For the first time in a very long while, the blues filled my humble hovel this weekend. This was the result of a project I had undertaken to build my own lap steel guitar from common household items (a paper board box, a 1x4 Poplar board, a few woodscrews, one dowel rod, and a set of guitar strings and you’ve got yourself a lap steel guitar). Now, it may sound odd that one would wish to revert so far back into his childhood that he would find pleasure not only in building, but in playing what essentially amounts to nothing more than a “rubber band” guitar.
In my own defense—it has real guitar strings on it...so there!
The art of building “cigar box guitars” actually has a long heritage in rural America. There’s been many a “hoe-down” played on instruments built from cigar boxes, planks, tin cans, and whatever else may have been available to poor farmers who couldn’t afford to purchase a Martin or a Gibson. What’s more, those farmers knew something that I have said for years—“it ain’t the instrument that makes good music, it’s the player.” I would never suggest that I could build a guitar that sounds as good as a Gibson or a Martin from a box and a poplar plank—but, I will say that I can make an instrument that will produce a pleasing sound for a huge fraction of the cost of even a low end manufactured guitar. (All told, my “plank guitar” cost me about forty dollars, and about six hours of work in putting it together—an acoustic lap guitar from a manufacturer will cost anywhere from a hundred well into the thousands). The fact is anyone can build a guitar for themselves in the same manner without the least bit of knowledge concerning guitar making.
The most pleasing aspect to me about my homely little guitar isn’t so much that I made it, however, or even that I got away on the “cheap”. It is the rawness of the sound it makes. It just sounds rustic. Blues licks have never sounded as good as they do when played as they originally were—on a plank of wood with strings stretched over it. All the great Blues players—B.B King, Muddy Waters, Lightnin’ Hopkins, and many more—have spoken of their first instruments as being homemade contraptions ranging from a string nailed to a wall to a board fastened to a box. After having played my own homemade guitar, I wonder if those fellows didn’t keep their cigar boxes handy to play when no one was looking (Bo Diddley’s famous rectangular shaped guitar is, in fact, an homage to the old cigar box guitars of his youth. In fact, the name “Bo Diddley” is just a reversal of “Diddley Bow”, which was the name given to a three stringed slide instrument built using the same methods). In an age where instrument manufacturers sell us useless and over-priced products that they claim are capable of reproducing “authentic” sounds from transistors, capacitors, and computer chips, it is pleasing to me to know that I can prove them wrong with a 1x4 and a paper-board box. While it may not have the aural resonance and aesthetic beauty that they offer, it sounds more like the real thing than anything they can sell me. It sounds authentic because it is authentic—something a computer chip will never duplicate.
All of this has led me to ponder strange things, however.
Knowing what little I do about the construction and physics behind guitar making (i.e.—choice of tone woods, bracing, and such), I have been speculating the possibility of building a box guitar using some of those methods. I have to wonder how much selecting good tone woods (spruce, cedar, or mahogany) for the body would change the resonance and projection of the instrument, for example. Or how much difference it would make to use maple for the neck as opposed to poplar. (I don’t think that the neck would make a considerable difference in sound for a lap-steel, since the strings never actually contact the neck, but maple may be more sturdy as far as holding up to string tension.) I know that building a box from cedar, rosewood, or mahogany would be a fairly simple task (albeit a little more expensive than paper board), and I already know how to make the simple design of the “cigar box guitar” work, so my next task will be to acquire “proper” tone woods and begin building.
I think it would be a lovely homage to the homely and rustic instruments that rural musicians built from necessity to build as aesthetically pleasing and aurally superior an instrument as possible using their utilitarian designs. Mrs. w thinks that I should market the idea. I don’t know about that. While it would be nice to think that I could actually make something that someone may want to buy, I would abhor having to succumb to the necessity of creating a “marketing strategy” for something that is so innocently beautiful as these simple little creations. My desire to build a quality instrument from primitive designs isn’t motivated by profit, but out of respect and admiration for the spirit of rural utilitarianism and the simple wisdom of “country folks”. It is fueled by my refusal to be anything other than what I essentially am at heart—one of the “country folk”.
I know that the “evils” of mass marketed musical instruments may seem a bit trivial to most people, but, to me, the state of the instrument manufacturing world, and the music industry, in general, is just as indicative of the subjugation of our culture to the power of the dollar as any other industry is. The thing that we never consider when it comes to music is this: in more primitive and rustic cultures, music is ingrained into the society—at once, it’s spiritual, it’s social, and it is traditional. Music is handed down from generation to generation, along with the skills associated with making instruments to play those songs on. Mass marketing musical instruments (and musicians, for that matter) does indeed run the risk of being detrimental to the sense of tradition that is so integral to the proliferation of authentic music in the folk genre, and in turn is, therefore, detrimental to a sense of community within any given culture. Folk music may not seem to be a big concern to us in the modern world, but I maintain that, while it may not be the cornerstone of our culture, without it, we may lose sight of the values and traditions, trials and tribulations that our culture was built upon.
Building homemade guitars and singing folk songs won’t change the world, but it couldn’t hurt for us to be reminded of simpler times.
It couldn’t hurt at all.
peace, wayf
