Timber Lakes resident Russ Jones is a Toltec master who takes people on spiritual journeys to the high Andes in Peru, and he is also a voting member of the Recording Academy, commonly known as the Grammys. But Jones’ love lies with Native-American style flutes. He plays and handcrafts these in struments, hosts sound experiences in tipis at his cabin and performs live almost every morning from 9-10 a.m. on Facebook Live. He has also recorded a string of albums and teaches flute-making classes. All of these achievements made Jones a firm believer that “You’re never too old to learn new tricks.” First flute “I have no formal musical background, although I’ve always loved music, and I had never played a musical instrument until 2011,” Jones said. “(in fact) I didn’t buy my first flute until I was 52. And the flute opened the door for me.” Music and sound collided with Jones’ life when he embarked on a spiritual journey to Mexico and discovered the Mesoamerica belief system in a mythical birdlike serpent, Quetzalcoatl. “They call it the Lord of the Above World, and it represents vibration,” he said. “When the bird flies you can see its tail moving up and down.” Upon returning to the United States, Jones wanted to buy a drum set. “I went to Guitar Center, and people were railing on things,” he said. “I lived in a condo in Midway and I didn’t think my neighbors would appreciate that.” As fate, luck or whim of the gods would have it, Jones decided to drive down Redwood Road and stopped at the Native American Trading Post. “I found this little flute for $40, and I bought it and the DVD that came with it,” he said. “I practiced for a week and went back to buy another flute.” A week later, Jones returned to the store and bought another flute, and another, and another. “I told the lady there not to sell me another flute, and she said, ‘Mister, if you have a credit card, I’ll sell you anything,’” he said. Instrument obsession To date, Jones has upward of 400 flutes, including one of the largest collections from Michael Graham Allen, known for his work with the band Coyote Oldman and with contemporary pianist David Lanz. “Michael is a mentor of mine,” Jones said. “I remember calling him up and asking for one of his biggest and baddest flutes, and he sent it to me.” A year later, Allen called and asked Jones if he had named the flute. “Michael told me he called it The Dog and Pony Show because of the carving on the block or totem, which routes the player’s breath from the instrument’s air chamber to the sound holes,” Jones said. Allen’s flutes are just part of Jones’ collection that also features instruments made by Bill Hughes, Dr. Oliver W. Jones, Bryan Akipa, Hawk Littlejohn, Joseph Firecrow, Louis Webster, Dan Red Buffalo, Lew Paxton Price and Richard Fool Bull, to name a few. “Richard Fool Bull was a Lakota man born in 1880,” Jones said. “He was a peyote Road Man.” A peyote Road Man would visit Indigenous communities and pray with families because it was illegal for Native people to sing their songs and do their ceremonies at that time, according to Jones. “Richard Fool Bull would put feathers on his shirt for the families and take them back to the Sundance, which is a sacred and hidden ceremony,” he said. Jones admits he’s obsessed with wooden flutes. “I buy them all the time, and I have gained a reputation,” he said. “Flutemakers and their families know who I am and expect calls from me.” Native American-style flutes are just part of Jones’ obsession. “I’m now a world flautist,” he said. “I play Japanese shakuhachi, and I have a pretty nice collection, and I’m learning how to play the pan pipes from Peru.” Jones’ friend, Grammy Award-nominated flautist Peter Phippen, sent him a shakuhachi. “He told me to try playing it, and I tried and tried,” Jones said. “But I just couldn’t get it to work.” So, Jones called Allen for help. “I said, ‘There’s something wrong with the flute,’ and Michael said, ‘Just blow softer,’” he said. “Because the shakuhachi is bamboo, it’s all different from a regular wooden flute, and it expanded how I played.” Russ Jones, a Timber Lakes resident, demonstrates how he makes Native American-style flutes in his workshop. Jones also teaches flute making classes. Credit: Scott Iwasaki/Park Record Flutes can be played in a couple of different ways — interdental, where the mouthpiece is placed on the canines, and obliquely, where the mouthpiece is angled across the lip. Recording debut Playing flutes led Jones to recording his music. “I took a risk and I recorded myself on my iPhone 4 and put that on my laptop,” he said. “I then put it on YouTube and downloaded the YouTube (file) back to my laptop.”Jones then burned the file onto a CD and distributed it.  “It was a cumbersome process back then because we didn’t have the programs we have now,” he said. “So on my first album, you can hear trucks backing up with the ‘beep, beep, beep,’ and that was just part of the album.” Jones continued to record and decided to hire basement engineers to help. Then he met Douglas Morton, a part-time Parkite and composer whose music can be heard at the Loveland Living Planet Aquarium in Draper. Jones heard about Morton through the late Leraine Horstmanshoff, a local musician, educator and sound healer. “She kept telling me that I needed to meet Doug,” he said. “Well, one day I was having lunch with Leraine, and in walked Doug and his wife. And Doug said, ‘You’re that flute guy! I’ve seen you on the internet and I want to jam with you.’” Two weeks later, the two met at Morton’s Park City condo. “It was during the winter,” Jones said. “We had a fire going and recorded music for an hour and half.” Those recordings became “Into the Wood,” Morton and Jones’ debut album that was released in 2020. “Doug is a magician with engineering the music,” he said. “He’s also a magician playing live, and I’ve played live with him at the aquarium.”Jones also likes Morton’s modesty. “He’s a humble guy with a lot of experience in music,” Jones said. “He never told me he played with Ronnie Montrose.” Morton also pushed Jones creating better quality recordings. “One day Doug asked me if I wanted to be a hobbyist or a professional, and I said, ‘Professional,’” Jones said. “So he took me to Performance Audio, and I bought a pre-amp and microphone and an effects processor. And then I bought a cheaper system for the tipi.” With the pre-amp and microphone, Jones can record a song and distribute it within an hour, which he recently did with a new single, “My Dream.” “I was able to do that pretty quickly because I’m not a perfectionist” he said. “With Doug, it’s different. He’s a perfectionist. So, we’ll record for four hours, and then he’ll take a year to get them ready for release. But you can hear the quality of what he does compared to what I do.” Flute making Jones began making his own Native American-style flutes three years ago. “I was taught by a man, Bill Hughes, who was taught by a Native man,” he said. Hughes kept urging Jones to make a flute, and finally Jones caved. “There was an old walnut tree that was by a house where some of the wives of Brigham Young once lived, and supposedly Brigham planted the tree,” Jones said. “That tree stood over a sweat lodge for 10 years, and I told Leraine to let me know when and if they ever cut it down.” When the day came, Jones loaded up the wood and took it to Hughes’ house. “That’s when I made my first flute, but Bill did a lot of the work,” Jones said. Hughes kept some of the wood, and Jones sent it to his friends — other renowned flute makers, Andrew Begay, Dana Ross and Geoffrey Evans — who also made flutes from the walnut. Jones kept thinking about the flute he made with Hughes and wanted to hone in on the craft. “Later on when I lived in Boston and had some free time, I would bother Geoffrey,” Jones said. “I would ask him what kind of tools I needed to make a flute and kept on bugging him until he finally said, ‘Just come over.’” Since then, Jones landed opportunities to make flutes with a variety of flutemakers such as Bryan Akipa, a 2016 National Heritage Fellow, and citizen of the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate. “Bryan invited me to Sitting Bull College on the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota to assist him in teaching other Native educators how to make flutes,” he said. “In turn the educators would be able to go back to their communities to teach this long-standing tradition.” While there, Jones and Akipa recorded some music, a song called “Akipa Jones at Standing Rock,” at Ft. Yeates, the tribal headquarters of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. “It was nice to have the chance to interact and make friends up there,” Jones said.  Teaching the craft One year ago Jones started to teach flutemaking. “When we make flutes as a non-Native, we can’t call them Native American flutes,” he said. “We call them Native American-style flutes, due to a law that says you can’t represent yourself as a Native if you’re not and making a craft.” Jones teaches three sessions that run three hours each, and he can accommodate groups up to 10 people at a time. Registration is open through Jones’ website: russjonesnativeflute.com. Russ Jones, a Native American-style flute maker and recording artist holds a nearly completed instrument. Credit: Scott Iwasaki/Park Record “We use mostly use western red cedar, but we’ve made flutes out of walnut and apricot and Alaskan yellow cedar,” he said. Jones sources the materials from Oregon. “I have found people online who reclaim dead red cedar logs that have been laying around for hundreds of years,” he said.  