Making Poor Man's Guitars E-Book

Shane Speal

• Herausgeber: Fox Chapel Publishing
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Seitenzahl: 171

Beschreibung

Many books have been written about how to build cigar box guitars and other unique hand-made instruments… but few have touched on why. This book presents the authentic stories of American DIY music with step-by-step projects, photo studies of antique instruments, interviews with music legends, and historical accounts. Shane Speal, the "King of the Cigar Box Guitar," brings the making of music and musical instruments back to its roots. From a simple two-string tin can guitar to an electrified washtub bass, Shane shows how anyone can build amazing musical instruments from found items. Sidebars present the fascinating backstory of the music, capturing struggle, poverty and the blues within the artistic side of cigar box guitar building. Featuring an introduction from the New Orleans Museum of Jazz, this DIY musical instrument book is as inspirational to read in the living room as it is in the workshop.

Leseprobe

This book is dedicated to Roy H. Williams, who gave me Don Quixote’s lance; Glenn Kaiser, who brought me to Blind Willie Johnson; and Ben Baker, who made sure we got a 12 pack of Budweiser before going to the greenhouse.

For Melissa, who is my everything.

Special thanks to David Sutton, Randy Flaum, William Jehle, RJ Gibson and the New Orleans Jazz Museum for their photo contributions.

All photographs are by the author unless otherwise noted.

© 2018 by Shane Speal and Fox Chapel Publishing Company, Inc., 903 Square Street, Mount Joy, PA 17552.

Making Poor Man’s Guitars is an original work, first published in 2018 by Fox Chapel Publishing Company, Inc. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher and copyright holders.

Print ISBN 978-1-56523-946-3

eISBN 978-1-60765-547-3

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Speal, Shane, author.

Title: Making poor man’s guitars / Shane Speal.

Description: Joy, PA : Fox Chapel Publishing Company, Inc., [2018] | Includes index.

Subjects: LCSH: Cigar box guitar--Construction. | Musical instruments--Construction.

Classification: LCC ML1015.G9 (ebook) | LCC ML1015.G9 S658 2018 (print) | DDC 784.192/3--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018023294

To learn more about the other great books from Fox Chapel Publishing, or to find a retailer near you, call toll-free 1-800-457-9112 or visit us at www.FoxChapelPublishing.com.

We are always looking for talented authors. To submit an idea, please send a brief inquiry to [email protected].

For a printable PDF of the patterns used in this book, please contact Fox Chapel Publishing at [email protected], with 9781565239463 and Making Poor Man's Guitars in the subject line.

CONTENTS

Introduction

Foreword: Little Freddie King’s Cigar Box Guitar: A Bluesman’s Firsthand Account

  1:“Nobody Builds a Cigar Box Guitar Because They Want to Play Nice Things”

  2:How to Build a Three-String Cigar Box Guitar

  3:Variations on a Theme – Pickups and Mods to the Three-String Cigar Box Guitar

  4:“The Portland Cowboy” Tin Can Guitar

  5:“Foot Stomper” Cigar Box Percussion Unit

  6:Electric Washtub Bass, a.k.a. “The Soul Bucket”

  7:Beer Can Microphone

  8:2 x 4 Lap Steel Guitar

  9:The Mailbox Guitar (A Builder’s Diary)

10:Cigar Box Preamp

11:Electric Washboard

12:“The Lady” Guitar – An Electric Guitar Illegally Handmade inside a Prison

13:Recreating Scrapper Blackwell’s Cigar Box Guitar (A Builder’s Diary)

14:Tips on Selling Cigar Box Guitars at Festivals and Craft Fairs

Cigar Box Guitar and DIY Instrument Resources

Appendix

Introduction

If I were to write just a book on building guitars, it would merely be an instruction in carpentry. If I were to add the rich history behind the instruments, the book would certainly have a bit more depth. However, I am neither a carpenter nor a professional historian; I am a musician who, to paraphrase the composer Harry Partch, was seduced into carpentry and history from searching for the sounds in my mind.

If I don’t talk about the music, then it is all a worthless quest.

It’s always about the music—a deeper music.

As I write this, my ears are still ringing and my voice is hoarse from attempting an old Cab Calloway song during band practice tonight. (Or was it the AC/DC cover?)

My band was at my place, running through a few song ideas. The mutant group, Shane Speal & the Snakes is built around cigar box guitars, washtub basses, homemade percussions, and a harmonica. All plugged into Spinal Tap amps and playing at breakneck speeds. In tonight’s practice, we experimented with a new sound by feeding the harmonica through a beer can microphone into a 1970s rotating Leslie organ speaker. It was fantastic!

