's a bit like trying to export coal to Newcastle," he said. "But I am exporting some of my Galway-made banjos and mandolas to the place which has some of the best banjo-pickers and banjo-makers in the world, Nashville, also known as Music City USA."
France is also a growing market for the Galway-made banjos. "The French prefer the four-string banjos which I make as they are more suitable for playing traditional and folk music. The growing popularity of Irish traditional music has been a huge help for sales of banjos all over Europe." said Mr Cussen.
While he admits that his trade as a maker of fretted instruments is only catering for a niche market, and there is no fortune to be made in the banjo-making business, his weeks and months of painstaking work on each instrument give him great job satisfaction.
"If you want to do it properly it is a clear case of quality over quantity as banjo-making is not like turning out some product off an assembly line.
"I've now exported banjos to every continent except South America, from northern Sweden to south Australia.
"I learned a lot from meeting with the many American makers of stringed instruments who attended the conference in Nashville," he said.
Tom Gilmore