"Playing a flute is like writing a book. You're telling what's in your heart...It's easier to play if it's right from your heart. You get the tone, and the fingers will follow."
-- Eddie Cahill

I’ve been somewhat remiss in updating my web page with new flutes, in part because I simply didn’t have any. Sometimes I get carried away on one or two flutes, and when I look up at the clock….three weeks has passed. I was down to a few blanks of exceptionally odd wood varieties, all of which are famous for the toxins associated with their sawdust, so I thought perhaps it was time to take a year’s worth of accumulated lumber, and rip it into sticks, and rout it into blanks for future flutes. This process took about twelve days, and I’m now good to go with about 80 new blanks before I get down to the 8-10 blanks I’m too scared to work with, and prompted this process in the first place. I figure I have a couple of years worth of cedar, zircote, paldao, huangana negra, radiata pine, yacashupana, cinnamon burl, buckeye burl, ancient kauri, cherry, Virginia walnut, amazique, paduk, Laotian and Cambodian flamewood, cocobolo, Indian rosewood, lacewood, zebrawood, guancalo alves, poplar, cypress, and a couple I forget how to spell.

I may have mentioned this in the past, but one of the questions web visitors constantly never ask… over and over again, is “Why do some flutes have ‘Email for price’ posted instead of a price?” and I’ll tell you why. Occasionally a flute will be entered in an art show, or a buyer has sent me a deposit, or I will revisit a flute and feel it needs additional work, or I simply want to change something. This allows me to suspend its availability for awhile without completely removing it from the website, and re-loading all the data again later.

For you folks across the pond…Thank you……generally, you folks have responded well to my price reductions, particularly those of you in Germany, Austria, and France. I understand the dynamic, wherein the Euro is strong, and the dollar is like the Peso, however, I would encourage some of you folks to move here, because I have to pack your flutes in pipe, to ensure safe arrival, and plumbing supplies are getting a little pricy. Plus, we have Knott’s Berry Farm and you don’t. Think about it. I’ll meet you at the airport.

The only snake oil/flute peddling road show for me during the year is the upcoming Yosemite flute festival. There is a link to it on the website, oddly enough, in the links section. I would put one here, but I don’t know how. Anyway, it’s a great way to see flutes and maybe have huge wild bears clawing at your lunch, possibly on the same afternoon. Festivals are generally the best way to purchase a flute, since you get to fiddle around with hundreds of them, from a couple dozen builders. The hot tip is to do your best bargaining on the last day, when builders like myself, are trying to scrape up the gas money necessary to get home.

As a parting note…. I have done my best to come up with a really good, inexpensive flute, and I haven’t had a lot of success. What I do to flutes is very labor intensive, and my plain flutes look like a 7th grade woodshop project. People who know my work, look at one of these finished flutes and think perhaps I had a stroke midway through construction, and gave up. I will continue to work on this issue, but I find myself competing with folks with some degree of automation, who turn out a remarkable instrument, each and every time, at a price point that is a fraction of mine. In the meantime, I’ll keep sending folks to my friend Odell Borg at WWW.Highspirits.com ….Ok then…play nice.

His brother's name was Jubal; he was the father of all who play the harp and flute.
--Genesis 4:21



As we continue to slide into the economic abyss…….I want to take this opportunity to clarify a couple of things, that have nothing whatsoever to do with the economy. The Dept of the Interior/ Indian Arts and Crafts Board, drew up a rather long, convoluted policy statement, I think sometime before I was born, specifically addressing and protecting the creative efforts of registered American Indians. As such, the short version states that non Native Americans cannot peddle their crafts, by creating the illusion that they are in fact native made. To do so is fraud. Not unlike many non-native flute makers, I reference my work as Native American STYLE flutes, since there is more than a passing resemblance to those crafted by Native Americans. Now I’m Scottish. That does not mean I plan to run out and start building bagpipes, since I’m content building Native American Style Flutes. The problem with my effort at clarification rests solely on the shoulders of the search engine robots that scour the internet for active data, and throw it all together, to assist you when you do a “Google” search or whatever. These robots act just like robots. They don’t care about anybody’s efforts to distance themselves and their craft from those of registered Native Americans, and more often than not, don’t bother to read the word “style”. As a result, I may show up on the internet as a builder of Native American flutes, whether I like it or not. A couple of years ago, in discussing this issue with a few builders and enthusiasts, I thought of changing everything on my website and correspondence to indicate I was a builder of NORTH AMERICAN FLUTES. I thought about this plan for perhaps……a minute, and I’ll tell you why. Today I googled “North American Flutes”, and the number of builders that popped up with that strict parameter…..was none. Those that were referenced, had the word “Native” plugged in as a descriptor, by either the builder, or one of the robots. So I will continue to do what I do, until I’m contacted by the flute police. The alternative is to give my work a name nobody will ever be able to find via Google, including me.