When fans ask us about our genre, we usually just stand there and give them blank stares, because we have no clue. We’re a jug band that plays hard blues.

Or blues-meets-Motorhead on homemade instruments along with a toilet paper gun and confetti cannons.

Maybe the genre is “jug fusion” or “trash rock.” Regardless of a tidy name, we’re dangerous.

I believe music should be dangerous, on-the-edge, a little sloppy, and most of all, human. I attribute this philosophy to what I heard on a live, bootleg Sex Pistols cassette in 1982. I was twelve and just beginning to grow my mullet, cranking music on my stereo. To me, the Sex Pistols were the epitome of rock and roll with a jug band attitude. Sid couldn’t play bass, but he still did. Rotten couldn’t sing, but there he was, center stage, screaming with a beady-eyed glare. Jones and Cook were a freight train together. It shouldn’t have worked, but it did.

Cigar box guitars really shouldn’t work, but they do—magnificently. They’re the only instrument I use in my band.

Shane Speal & the Snakes plays mostly dive bars in rural Pennsylvania. Our fans follow us in hardcore devotion from show to show, because they never know what’s gonna happen at the next gig. When you play 100% homemade instruments, something is bound to get destroyed at any moment. There are always two rolls of duct tape on stage just in case a repair is needed.

Add the fact that we never use a set list. The entire three-hour concert is spent wrestling uncompromising instruments and feeding off the audience’s energy. Our shows sometimes contain reworked songs as diverse as Blind Willie Johnson, Jimi Hendrix, Muddy Waters, Depeche Mode, and Led Zeppelin. Some nights our songs are developed on the spot.

And there’s always danger ahead. The gig is either a masterpiece or it’s a train wreck. One night, a bar had a blackboard in the bathroom where somebody scrawled: “This band is HORRIBLE!” Another person scratched out “HORRIBLE” and wrote “AWESOME.” And THAT completely sums up my music.

So what is this all about? Why cigar box guitars with their out-of-tune janglings? Why gutbucket basses and their warbling thuds?

As you dig into this book, you’ll realize it’s not a gimmick for me.

It’s my life.

There are two types of projects in this book. The first lists all the parts, tools, and instructions, along with photos. The second is Builders’ Diaries, which chronicle unique instruments that were created in the past, usually on a whim, and were designed without any structured plan. I include them here to inspire you to try your own inventions.

Foreword

Little Freddie King’s Cigar Box Guitar: A Bluesman’s Firsthand Account

On January 17, 2017, I had the opportunity to interview 77-year-old blues legend Little Freddie King on stage at the New Orleans Jazz Museum and learn about the cigar box guitar he built when he was only six years old. King’s face lit up when we talked and every detail was as vivid in his memory as if it just happened earlier that day.

Me: I hear that when you were a little kid, you started out making your own instruments.

Little Freddie King: For sure, because I was so poor, I couldn’t afford to buy my own guitar.

Me: Where were you living and how old were you at the time?

L.F.K.: Macomb Mississippi. I was six years old.

Now, my dad, he used to play all the time. He’d get off from work and come straight home and run up on the porch and go in the living room to the far corner and pick his guitar up and run back on the porch. He’d sit in his special rocking chair and would start a-rockin’, playing guitar. I said, “Daddy, why don’t you learn me how to play?”

He said, “Boy, I can’t learn you how to play, but I can show you three chords and you have to learn yourself how to play.”

My dad used to work up in the Mississippi Delta, he’d go up there and pick cotton. While he was goin’ up there, I was getting real busy taking his guitar from the corner and banging on it, trying to learn how to play. I kept bangin’ on his guitar, and I broke a string on it. I said, “Uh oh, I know I got it coming now!”

So here he come that evening, wide open and running there, grab the guitar and back to the front porch and jumped in his rocking chair. He banged down on it . . . and there was no string at the bottom—not as many notes, you know? He said, “Boy, get here!”

I said, “Uh oh.” [Laughs] I said, “What’s the matter, Daddy?”

He said, “You know what’s the matter! You done broke my damn guitar!”

I said, “What? I didn’t do that, Daddy!”

He said, “Boy, don’t you lie to me. Come here.” He went and got a rattan vine. Man, I tell you the truth, when he finished me with that rattan vine, that learnt me not to fool with his guitar anymore!

So I said, “I’m gonna have to do something to get me a guitar. I ain’t gonna fool with his guitar anymore because he’d likely kill me.”

