Episode 501: Phoebe Sanders (Banjo, Limberjacks, and Jig Dolls)

April 1, 2026·37 min·3 clips

Phoebe turned a Halloween skeleton into a viral banjo-playing puppet that launched her folk art career.

1. Get Up in the Cool, Cameron DeWitt's old-time music podcast, features a home visit with Phoebe Sanders in La Mirada, California, recorded in her backyard shed. 2. Phoebe Sanders is a 23-year-old clawhammer banjo player and folk art puppet maker, best known on social media for playing banjo while operating jig doll puppets. 3. The episode covers her discovery of jig dolls as a traditional Appalachian form, her process for making and commissioning puppets, and her relationship to old-time music as a largely solo practice. 4. Cameron first discovered Phoebe when a limberjack video featuring Tiny Gilligan went viral among his non-old-time-music friends, which he describes as an unusually positive experience compared to typical viral folk music content. 5. Phoebe explains that jig dolls — also called limberjacks — are traditional Appalachian folk instruments played on a bouncing plank; she discovered them through a video of a player with two dancing simultaneously. 6. Tiny Gilligan, her signature puppet, was custom-commissioned from a kazoo maker (whom Cameron calls a 'kazoothier') to resemble the character Gilligan from the TV show Gilligan's Island; the commission took approximately one year. 7. Phoebe explains that she wears a bucket hat in the style of Gilligan's, and that the character's enthusiasm combined with lack of coordination makes him a perfect flat-foot dancer — 'incredibly enthusiastic and has not practiced at all.' 8. Her folk art evolved from Tiny Gilligan to a Halloween skeleton rigged to her hand, which went viral when she played 'Spooky Scary Skeletons' on banjo, then to construction paper figures, and most recently to a raccoon puppet she used while opening for a performer named Meals. 9. Phoebe is 23 years old — a detail she discloses because Cameron notes she looks younger — and grew up watching Gilligan's Island after buying a DVD at a dollar store, ostensibly for her father, who turned out to hate the show. 10. Her musical background began with piano, which she describes as not inspiring joy, then violin with a teacher named Mrs. Laurel, before finding a banjo given to her mother by her grandfather in a storage loft. 11. She describes the moment of first strumming the grandfather's banjo as immediately captivating — 'I just strummed it and it sounded so cool and I was just hooked' — and asked to take banjo lessons alongside continued violin before eventually dropping fiddle for banjo. 12. Her current banjo, named Bertie, was a birthday gift from her parents after her teacher noted the grandfather's banjo was not adequate for lessons. 13. Chronic fatigue limits Phoebe's ability to attend the downtown Los Angeles jams where old-time music is played; she dislikes the drive and the traffic, and frames the isolation as allowing her to enjoy the banjo purely for the music rather than as a social technology. 14. Her primary audience is her backyard chickens, which she mentions without irony as the regular recipient of her practice sessions. 15. She prefers clawhammer over Scruggs style because clawhammer allows self-accompaniment — playing melody and chords simultaneously — making it suited to solo playing at home. 16. The Tiny Gilligan rigging system is explained in detail: a harness with clear fishing string, one end attached to her picking hand and the other to the banjo neck, so Gilligan dances in the middle in sync with the picking motion. 17. She discusses future ambitions including a duet between Tiny Gilligan and a live clog dancer performing the same footwork side by side, and an idea to rig an autoharp with foot pedals that Gilligan could press while dancing to change chords. 18. The episode ends with a clay jester puppet Phoebe made, fitted with jingly bells, whose leg falls off mid-performance, leading to Tiny Gilligan returning to fill in. 19. The episode's tone is light and playful throughout, with Cameron frequently expressing genuine delight at the puppets and both participants laughing often; it includes live banjo playing and attempts at limberjack demonstration. 20. Listeners who enjoy folk art, clawhammer banjo, and warm personality-driven conversations will find this engaging; those seeking technical music instruction or dense discussion of tradition will not.

As heard by us

A shed-side jam that turns tune memory into a sturdy lesson in old-time music.

Phoebe Sanders makes this Get Up in the Cool stop feel like a real conversation around old-time music, not a polished set piece. She moves from a jam to tune lore to the practical, lived-in details that keep the tradition moving, and the shed recording in La Mirada adds to that…

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Why you'd press play

Play this when you want Phoebe Sanders, an old-time hang, and a tune trail worth following.

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