With the Little Horsefly River bubbling in the background as their two children Indigo, 7, and Sy, 5, played nearby, Juno-award winning musicians Jason and Pharis Romero exuded an enviable calm.
“We grew up with the same thing - being outside all day and basically adventuring as kids,” Pharis said, noting her dad Geoff Patenaude lives on the family property about 20 minutes away. “We both wanted that type of place where our kids could just be. We are close to the alpine, close to fishing and being able to just take off and be immersed in nature.”
As if they were testifying to her statement, within a 20-minute period the children had played with home-made blow darts, caught fuzzy caterpillars, went for a swim in the river and prepared to do some fishing.
“I feel like this place is a gift to the kids to be self-actualized humans and be aware of themselves and their surroundings,” Jason said. “All of the thousand little things that come from growing up in a place like this is going to make it far better for them.”
Pharis said it’s important for herself as a person to have a connection with each action she takes, and each thing that she is using in this life to understand what it took to bring that thing to her and where everything comes from. They spend a lot of time thinking about that and “unconscious consumerism” is not something they subscribe to, she added.
With their children it is important they know where their food comes from and where their toys come from, Pharis said.
“Not in a way that we are telling them they can only play with wooden toys and eat food we’ve raised - we don’t work like that - but similar to our banjo shop, we don’t just go to a lumber yard and buy wood. Instead we have relationships with small mills all over North America and we know exactly where the wood comes from.”
Jason said they had to beg and borrow to buy the property in 2010.
“It was quite a haggle from what they wanted and what we could afford. In the end I made them a banjo out of wood from the barn on the property,” he said. “The banjo saved the day, once again.”
Pharis said her parents knew the property’s owners, Jack and Bessie Smith.
“My dad worked on this land in the seventies and my Uncle Bud worked on this land as well,” she said.
The Romeros met in 2007.
Pharis was living in Victoria at the time and Jason was living in Arcadia, California.
Two and a half months later they got married and Jason moved to B.C.
For two years they lived in the Cobble Hill, north of Victoria, but once they knew they wanted to have children they began looking for a place to settle down and soon realized Horsefly was the perfect combination of community, wilderness and affordability.
And not too far north, Jason added, noting accessibility to get places to play music was important and Horsefly was only a day’s drive from Vancouver.
Having grown up in Horsefly, Pharis never imagined moving back.
She left when she was 17 with a sense of adventure to go travelling and see the world.
“I always thought I’d be off gallivanting somewhere else, but there were a lot of factors zeroing in on Horsefly. As it turns out turns, our kids are the sixth generation of my family to live here. I had no idea how much that would mean to me -that sense of history and sense of place.”
When Jason was 19, he started playing the banjo and fell in love with it.
“A lot of banjo players are borderline obsessed with the instrument itself because of how it is put together,” he said. “You can take a banjo apart in five minutes completely. It’s the only instrument you can do that with so it draws a type of person in and a different type of interest than a person might have if they are into guitars.”
After relocating to Arcadia, he went to school to study fine woodworking and cabinet making and got his first banjo making related job at Wildwood Banjos with a guy who had been in business since the 1970s.
Pharis said when she met Jason in 2007 and he was by then a boutique banjo maker with his own business, there were about five people in North America doing the same thing. Now there are about 50.
“The renaissance of the hand-made movement has been growing pretty strongly in the last 10 to 15 years,” Jason said. “People are just starting to think like we do. If you are into something - great - find somebody who is also into to that’s also making it.”
Chuckling, Pharis said it’s slow consumerism, like the slow food movement.
“It’s where you are taking the time to think through purchases and maybe pay a little bit more because you know what went into it.”
When the Romeros moved to Horsefly he built a shop at the property, which was destroyed by fire in 2016.
“This is my sixth and final banjo shop,” he said of the one they had rebuilt.
On average he makes about 30 banjos a year and have a six-year waiting list.
Their wait list is only opened once a year on Jan. 1 and they take a small number of new orders.
“We draw a certain number of names from the many names of people that email us,” Pharis said. “We would have a 20-year wait list if we took everyone.”
Pharis does all the decorative work on the banjos.
While she has no background in design work, she said she is naturally inclined to work with her hands and loves making things.
“I’m very tactile,” she said. “When I met Jason he gave me a few little tests to start. He said, ‘cut out a star, I want to see if you can do it.’ It is very, very fine work and I think the test of whether you can do it or not is what level you are willing to take it to before you decide it is finished.”
Pharis said the sanding Jason does is such a fine level that no one will ever see a tool mark on any instrument that has gone out of their shop.
“It’s about taking time, a certain level of perfectionism and joy in that perfectionism,” she said.
Pharis can sit engrossed for four hours doing the work, adding she works with customers on an idea, such as a love of Oregon wildflowers, to determine how it will appear on a banjo.
“I’ll go through all the different possibilities with the customers, whether they want shells, stone, wood or metals to bring the design together and to life.”
As a duo they’ve put out five albums and a few old time fiddle banjo records. They have won three Juno Awards, seven Canadian Folk Music Awards and a few other random awards.
A new record is in the works that will feature Jason playing seven different banjos that he has built with all different sounds and setups.
It will be recorded in a barn on the property this October.
“This is a barn that Jack Smith built probably in the 60s from timbers on the property,” Pharis said.
“We’ve been slowly throwing money, renovation materials and whatever we can find at it for a few years and now it’s this gorgeous open performance and recording space that currently has 3,000 heads of garlic hanging in it.”
An engineer will come up to Horsefly from Vancouver for the recording as he has for the last two records, as well as some extra musicians, including a friend who moved to the area a couple of years ago who is a great old time fiddler from California.
“Horsefly is an artistic and creative community,” Pharis said. “There is something about it here. We have another friend who just bought property down the lake who runs the Victoria Conservatory Music program. He’s an amazing fiddler and musician, originally from Prince George.”
Pharis said they trade banjo lessons for meat and cheese and it feels like it’s a way to build community and friendships.
“It’s an idea I wish would grow more,” Jason added.
Aside from working on the banjos, writing, playing and recording music, and teaching music, Pharis builds jewelry whenever she can.
“We are always very interested in the potential of things and sometimes they might take longer,” she said.
“It’s a long-term interest in putting energy into things when you see a vision. A great example would be the Suburban that’s in our yard right now. Jason’s putting a diesel engine in it and rebuilding it.”
They needed a better vehicle for touring that can fit the family and all the instruments, Jason said.
“We decided to go old school, bought the simplest rig. It won’t take much to keep it running.”
They also love the four seasons and the shift that comes with each change.
“Cross-country skiing and being in the alpine are my church,” Pharis said. “Something happens to my brain when I’m in either of those two places that I switch on.”
Bird watching is also a favourite family activity and the Romeros. They have kept track of all the birds that have shown up on the property since 2010.
“Pharis loves her spreadsheets,” Jason chided.
When the couple realize life is getting busy with tasks, they make a point of ‘getting off-campus,’ and going camping, paddling or fly fishing with the children.
“There’s a lake in every direction from here full of trout,” Jason said.
Pharis said they make those getaways happen and all feel better for it.
“We also built a sauna and have a home-made outdoor hot tub that add to our quality of life,” she added.
As the interview drew to a close, Indigo ran up and said there were lots of trout in the river.
“They were taunting me,” she said excitedly.
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