Album Notes

ALSO CHECK OUT BEN'S BAND, SWAMP SHACK AT: WWW.CDBABY.COM/SWAMPSHACK
Hailing from the Dirty, Deep South, Ben Prestage creates a fresh, new sound on “down-home & Home-made” by resurrecting the musical spirits of the past. Prestage was voted one of the top 3 best performers at the International Blues Competition (2003 & 2006, Memphis,TN: home of the Blues-Birthplace of Rock and Roll) and he is the only two time recipient of the prestigious “Lyons/Pitchford Award” for “best diddley-bow player.” Ben now utilizes his mastery of the diddley-bow to take this traditional, Southern, folk instrument to new dimensions.
FYI: from wikipedia: The diddley bow is an 1. American string instrument of African origin. It is typically homemade, consisting usually of a wooden board and a single wire string stretched between two screws, and played by plucking while varying the pitch with a metal or glass slide held in the other hand.
The diddley bow is significant to blues music in that many blues guitarists got their start playing it as children, as well as the fact that, like the slide guitar, it is played with a slide.
A notable performer of the instrument was the Mississippi blues musician Lonnie Pitchford, who used to demonstrate the instrument by stretching a wire between two nails hammered into the wood of a vertical beam making up part of the front porch of his home.

To the unique sound of Ben’s homemade diddley-bow (made by a friend, John Lowe of Memphis, TN) he adds another homemade instrument, the lap-steel-guitar (made by his father Kenneth Prestage.) The combination of these two instruments creates a fresh, new sound that is the perfect canvas for Prestage's wordsmithing: Tragic, Chaotic, Melodic and Hep.