During the classes, Jones talks about the history of flutemaking and the different parts of the flute that include the totem, air chamber and holes. “Flutemakers used juniper back in the 1800s,” Jones said. “They used it because they didn’t use saws, and the wood would split pretty straight.” Class members can choose to handcarve or lathe the wood, according to Jones. “When we start, we split the wood and gouge (the middle),” he said. “We use dowels to measure how deep the gouge goes.” The class will then glue the pieces together. “If there is a mistake, the good thing about wood is you can glue things back together,” he said. Still, students need to be careful when fixing a damaged flute, Jones said. “One of the first flutes I made, I over clamped it, and it exploded because the wood was too soft,” he said.  The pitch and tone of the flute will change with the weather and barometric pressure, Jones said. “If you hand carve the flutes, you should remember that most of them won’t be perfect,” he said. “I know a lot of professional flute makers like Michael Allen who do make perfect flutes, but I’m not a perfectionist.” Class members usually finish their flutes with food-grade walnut oil, Jones said. “We use that because it doesn’t mold,” he said. “I also use Varathane because it’s thick, and that helps, especially if the wood is super soft.” Flute culture The flute fulfills different purposes between the nations, Jones said.  “Certain tribes believe a flute was made specifically for courting,” he said. “A man would make a flute and play it down by a river so everyone would know what his song was. And then he would play by a woman’s tipi.” If a woman’s father came out, “the man better run,” Jones said. “If the daughter came out, it was all good, and the man had better be ready to (compensate the father),” he said. “Then after that, the man would put the flute away forever.” Some nations, like the Lakota, make flutes so they could sing songs with them, Jones said. “Lakota ceremonies are very vocal,” he said. “Someone would have a dream about a song and make a flute to match the song.” Many flutes are sacred, said Jones, who volunteered at the Utah State Prison for eight years holding Lakota ceremonies.  “Those are usually made from animal bones and played in ceremonies,” he said. “When you go into a sweat lodge you hopefully come out as a ‘hollow bone,’ where we’ve let go of our frustrations, anger and resentments.” Some nations keep hold of the tradition that flute culture is not for women, even though times have changed, Jones said. “My friend Hovia Edwards has been criticized because she’s a woman who plays the flute,” he said. “And there are some Native women who will not walk into my house because of all the flutes. They won’t enter, because they see the flute is a phallic symbol.”  Next appearance Jones plans on attending and participating in the 2026 World Flute Society Convention that runs July 29-Aug. 2 at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. The annual event celebrates “Musical and Cultural Expressions of the World’s Indigenous and Folk Flute Traditions,” according to its website. “I’ll sell some flutes and perform,” Jones said. “Bryan will be there and so will Hovia, who is a member of the Shoshone-Bannock tribes. Hovia started playing when she was 6. Her father was a great flute player and maker.” Jones is still amazed at what the Native American-style flute has brought to his life in just a few short years. “I went from not playing music at all to hanging out with these great musicians and people,” he said. “Now, people know me and when they walk on or pass away, their families would sometimes call me to see if I want to buy or acquire their flutes. And that has been such an honor.” Jones, who knows he still has a lot to learn, enjoys sharing what he has learned so far in his journey. “For me it’s about telling the story of these people and these instruments,” he said. “I’m just the guy who blows air through them, but I am also able to tell the story of the flutemaker, from what little I know about each person. Without them, I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing.”  For information about Russ Jones, his music and flutemaking classes, visit russjonesnativeflute.com. The post Timber Lakes resident composes a hobby around Native American-style flutes  appeared first on Park Record. ...read more read less