In the next couple days, my mama said to me, “Sonny, you wanna go to the store for Mama?”

I said, “Yeah, Mama.”

So she sent me to the store . . . Where I’m from, they only had gravel roads . . . So here comes two big shots in an Eldorado Fleetwood Cadillac . . . dust was flyin’ . . . When the dust settled, I saw they tossed something out the window. I looked down in a ditch and it was a cigar box.

I said, “Wow, that’s just what I need to make my own guitar so I won’t have to get no whoopin’ no more!” So I get down in the ditch and get that old cigar box out of there and go on home.

I said, “Now I got to make my own guitar.”

I got to thinkin’ that I didn’t have no saw or mechanical tools or carpentry tools to build with.

So I crushed an old Coca Cola bottle [to make a homemade knife] and whittled me a round hole in the center of it.

Then I said, “I got to paint it and glue it together,” but I didn’t have none of that nor money to do it, so I went to this pine tree that’s got that rosin coming out of it. So I got some rosin and put it in a cup, put it on the stove, and melted it. Then I went to the chimney . . . that had soot that was black, and I took that and melted with the rosin. And it made it black. [Using the cooked rosin concoction], I glued it together and painted it black.

I said, “What am I going to do for the neck and the frets?”

So around the house, we had a picket fence. So I ran out there and grabbed a picket and snatched it off the fence and took the same piece of glass and whittled it down. Then I put it on the cigar box. So then I said, “I got to make the frets.” I thought about the hay wire outside. So I went out and got some hay wire, the smallest hay wire I could find. I took it, cut it, and glued it down on the “keyboard.” I then took another piece of wire to the stove and got it red hot and then marked the holes at the end of [the headstock] to make my tuners.

I said, “Now I got my cigar box guitar, but I don’t have no strings!” So my daddy came for lunch and he used to make this homemade corn liquor called “buck.” You drink a pint of that and you’ll be drunk for seven days! And so he’d go back there and get charged up on that buck and he tied the horse to the pole. And the horse started stomping and kickin’ his tail as he was swatting horse flies. And I heard the sound of his tail moving in the air. “Woosh! Woosh! Woosh!”

I said to myself. “He made that tail sound through the air, so I wonder what it would sound like on my guitar.”

I went out to the horse and he looked at me. I said “I ain’t gonna bother you. I just want to take a hair and see what it will do on my guitar.” So I pull one strand out. I put that on [the guitar] and it made a sound. So I went back to the horse and he looked at me again. I said, “I’m back again and I want five more strings from you, horse.” So I kept pullin’, pullin’, pullin’ till he had a great big bald spot in his tail! [Laughs!]

Born Fread Eugene Martin in 1940, Little Freddie King has been a pillar of the New Orleans music community since moving there in 1954. A cousin of Lightnin’ Hopkins, King’s style mixes country blues with the fierce electric blues of his namesake, Freddie King.

I just wished I would have been able to hold onto that guitar until today.

Special thanks to Collins Kirby of the New Orleans Cigar Box Guitar Festival and Greg Lambousy and the staff of the New Orleans Jazz Museum for making this interview possible.

CHAPTER 1:“Nobody Builds a Cigar Box Guitar Because They Want to Play Nice Things”

You simply don’t go down this road because you want to play another Fender® Strat. That music has been spun a million times over. This is a deeper quest.

If you’re you looking for a modern method of crafting a perfect guitar from a cigar box for playing fancy music, then you can stop right here. This is something different. This book is a quest for deeper music . . . deeper living. Deep.

For me, the story starts in 1993 at a period when the blues first hit me like a ton of bricks. As an amateur musician, hearing this music caused me to abandon thrash metal and punk for this older American art form. I think it was Jimi Hendrix’s “Red House” that started it for me. From there, I had to learn more about this music.

I started digging for more information. If Jimi Hendrix was so good, then who came before him? I unearthed Muddy Waters braggadocio hollers, Hound Dog Taylor’s gnarled slide, and Howlin’ Wolf’s howl. I kept on digging. Soon, I fell into a pit of the deep stuff . . . the Delta Blues of the 1920s and 30s. Blind Willie Johnson’s hellfire and damnation preaching, Mississippi John Hurt’s murder ballads sung with a smile, and Cryin’ Sam Collins’ sorrowful and out-of-tune “git-fiddle” guitar.

My apartment became filled with overdue Smithsonian Folkway records from the library. I had a cheap acoustic guitar and a ¾" (2 cm) socket guitar slide beside my bed that I would use to choke old blues songs I heard on the turntable. It was a constant struggle with my fingers cramping up after hours of playing.

