Hi, has anyone visited Pat Olwell’s flute shop? If so, would you share your experiences and describe the shop in detail?
Thanks!
I did, back in the fall of 1989. Pat and I spent a pleasurable afternoon, evening and night talking shop - until I had to get out of there to catch an 8 AM flight out of Washington DC (4 hours to the north). Pat sent me home with one of his bamboo flutes in A (above D), one of he flutes that I treasure. I hope to visit him again someday and sometime would like to see him out here. Maybe if I put on another Flute Symposium like the one I did with Dusty Strings in October 2001, he could make it out here.
Casey
It smells of linseed oil, hardwood smoke, and expensive sawdust. The vibe is very 19th century, especially since the building is somewhere near that old, being an abandoned textile mill or some such. Flutes everywhere, old and new, and some of my favorite people. I love it there.
Rob
I’ve been a couple of times, too. Great place, good company. Tried not to overstay my welcome. It was my daughter’s first experience with an outhouse (very common in that part of Virginia). He had some unusual historical flutes to try out, too. If you go, make sure to plan an extra couple of hours at Crabtree Falls.
My grandmother had an outhouse and a hand water pump from a cistern behind the house. It was an eye-opener for me, too. I’m curious as to how many people are engaged in making Olwell flutes? And am I too old (67) to get on the waiting list for a keyed flute?
I was there last summer and really impressed by how down to earth his workshop actually is. I had expected nothing less that a surreal isolated environment with crystal clear springs that spawn the finest flutes. I believe the building he is in is an old bank building, not sure what’s on the bottom floor, but you walk upstairs and you know you’ve come to the right place. I was pleasantly surprised to see a bunch of shakuhachi and world flutes kicking around there. It was fun trying all the old flutes, new flutes, and seeing that will someday be Olwell flutes in my possession. At the time I visited I was going through flute overload. Just a few days before I went over to John Gallagher’s workshop to have him tune up my flute, his shop was pretty cool too. Both of them are great folks, great musicians, fantastic craftsman, and all the more reason for us folks in the states to buy local.
Hey Doug, in NH we have an outhouse and a hand water-pump from a shallow well (10ft). Lived thirty years like that and still stay there when we go back. Raised four great kids there, who can live anywhere but who swear they’ll never like that again. So they have mortgages and are in debt. Me… I’d rather live cheap and debt-free.
Olwell’s shop? I used to help him cut blackwood from the grove behind his shop. He sleeps in the big walk-in safe downstairs in the old bank that used to be. Most people don’t know that. It’s very cool down there, even in summer. His outhouse is a pretty crude affair, what with black widows and poison ivy growing through the seat. He used to have windows in the shop before he blew them out tuning his cocus Prattens. One time in winter we got iced in for a few days and had to burn some of his keyless rosewood and boxwood flutes. “They burn better and ignite faster than cocus or blackwood,” he said. That was a lot of fun.
“Oil’s cheaper,” he said, “but this old wood stove’s all we got.”
I said, “Hey, aren’t you Patrick Oilwell?”
“Har har,” he said, “Pass the marshmallows.”
I am Patrick Olwell. I approve this message.
Wow, Julia, that’s really interesting information about Patrick. I never realized that he had a stand of blackwood in his back lot. That is so convenient. I don’t know, though, about sleeping in an old bank vault. I think that I would have nightmares about someone closing the door and locking me in while I was sleeping. As an ex-bank teller, I have spent some time in bank vaults. I can’t say that I every thought of them as a potential bedroom. If I didn’t trust the veracity of your comments, I would think that these were merely stories that you made up.
Don’t you have a stand of PVC out back?
Best wishes.
Steve
…merely stories … made up.
Like The Bible? American foreign policy? Obama’s plan for economic recovery?
Maybe it’s the merely I don’t like.
One’s experience is just a reflection of one’s self. Don Miguel Ruiz says that even when we are “awake,” we are dreaming, with our eyes open.
Didn’t the Monkees say that in “Daydream Believer”?
Best wishes.
Steve
Right, who’s next to tell me that Pat Olwell actually lives and works in a yellow submarine?.. and that his flutes are cucumbers that he grows under the sea in an octopus’s garden in the shade?
I think i’m starting to like Julia.
Isn’t Pat the guy who plants a blackwood seed in a flute mould and goes out to harvest every 10 years or so? 
No, Mr. Blackwood. They only do that in Australia. The keys (if they want them) are produced by pouring Florida lime juice into the fipple hole.
Also - and by the way - PVC doesn’t grow on trees. It’s a root crop.
E.
That’s what I meant—a stand of roots. 
Best wishes.
Steve
traditionalist 
Ah, so that’s what they mean by “Roots Music”??? I wondered…