I made my annual rock purchasing safari to Quartzsite Az this month, as evidenced by the photo of my three new best friends. Opal prospectors from Australia, they proudly showcase this year’s crop of raw Andamooka Mine Australian opal. I made a number of purchases, and although I’m not entirely happy about it, I plan to start cutting and polishing my own opal and ammolite, as pre-cut and polished pieces are now running into hundreds of dollars each, and I have a problem putting a $400.00 stone in a $300.00 flute. Plus, I can cut the stones to fit the flutes…maybe. The other photo is the festive dining patio of a Mexican restaurant down the road. I just couldn’t help myself. Actually, after a couple of their margaritas, this patio becomes quite lively and colorful.


From the Gizmo department here at Querencia, … I tune flutes with analog, digital, and now strobe tuners, simultaneously. For those at all interested, a half step, say Fm to F#m, is divided into 100 “cents”. The analog and digital tuners will tell me how far off from dead on a note is, in terms of +/- one cent. The strobe will tell me to a factor of a tenth of a cent. Does that mean my flutes are going to be 10 times more accurate? Probably not. I’m mostly fascinated by the way the lights spin around. There are too many variables, like the velocity of YOUR breath, as well as the humidity and temperature where you play the instrument. Some of you folks are playing my flutes in the Alps. I’m surprised you’re getting notes that are even in the alphabet.



On one last note, I wanted to dwell for a moment, on the collective power of human stupidity. Since the Dollar is hovering around the same value as the Peso, …my flute sales to Europe have been brisk. I recently sold two flutes to a client in Austria. Oddly, both the most expensive flute, and the least expensive flute currently for sale on my website. Both shipped Global Priority the same day. My client received his least expensive flute in about 10-12 days. The expensive flute however……….is in AUSTRALIA. Not only is it in Australia, currently headed for Melbourne by truck……actually moving further away from Austria, at about 50 mph … but it cleared customs in Australia as well. I’m figuring so far, at least TEN people have handled my package, and NO ONE has noticed it’s addressed to a small town outside of Salzburg Austria. I’m guessing the guy who finally figures out my flute is on the wrong side of the planet, will be the mailman walking down some street with it, trying to deliver it to somebody in Southern Australia. Gotta love Civil Service.


I posted five new flutes to my website today. If you are unemployed, or plan to be, do not buy a flute. Just fiddle around with the sound files. If you are employed, donate some cash to your local food bank first, …then buy a flute. In the meantime, try and put some joy in your life. Rich

"Every music lover is familiar with the sound of the flute, which seems to possess a magic power that emanates from its innermost being. It speaks, it moves, it entrances, almost as if it had been revealed to us on the glorious day of creation. And yet it is genuine human expression, an element of language, the image of a dream continually repeated."

--Meylan, in The Flute, p.9

Well, 2008 is over and done….and if I could dig a bigger hole for its burial, I’d rent a backhoe and some dynamite. I understand 2009 isn’t looking so hot either.

To the degree that I’m able, I will continue to keep the price of flutes as low as I can, based on the time invested in each flute and the materials used. I will also continue with USPS Priority Insured domestic shipping at no charge, as well as the extra goodies I include with each flute. I’m sure you folks will let me know when the economy has righted itself, and I can again charge thousands of dollars for a flute, and tack on huge shipping charges that have no bearing on actual costs. I look forward to that, hopefully by the end of 2010.

As an overview of the year, 8,734 different folks came by my website to say hello, looking at 25,814 pages, resulting in the sale of 30 flutes. These numbers continue to be perfect, in spite of the economy, since I continue to fire flutes out of my shop at the blistering rate of about 30 a year. I figure this modest yearly output is what keeps corporate giants like Raytheon or Flutes-R-Us from tendering buyout offers for my company. Keeping my operation unattractive to corporate giants is just one more thing I do for you, my loyal clients.

During the course of this last year, I’ve explored the skill and talent presented by a small number of Zuni fetish carvers. Using jet, jasper, turquoise, and a number of other stone varieties, these folks cut beautiful and powerful works of art and magic. Although pricing for fetish carvings can approach $200.00, I’ve purchased a few for between $30.00 and $60.00. I will be bonding these to SE Asian amboyna/cedar bases, for use on a select number of flutes. Doing so adds a stunning example of authentic Zuni artwork, and lets me off the hook in trying to carve, say….a kit fox, that I guarantee would look like a gopher. An example is included in the clickable photo above. If you click on the other photo, I tried to get a shot of the ANT orchestra on the roof of Querencia World Headquarters. They consist of river rocks and torn up shopping carts. I just love Mexico, except when I'm being kidnapped or shot at.

