David Foster, a popular dentist practicing just south of Nashville, sold his successful practice to focus his attention on building banjos and mandolins, and doing custom inlay work. That may sound a bit like something concocted for one of Chris Jones’ fictional anecdotes, but it’s all true. Dr. Foster was approaching retirement age, and wanted to spend the rest of his fruitful days doing what he loved best.
And so we have the genesis of Things With Strings, a new web site to highlight the various services David offers, the instructional camps scheduled in 2025 for students of luthiery and inlay, and which will eventually showcase the handcrafted instruments he makes.
Though he required many years of training to obtain a DDS, David has been involved in bluegrass all that time, learning to play the banjo at 13 years of age. That passion remained while in college, and he tells us that he paid his way through school playing in a bluegrass band with his wife, Pam, on bass. In dental school in Memphis, they continued this practice, appearing often at The Lucy Opry.
It was at this point that luthiery first caught his eye, which David says happened by chance.
“There was a guy, Tommy Davis, who owned Memphis Rubber Stamp company, and built dobros, banjos, ukuleles… anything that you can imagine really. I told him I’d love to build a banjo, and he said, ‘My shop is two blocks from your school. Be at my shop Tuesday at 5:00 and we will get started.’
Long story short, I went there every spare minute during school. I carried him coffee or soda and built my first banjo.
He mentioned dentistry and inlay went hand in hand (it does), and I could focus on inlay.”
After establishing his practice, David Foster would use his vacation time to study with noted builders like Roger Siminoff or Dave Nichols, who does custom inlay for Martin. This past 20 years or so he has been doing custom inlay for individuals and builders, and making banjo conversion necks and mandolins, guitars, and ukuleles as his time allowed.
But a big change occurred about eight years ago when his long time friend Steve Huber, owner of Huber Banjos in nearby Hendersonville, appealed to David to take on all of Huber’s inlay work, as the guy who had been doing that was getting out of the business. That was the impetus to sell the practice, which he did in 2019, and transition to the life of a luthier.
This year Foster will share his expertise over two weeklong building and assembly workshops for banjo and mandolin, in which students will have all materials and tools provided, with expert instruction all the way through the process, so that they can leave after six days with a completed, professional grade instrument.
He is also offering two Introduction to Inlay workshops, and two Intermediate/Advanced Inlay camps where students bring in and execute a custom inlay that they design into an instrument over two days.
The camps are structured so that a beginner interested in developing these skills can start with the two inlay workshops, after which they should be ready for the assembly camps.
Full details on all these camps can be found on the Things With Strings web site.
Soon, you’ll be able to purchase Foster’s Tennessee Tornado banjo bridges in a variety of woods from the site as well, with instruments to follow in time.
