On December 10, 2023 the world lost the great flute maker Rod Cameron. He was best known for his Baroque Flutes and lived in Mendocino California with his wife Kathleen.
Rod and I have been close friends ever since the early 1980s when I began making flutes. Rod was passionate about documenting his life, experiences and data - and hopefully succeeded in preserving these where his afterlife handlers can find it. There are bits and pieces of Rod’s life tucked into this and that corner. I have some CDs featuring collections of the music he loved that I need to find in my clutter, for example. As for Rod’s flute making data and notes - this apparently has been relocated to a European repository. More on this in some future post.
Many of us have our own experiences with Rod as colleagues, clients, collaborators in crime, and especially friends and mixtures of all of these types of relationships. Since Rod’s passing there has been a huge outpouring of tales on various pages on Facebook and in personal emails.
For me personally, conjuring up these memories makes me feel like they happened just yesterday. I have been on the phone way too much swapping stories. My voice is a little hoarse and scratchy! I have been on the Internet as well and the screen time exceeds safe limits!
I have created this Substack page as a collection point for this tribute to Rod. I will act as gatekeeper for now, keeping the site simple and easy to use. I am eager to collect everyones’ tributes, stories and pictures as well - for now the best is to simply email writings and pictures to me at caseyburnsflutes@gmail.com.
I will edit and format these as necessary. Everything collected might get posted as a monthly or weekly digest, depending upon how fast contributions arrive. I considered a separate post per individual. However, if I received 15 different posts in a day, this would result in 15 different daily emails for everyone subscribing - versus one a week or month!
Subscribers will have access to all of these posts. Eventually I will turn on comments. After a few years of accumulation when we decide that life must go on and we have nearly said all that we can say about Rod, I will reformat this collection and publish it as a single document in PDF form which I will post and allow everyone to repost.
As to the name on this Substack blog: “Reverend Rod” was my nickname for him. In reality Rod was a Universal Life Church mail order minister. My wife Nancy and I wanted him to preside over our wedding on the Mendocino Headlands. We had to ask his wife Kathleen if it would be okay if Rod was our minister and we would obtain his license. She responded with uncertainty, claiming that he was “ministerial enough already”. Kathleen gave us her blessing and thus “Reverend Rod” came into existence.
Unfortunately another name was taken: Scott Flute. I suspect that Rod himself grabbed this. He used that name in social media occasionally.
For now I will keep thus to free subscriptions and as for myself, this is a labor of love. I might turn on paid subscriptions if people want to contribute to some wothy cause that Rod supported. There are some that come to mind. I am keeping comments off for now and may keep it that way. Perhaps I will start a Facebook group with co-moderators for discussions. There is a way for Substack to host a community discussion as well. For now, kets all get these stories and pictures down while these are sharp in our minds.
My friend Robert Bigio and I somehow were “blamed” by Rod for sending him down a treacherous path in what Rod called “My last hurrah in the world of flute making”. He was inspired by Robert’s application of rose engine -turned ornamentation on the flutes that he makes in London, using 19th century tools once owned and operated by Rudall, Rose and Carte. He was also inspired by my development and application of my own rose engines, used for Guilloche engravings on the ferrules and end cap inlays on my own flutes. The tools are attachments that can be used on any Myford Super 7 lathe.
Rod joked about how inappropriate it was for an 80 year-old flutemaker to attempt the difficult task of recreating a well-known Baroque flute by Rippert, using the original fixed tool rose engine techniques to generate the heavily ornamented ferrules and end cap (using modern resin ivories of course). His journey took him to the workshop of Jean Claude Charpignon in France and elsewhere. In Mendocino he would build and then tear down the machinery and tooling required for this task. After several iterations Rod finally was satisfied with his work.
Rod and I taled about how many men when they retire from their work, and soon after disappear from the world instead of thriving in retirement. He and I shared a similar outlook of pursuing our work until the end. Making some of the best flutes ever made requires more passion than skill. Rod was busy in his workshop as much as possible until the very end.
Fortunately, he posted the results on a YouTube page along with a few other stories. These can be seen here: https://www.youtube.com/@rodcameron4376
Enough for now. Note that I am not always the best editor due to early morning bleary eyes (its 4:15AM on the Pacific Coast as I finish this) and so you will find typos. I will deal with that later!
Casey
Casey Burns - Wind Instrument Maker
www.caseyburnsflutes.com
laurentflutes.substack.com
caseyburnsflutes@gmail.com