During the coming year, I will continue a practice I began a couple of months ago wherein I’ll build some flutes that I will market for less than $200.00. The instruments will have the same build and sound characteristics of my more expensive flutes, but without time consuming crushed stone and wood inlay, or accents and appointments of diamonds, ammolite, and opals. They will however have some appealing characteristics so I continue to enjoy the process of building them.

As this New Year takes off like a corn grinder on one cylinder, I want to thank everybody who has inquired about my flutes, whether you subsequently purchased one or not. I didn’t receive one crank call, nobody was drunk, and you didn’t call at 3:00 in the morning. I’ll do my best to keep giving you useful information, even if I have to pull my facts out of thin air. During that process, I hope to continue to make great friends, as you have all been just truly great folks, with an honest passion for this instrument. In closing, now that we’re headed into an exceptionally cold winter here on the California coast, if you live in Hawaii, or some place subject to afternoon trade winds, and you have a pool or an ocean, with perhaps a palapa bar, and maybe some monkeys in the trees, your flute maker is available for a free private consultation……for about a month, maybe two. Make your New Year happy. Rich Halliburton

"The flute calms the spirit and penetrates the ear with such sweet sound that it brings peace and an abeyance of motion unto the soul. And should some sorrow dwell in the mind, a care that wine cannot make us forget and banish, it lulls us to sleep and is balm on account of its sweet and gracious sound, provided that it adheres to modest music and does not excite and inflame the soul with too many notes and passages, which would weaken it and could easily come to grief on account of the wine."

--Meylan, in The Flute, p.11

Well…………..It’s that time of year again….Time to pass along some holiday cheer, if there’s any to be found. I realize the domestic economy has tanked, and has become a sea anchor for the global economy as well. Internationally, we’re engaged in drug wars, wars of pacification, wars of democratization, and wars I suspect are just to try out new toys. I also realize the top five products currently available to U.S. consumers, at bargain prices, are Portland cement, shoe polish, corn tortillas, paper cocktail umbrellas, and my flutes. I think I read that in Forbes.

Now I don’t expect you to pass up the great deals out there on Portland cement, but I will again be lowering the price of my flutes for the month of December. Typically I lower the prices by 10%, but this year will be a little different. I’ll be figuring the cost of materials for each flute, as well as an hourly wage typical of a car wash employee…like the old days. Some flutes will go down in price significantly, some, not so significantly, and some … not at all.

I suspect this holiday shopping season will be completely avoided by most consumers. Everybody is broke, and I understand that. However, if you DO find yourself caught up in the Christmas season, torn between purchasing one of my flutes, or a live pony and little cowpoke outfit for your child, please keep in mind, you don’t have to feed a flute, and you’ll never need a shovel.

The domestic economic downturn has created an interesting set of circumstances for what, 6 months ago, was a marginally thriving middle class. Specifically, food banks across the nation are operating at the lowest inventory levels in their history. With unemployment approaching double digits, as well as nest eggs, investment portfolios, and emergency funds simply vanishing over a period of about 10 weeks, our middle class has been forced to utilize food banks themselves…at unprecedented levels. The food banks are starting to run on empty.

Now I haven’t had an original thought since I was about 6 years old, and today is no exception. However, my wife mentioned a plan that I find to have serious merit. During this season of giving, particularly for colleagues and extended family members, rather than give a fruitcake, or cellophane covered wicker basket full of cheese and soap that you can’t tell apart, make a donation to your local food bank, on behalf of one another. Specifically, make a cash donation for one another, because the food bank people can buy food at lower cost than we can. Everybody wins. Plus, you don’t find yourself in the shower, lathering up with a bar of cheese. Additionally, here at Rancho Relaxo, and the world headquarters of Querencia Woodwinds, for the sake of energy conservation, I will probably tone down the seasonal exterior lighting, and forgo the opportunity to make my home look like a Third World liquor store. I’m hoping I can resume that activity again next year.

In closing, I’m reminded of the phrase “Peace on Earth, Goodwill toward men,” or all, or something. I don’t know if it came from the Bible, Santa Claus, or Hallmark. In any event, it’s truly my wish for everyone this season. Rich Halliburton/Querencia Woodwinds.

