Cynthia Robertson

San Diego Business

Deering Banjo Releases New Kingston Trio Model Vega

Spring-Valley Based Company a Fine-Tuned Factory
By Cynthia Robertson
Posted on Wed, Feb 28th, 2007
Last updated Thu, Mar 1st, 2007

A hand-crafted banner from the 6^th grade class of Saint Sophia Academy hangs in the reception area of Spring Valley-based Deering Banjo. The banner says "Thank you for being part of our community."

Janet and Greg Deering, co-owners of the banjo factory, recently went to the National Association of Musical Merchants in Anaheim, where all the music stores go to do their buying. "We released our brand new Kingston Trio Model Vega long-neck this month," said Greg.

The company is the largest manufacturer of banjos in the world. No other company manufactures just banjoes. Deering specializes in them, making three different brands of Good Time, Deering and Vega Banjos. The different brand names are for the different playing styles.

The Deering Banjo Company is, in fact, a testament to the folk music community thriving in San Diego. "In some ways it is a bit of a surprise that such a musical community has thrived here," admitted Greg. "On the other hand, it’s quite typical. Just a nucleus of tightly knit friends who all had a passion for building instruments. We all had entrepreneurship in our blood."

"Some people will come in and ask what we are doing in southern California. They say we belong in Tennessee or Northern Carolina," said Janet. "But Greg and I are both native San Diegans. We’re here to stay."

But why Spring Valley? "We live in El Cajon and wanted to stay in East County. Frankly, we were not interested in doing business within the San Diego City limits. We looked in the county itself," Janet said.

"It’s an empirical fact that it’s easier to do business in the county," said Greg. "There are fewer regulations to deal with. There’s no way we could have had afforded such a building as this within the city limits. Just to get the building permit would have been easily ten times higher in cost within the city. As a result, manufacturers in particular are high-tailing it out of the city".

The San Diego Building Department, Fire Department and Business License Office are all hard to deal with. But the San Diego County Health Department is not at all hard to deal with. Sign usage is also less restrictive in the County than the city.

Air Quality Board and County Health inspect Deering Banjo once a year, looking into matters such as waste material and water quality. "We had a huge argon tank. Argon is a gas used in welding. I had to get a smaller tank of argon, when our company moved into the current facility in 2001," said Greg. "That was in accordance with the Air Quality Board. But I didn’t find the Board to be a problem."

"You know, if you stay clean in industry, comply with everything, you’ll be fine," said Janet.

"We have to make sure we know more even than the regulators," said Greg. "We’ve cleaned up in our finishing materials way beyond what they’ve expected."

Indeed, it is a Deering trademark to go beyond the expected, even in the early days, far before Greg had envisioned Deering Banjo. His love of banjo playing came about through the song "Tijuana Jail" performed by Kingston Trio. Greg’s neighbor had a guitar and suggested that he get a banjo so that they could play the song together. Banjo music became Greg’s first love.

While he was an Industry Major at San Diego State College, Greg built his own banjo. Then he began playing in church groups, and people would ask him to make one for them.

"I finally bought myself a Gibson Banjo, although I really wanted a Vega, which was $450, a lot of money at that time, enough to buy a VW then," he said.

Though his parents wanted Deering to study biology in college and become a doctor, his eyes were on the Industrial Arts program, in which a brother of one of his friends was enrolled. "I got to see all the shop classes and eventually, I took woodworking classes," he said.

In the fall of 1969, he built a banjo, his very first. When he finished his woodworking project, the teacher was convinced I’d taken it somewhere else and gotten help with it. So I only got a ‘B’ for the class. But years later, he told all the professors how proud he was of me. He’d forgotten about the ‘B’ that he gave me," Deering said, smiling as he recalled the incident.

In the meantime, Deering had begun taking banjo lessons from a girl who worked at the Blue Guitar, now located on Mission Gorge Road. Blue Guitar was quite cliquish and she was part of the in-crowd, Deering explained. "So when I went to play there and told her how I built my own banjo, she went into a tirade for 20 minutes about how great the Blue Guitar was and how nobody could top them. They were considered the ‘gurus’ in repairing guitars back then," he said.