The blues are dangerous and I wanted to dance with it. But I kept failing. That’s when I asked myself, what came before the Delta Blues? What was one step deeper?

At some point, I came across an interview with rockabilly legend Carl Perkins in which he described the very first guitar he owned:

“Before I went to school, I started fooling around on a guitar. My daddy made me one with a cigar box, a broomstick, and two strands of baling wire, and I’d sit and beat on that thing.” – Carl Perkins

It was a poor man’s guitar, built because he couldn’t afford a store-bought acoustic. In my imagination, it was the whining sound of desperation.

It was one step deeper.

I had to make my own just to see if this was the Holy Grail that I was searching for in my quest.

On July 4, 1993, I built my very first cigar box guitar. These photos (see here) are of the actual guitar. It was built from a plank of wood from my father’s barn, a cardboard Swisher Sweets box, three guitar tuners from a broken guitar, and three used guitar strings.

Perkins said his guitar had two strings, so I decided to make mine fancy and add a third string. When I strung it up, I immediately was able to play Sylvester Weaver’s blues classic “Guitar Rag,” a song that had earlier been the bane of my existence on my six-string acoustic. The three strings played with a slide made perfect sense to me, and the songs kept pouring out of the box.

I had found my instrument.

A cigar box guitar, in its most primal form, is broken to begin with. It shouldn’t work, but it still does. The sounds are otherworldly, like stepping inside the grooves of an old Victrola record. The box itself was crafted by manufacturers simply to hold 25 cigars, look enticing on a store counter, and carry a tax stamp. No thought was ever given to whether it would be acoustically tuned for performance.

And yet it has the exact sound and spirit I was looking for.

It’s been 25 years since I built that first cigar box guitar, and since then I’ve only slightly refined the style of that very first one. In the thousands of instruments I’ve built since that first one, I experimented with adding frets, pickups, and other elements.

The further I would push the idea, the more the muse would pull me back to the simple three-string slide style of the original Swisher Sweets guitar.

This not a gimmick guitar. It’s not about some educated egghead guitarist making cheeky viral videos while “slumming it” on a homemade cigar box guitar. It’s digging deep into the past to find the music that connects with your soul and then developing your own sound from it.

Let’s start digging.

A decade ago, I “retired” the Swisher Sweets cigar box guitar by hanging it at Unkl Ray’s Bar in Hinton, WV. Unfortunately, the iconic roadhouse closed several years later, but owner Ray Nutter kept my guitar preserved and in perfect condition. It was only after I started writing this book that I asked for its return. Within two days of my message to Ray, it was delivered to my front porch. Thanks, Ray. You’re the true Washboard Wizard. Let’s do a Jug Fusion reunion someday.

Guitarcheology: “The Horse’s Bridle” Two-String Guitar, Circa 1900

Measuring in at 30" (76 cm) long, 5" (12 ¾ cm) wide, and 3" (7 ½ cm) deep, this two- string guitar sports a body and neck that were crafted from one hunk of wood using hand tools.

The body cavity was completely carved. A soundboard made of 3/16" (½ cm) thin wood from the same stock was attached with nails. A house-shaped sound hole is carved near the floating bridge. It is strung with two gauges of fishing line.

The angled headstock has two hand- carved tuning pegs which still work great. The frets are small pieces of nickel and copper that have been hammered over the sides and positioned at an approximated do re mi scale, similar to a diatonic dulcimer fretboard.

To get a better idea on the frets, I called up Derick Kemper, my current harmonica player who is also a professional blacksmith. He took one look at the guitar and said, “The frets are definitely hand hammered of some kind, but the tailpiece that holds the strings is an actual horse’s bridle. I know because I just got back from shoeing horses!”

Take note at the wear marks on the face of the guitar. This instrument has been played . . . and played hard. Whoever built this definitely made the instrument they were searching for. The neck contains sweat marks and wear.

The guitar was discovered somewhere in New England. Amazingly, it is still very much playable.

1886 Newspaper Article: A Juvenile Sits on a Beer Keg and Gathers a Crowd

GALVESTON (TX) DAILY NEWS, THURSDAY, APRIL 15, 1886

Historic cigar box banjo plans, first published in 1886.

Perched upon a lager beer keg in an obscure locality in the city, sat a diminutive musician yesterday. His legs were crossed, his lips were moving, and his hands were playing a [homemade] guitar. This instrument was rudely but cleverly fashioned, and exhibited traces of an inventive genius in its maker.