“If you want to know the meaning of life….Creativity is the low hanging fruit, even if all you create is morning coffee with your special recipe of Folgers, Maxwell House, and a little cinnamon.” Bruce DeBoer.

“Skill without imagination is craftsmanship, but skill with imagination, is art” Home improvement flyer I found in my driveway. Cute.

Notwithstanding a one day flute event at the end of November, my traveling road show is over. Yosemite was great in that I got to hang out with a lot of my favorite artisans, and meet new ones too. One was Dwight Lind, of Quiet Bear flutes. He’s almost as crazy as I am, but …older. He takes over 200 flutes to these events and tries to leave with none. I take 20 and try not to leave with 23. I ended up swapping one of my flutes to Dwight Lind, and since John Kulias (Meadowlark Flutes) was there, I ended up buying yet another of his ceramic flutes, and I’ll tell you why. The group of folks I perform with make a LOT of noise, tough competition for anybody’s wooden flute. John builds a ceramic flute that will take the paint off the side of a house. They’re REALLY LOUD. They’re beautiful too; you can just never drop them.

As with most first year festivals, there was not enough intelligently directed advertising to generate the foot traffic we had hoped for. I volunteered to throw a spike strip across Hwy 41 and try and snag a tour bus headed into Yosemite but the season was about over, and the buses were few and far between, plus I was getting low on spike strips. It is however a great event, and if invited, I’ll be back next year.

The site of my next event, five days after Yosemite, was the Manhattan Beach Hometown Fair. Manhattan Beach has the distinction of being a city with some of the most expensive residential real estate in the United States. It is NOT however, the demographic motherlode for NA style flute sales. With over 200 vendors, I found myself competing with embroidered baby dribble bibs, rhinestone dog collars, and wind chimes made from pop bottles. As the only flute vendor, I had folks wandering over, thinking I was selling firearms, or bongs, or both. I had couples coming over asking if I would play a little something to stop their infants from screaming. I could go on and on, and write a whole blog about this event, but I won’t. However, if you EVER see me participating in another generalized “arts and crafts” fair again, don’t come up and say Hi….instead, go back out to your car, root around in your glove box or under your seat, and find your gun. Then come back with it, and shoot me in the head.

I realize that during the two weeks I was on the road peddling flutes, your savings, stocks, and 401k accounts were vanishing into thin air. The economic perfect storm we are experiencing, fueled by greedy and imperfect people, is virtually unprecedented. We are experiencing the lowest level of consumer spending since 1980. I’ll be lowering the prices of flutes yet again for the Christmas season, and at the same time realize a lot of folks don’t need a flute, and won’t care….they need food, firewood, and a prayer. I’ll be doing my best to help out with all three for those folks too.

Switching gears for a moment, I recently built a custom flute for a client, and she requested dished, or slightly cupped finger holes. I had suspended this practice about two years ago, on the advice of a couple of entertainers who play my flutes. They had mentioned the cupping limited their creative latitude in playing the instrument. I don’t even know what that means, but they play these instruments far better than I do. Since that time, I’ve received feedback from a number of folks, particularly those who have collected my flutes over the years, suggesting they miss this feature. Since I sell far more flutes to enthusiasts than performers, some flutes will again have SLIGHTLY indented finger holes, in an effort to strike a happy medium. I’ll indicate both in photos and text which flutes have received this treatment. OK then… hope you had a great Halloween. ….. I don’t believe I’ve ever hoped, or said that before. Ever.

Praise him with the strings and flute...

--Psalm 150

This will be a brief rant-free missive just to explain a little bit of pending weirdness on my “flutes for sale” page. Since I will be participating in two events this year, and they are virtually back to back……specifically the Yosemite Flute festival, and the Manhattan Beach Hometown Fair, I will in all probability be cannibalizing my website flute inventory in order to have about 20 available for these events. Since they fly out of my shop at the rate of about 35 a year, ……well, I don’t have enough flutes. What you will see within the next few weeks, instead of a price, is “Email for Price”, or some such thing, for those flutes I’m taking with me. This keeps you from buying on-line some flute that I may be simultaneously selling to some guy with lederhosen and a funny hat, up in Oakhurst/Yosemite.

This is the good part. …… If you do find a flute you want….and it’s earmarked for one of these events with “Email for Price”…AND you email me for a price…AND you mention you read this blog entry, I’ll rebate to you 10% of the purchase price, because I’m reducing the prices 10% for the events anyway.

This is truly a win-win. You win because the flute costs you 10% less, without having to drag yourself to Yosemite or Manhattan Beach, and I win because ONE, I get to find out if anybody but me reads my blog, and TWO, In all probability you don’t live in California which means I don’t have to deal with Edith from the Franchise Tax Board in Sacramento regarding your flute. I hopelessly screw up my business taxes every year, and every year, I get a call from Edith. Sometimes two calls.

