So there's this band called Rend Collective Experiment (read my thoughts on them here). When performing "Build Your Kingdom Here," live or in their fantastic music video (here!), they employ an instrument which they have lovingly named the "jingling johnny." This is the odd contraption being wielded by Gareth Gilkeson, band leader and percussionist. It's beautiful, isn't it?
A jingling johnny is basically a stick that you thump on the ground, to which you may affix any number of various noise-making objects. Most include a small pie-pan-screen-door-spring contraption that makes a snare drum sound and numerous jingle bells. It has long been my dream to possess one of these beautiful contraptions.
Anyway, turns out Gareth and his wife Ali (also a member of the band- shouldn't be hard to figure out which one she is) have set up shop online selling handmade jingling johnnies for $280 a peace. Despite the fact that I know they certainly make high-quality instruments, I certainly could not justify spending that much money on such a device. However, as I looked at pictures of the thing, I thought "hey, I can probably build myself one for much less..." And sure enough, I soon found online videos and posts of people who had done that. It was at this point that I learned that the jingling johnny is also known as a stumpf fiddle.
So, sooner or later, building a jingling johnny for myself was firmly planted in my mind. The night I came up with the idea, my mom bestowed these pie pans upon me.
They next time my dad ran to Menard's, I tagged along and we bought a dowel rod, a plumbing reducer, and 2 screen door springs.
I spent the next couple days staining and then varnishing the rod.
Finally, yesterday, my dad and I went into the garage and did most of the actual building. This involved screwing one pan to the pole, pouring pinto beans into it, bolting the other pan on top, affixing the springs, attaching a rubber ball to the base of the pole, and affixing jingle bells at various points. In the end, we had this masterpiece:
Naturally, I brought it to church on Sunday to brag on it. We had some fun banging it around before church, and during the afternoon Josh and I actually spent multiple hours figuring out all the different was to use the thing (it is an entire trap set on a pole- it's really fascinating). Of course, neither of us could resist unleashing this force at Crave that evening, so we opened our worship set with an exclusive Joshcoe performance of "Build Your Kingdom Here" straight out of Bangor, jingling johnny and all. Here are a couple pictures of the result:
You can't really tell, but I wore my relevant "Build Your Kingdom Here" shirt in honor of the event. It was so much fun! My goodness, when it looks like Gareth is having the time of his life beating this thing to death, he really is! Anyway- thanks a lot to my dad for really helping me out with the construction, to Josh for piloting it on its inaugural voyage, and to everyone at Crave tonight for making it all so fun!
You'll probably be seeing the jingling johnny again. In the meantime, why not build your own? :)
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