When 19-year GAL member Sean Barry was 12 he was offered the choice of learning to play bluegrass banjo and guitar or becoming a herpetologist to study snakes and lizards. Since both involved scales, he saw little difference between them and he pursued them both with equal fervor. He spent ten of the next fifty-four years as a professional road musician and much of the rest as a professional herpetologist, not to mention as a bus driver and diesel mechanic for his traveling band. Along the way he developed an interest in the way wooden instruments were made and repaired and he has pursued lutherie tenaciously since the late 1960s. His lutherie focus is the F-5 mandolin but he also builds flat top guitars and even the occasional solid body electric. He hopes to write more for American Lutherie, especially during the winter when the snakes are hibernating.

▪ bio current as of 2016