If it’s currently Summer where you live, have a great second half. If it’s Winter where you live, Summer is coming. When that happens, it might be a good time to invite your favorite flute maker down to where you live for a couple of weeks,…. or months.

One last note……..for those of you who read this, and perhaps purchase my flutes…..I’m building them with a lot of BIRDS for the fetish block…and I’ll tell you why. I still have some systemically dyed maple…nobody else does, and some really expensive sheet abalone, and other stuff. Horses, gophers, pigs, wombats, giraffes, squirrels and prairie dogs never look right with hints of wild colors. …birds can get away with it, particularly if it’s a bird out of my imagination. Ok then…………….

Play from the heart; the flute is a heart song...
like a sweet prayer, and it will teach you as well
as you teach yourself.

--Mato Wambli

Back in February I introduced my readers, both of you, to a flute maker who I found to possess some pretty remarkable talent in this field. At the time, I indicated I would rather collaborate than compete with him. What is it, almost July now? Five months. How’s that for just crashing ahead with reckless abandon. Anyway, as a result, I just posted one of his condor flutes to my website. He’s priced this flute very reasonably, considering its gorgeous voice, and the time invested in the build. The folks over at the flutecase store are pretty impressed with Mr. Jones too, so I stole a brief bio from them to paste here for either one of you that might be interested. As follows….. “Greg is a retired railroad conductor. He’s been a Hang glider pilot; a skydiver; BASE jumper; an avid fly fisherman and fly tyer; a martial art Master with two published books; and holds the Guinness World record for the highest bungee jump in the world (12,000 ft. affixed to another skydiver). He’s been a freefall video/photographer for many years and called his business “Wingshadow”. This name was chosen for his signature act of briefly painting the jumpers and customers with his shadow in freefall, and under canopy with his own parachute. He now calls his flute venture “Wingshadow”. He says, “I extended the name to flute making, because we all stand in the shadow of someone else’s wings; the people who had greatest influence in our lives, the people who taught us our greatest lessons, and the people who loom largest in our hearts.” He says, “The flutes are the living shadows of the flute makers themselves. Though they appear to be inanimate, dead objects, we breathe life into them and tap out the heartbeats with out fingers, guided by a common spirit.” “So, in essence, the flute itself becomes a vocal shadow of our own soul.” ……I personally find Greg a fascinating individual, mostly because I rarely understand fully what he’s talking about. Nevertheless, he can build flutes.

On another note… I just found out you can click on these blog pictures, and they get larger. Wow. Who knew? Nobody ever sent me a pamphlet or anything when I set up the blog. I like pamphlets.

On a closing note, I was recently talking with a few seasoned, well respected luminaries in the flute world, both recording artists and builders. In discussing how to make ends meet, put food on the table, and keep gas in the pickup, all echoed variations on the same theme. Too many producers, and not enough consumers. There are but a handful of folks who play this instrument for a living who know ANYTHING about music theory, and are classically trained in one instrument or another. Their skill is evident in their work, but this instrument is so easy to play, it has drawn hundreds of novice enthusiasts out from under that tree in the backyard, and into the ill conceived belief that they are SO GOOD, they need to cut a CD. A Google search of Native American flute music, will yield 283,000 web pages, and a great number of them, belong to just these folks. Those few artists with talent, passion and knowledge of fundamental theory, are being trampled by anybody with a flute and recording software. Likewise, the flute builders with any skill, history and following, face the same challenges, but on a smaller scale. A few excellent builders have assembled their valuable trial and error knowledge, into books and instructional videos. Some do it for profit; some do it as a public service. This is a fairly recent phenomenon, and has given birth to an explosion of flute peddlers. What they share in common in addition to their new how-to books, is a lack of originality, skill, creativity, and nuances that can only come from trial and error, and time. My own flute building was kick started with the help of instructional information, specifically from Don and Dave Rivaldo at Flutemaking.com, and I used the information necessary to coax a stick into making some noise. Once I got noise, I did not run out and try and sell my noisemaker. I began experimenting until a couple of years later I could build an instrument I could truly call my own.

The Native American flute community, to include builders, performers, enthusiasts, collectors, and supporters, is very, VERY small. I think my whole point in this rant, boils down to a request that as a consumer, you support those artisans who have truly dedicated substantial time and energy into fine tuning their building or playing skills. They’ve earned it, and done so on many levels ….On the other hand, If you have any money left, consider purchasing my flutes too. Ok then.