Lucho Pellegrini - Playing the washboard and discovering the different sounds that can be created.
"In 2015 Lucho Pellegirini was having a hard time getting a washboard for a gig. With just a broken washboard frame on hand, Lucho turned to his cousin Rodri, an engineer, who helped him hack together a ribbed metal panel to get by for the gig. It worked like a charm!
Lucho and Rodri were tinkerers by nature, so they went back to the drawing board, and designed a washboard from the ground up. They based their design off of the old one they had hacked together, but free from the constraints of a "restoration".
From the very beginning, their intention was clear: To build an appealing washboard built for musicians, using sustainably sourced materials. For the main ingredient (wood), they chose Paulownia: a rapidly-growing tree grown in Northern Argentina for re-forestation purposes that also happens to be the world’s highest absorber of CO2.
A few iterations later, in 2016, they launched the first ever washboard made especially for music. It quickly ran out of stock in the first week, and they’ve been pushing out washboards ever since.
It's been incredibly exciting and humbling to see how musicians from so many different genres have adopted a Cincinnati washboard into their music including Silvina Moreno (ARG); Ed Sheeran (UK); Washboard Chaz (US); Jack Amblin (UK); Adán Jodorowsky (FR); Defne Dizzy Incirlioglu (US); Marcelo Woloski (AR); Vince Giordano (US); Pablo Leites (UY); Fantastic Negrito (US); Mon Laferte (CH); Santiago Vázquez