A few years later, Lee Folmer, who was in his Wood Shop class at San Diego State University, told Deering that he had a small music store out of his parents’ garage on College Avenue, where he built guitars along with Sam Radding along with Bob Morris, known as Captain Bob. "I couldn’t stay away from that place," he said. "I wasn’t getting paid, but I was just there, helping out."

Then one day Folmer and Radding were talking about how they didn’t want to do repair work anymore, so Gregg volunteered to take on the job. He ended up building himself a bench in their American Dream shop on Lester Avenue in Lemon Grove. "Bob, Lee and Sam let me run the repair bench like it was my own business, right there in the garage," said Greg.

San Diego’s folk music community was growing in ever-wider circles. Two brothers John and Tony Prim, who went to Madison High School, told Greg they had befriended a new kid in school, and this kid played banjo. "One day, I came to their house, and he was sitting on the couch," said Greg. "He turned out to be Bob Taylor, who now has Taylor Guitars in El Cajon."

The social scene at the time belonged mainly to the hippies. "They all liked the idea of owning their own business, but they didn’t really want to work. So when Bob showed up at the American Dream with his own guitar already built, Radding put him to work," Greg said.

By that time, both Taylor did the guitar work, while Deering repaired and built banjos. "We were the only young people around not busy being hippies smoking marijuana," said Greg, laughing.

It was the year 1974, and Greg married Janet. They initially moved to D.C. because Sam Radding was threatening to close down American Dream. For a thousand dollars, Radding sold the shop to Taylor. Janet and Greg returned to San Diego in late 1974. Greg needed a job badly, so he went to American Dream. Within minutes, they hired him.

"But I only lasted a few months there, since I was only making around $100 a month, and Janet and I had a 4-month old baby," he said.

"I remember those days well," said Janet. "Our budget was $30.00 a week. We were just kids back then."

Initially, the Deerings started out with nothing. Before they married, Greg had already told Janet that he wanted to start a banjo making business. She had been working with Hubbard Administrative Technology, and that helped her in the administrative part of the business.

"I had to re-focus my life," she said. "I joined in with him right away. I’d always wanted to make a product and we’d agreed that we wanted to own a business together. It’s what I wanted to do with my life. And so this has been a marriage made in heaven."

At first, they did everything by hand and went to salvage yards for machine parts. She was 20 years old; he was 24. For one year they crafted banjos by hand, and then they hired a couple more people each year after. "We would always add another piece of equipment or hire another person. I was actually on the production line for 15 years," said Janet.

In 1977, the Deerings moved their banjo-making business to the house across from where they lived. Taylor’s business grew to 70 employees. "In some ways, it was all a coincidence the way we were growing, but we were inspired by each other, too," said Greg.

In fact, Deering Banjo has grown so well over the past decades that it now is the owner of Vega Banjo Company. "The very guitar that I could not afford when I was in college is the high-end one we manufacture right here," said Greg.

For the last 30 years, the Deering Banjo Company has been music to the ears of countless enthusiasts, including big music names from Aerosmith to Hootie and the Blowfish to Wayne Newton.

"We give a lifetime warranty. We make our banjos to last for future generations," said Janet, who added that the banjo is expanding in popularity, as people appreciate the fact that the banjo is deeply rooted in history.

Deering Banjo has plans in the works to hit a larger mass market.

Factory tours are given every day at 1 p.m. Contact the Deering Banjo Company at 619-464-8252 or go to www.deeringbanjo.com.

About the author: Cynthia Robertson is a freelance writer based in San Diego.
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Comments

Posted by Joseph McLellan	Thu, Mar 8th, 2007
Greg and Janet are wonderful business owners! In fact, the gave me my first job as a teenager cleaning their warehouse in Lemon Grove. I was only a freshman in high school. I am very grateful for what the Deering Family has taught me and I greatly appreciate the opportunity they gave me in my community. The two are definitely model San Diegans!

Posted by Tyler Rivers	Sat, May 17th, 2008
He is my scoutmaster and I have known him for 6 years. He is a great person and has a very good factory.

Posted by jason allen	Wed, Oct 1st, 2008
hello there, We need help ! My brother got a vega banjo for a gift and we are trying to apraise it. Can u point us in the right direction for that? It saids dec 30, 1890. very nice condition. can u please email back, thank you. Amanda Bica

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