Of course musicians and
sculptors are artists, but what about men and women who work on musical
instruments? Those who make and repair stringed instruments are called
luthiers. Does a luthier make artistic decisions about the way an instrument
sounds, looks, and feels?
Luthiers have advanced skills in the
arts of instrument building and repair, and they use these skills to
serve musical communities. Through recent interviews, some luthiers explained
how they learned the trade, differences in building and repairing, communities
they serve, favorite tools and materials, their workshops, and their
innovations. This exhibit features Kentucky luthiers’ quotations,
photographs, and some of their musical masterpieces.
Roy Bowen cofounded RS Guitarworks in Winchester, which
is internationally known for electric guitar making, repair, aging, and
upgrades:
“The guitar itself is a work of
art. It all has to be about the craftsmanship and the beauty of the thing. You
could almost frame them and put them on the wall.”
Donna Lamb and her father Lewis make instruments, play
them, and host popular jam sessions in Berea. They live in Lancaster and won a
2007 Kentucky Governor’s Award in the Arts for Folk
Heritage:
“They’re made to be
used. I’ve seen so many instruments go into museums and you can just see
that they want to be played. They don’t want to be sat there for people to
look at, that wasn’t what they were built for.”
Like all master artists, luthiers have talents they develop over
years. Often, they begin as musicians who work on their own instruments.
Luthiers learn from one another and share artistic expression, which is why
folklorists study luthiers as an occupational folk group.
Luthiers make
up a group that serves another type of folk group: musicians. John
Harrod is a musician and scholar from Owenton who plays in the band
Kentucky Wild Horse. He says:
“They’re artists, and highly skilled craftspeople.
It takes a lifetime of experience to learn the ins and outs of instruments,
whether they’re banjos or guitars or fiddles or mandolins, they all have
their own history and lore, and what makes them sound good. There’s a lot
of specialized knowledge that goes into it, and that’s why most musicians
don’t do it themselves, because they’re specialized as pickers. They
rely on somebody to keep the music going.”
Frank Pittman of Bowling Green is a retired industrial arts
professor at Western Kentucky University:
“I wanted to learn how to make guitars first and then
see if I could teach guitar making. The only way that you can really, really
know that you know something is to actually try to do it on your own.”
Art Mize learned lutherie from the late J. B. Miller.
He operates Mize Violin Shop in Lexington:
“There’s a lot of wisdom that’s almost
incommunicable about making: sense of the wood, the feel for its strength, and
that sort of thing. You could just watch J. B. Miller and see how he dealt with
the wood and say, ‘he’s feeling for something there.’ And then
you go feel it yourself and say ‘What’s he discerning about
that?’”
Cathy Currier, of Currier’s
Music World in Richmond focuses most of her work on repair and
maintenance:
“You have a big, networking
group of people. If I need help with something, I have ten people I can call.
There’s always something different to learn when you’re doing
instrument repair work. Everyone has a different opinion how to do it, so then
you have to decide which way is good for you.”
Jimmy Robertson of Metcalfe County is a self-taught instrument
builder:
“I’d always wanted an
F-style mandolin. You know, they’re too high to buy. I just started
whittling and chopping on a piece of wood and made me one, and it made a sound.
Somebody wanted it, and I sold it and made another one. It just went from
there.”
Luthiers develop a deep understanding of how instruments are made, and
how they are maintained. Some focus on making instruments, and others focus on
repair. Both areas of specialization require lots of creativity, and both serve
equally important roles in musical communities.
Environmental changes
like humidity and temperature affect the way stringed instruments sound, so
luthiers may “set up” an instrument two or more times a year. A
set-up may involve neck, bridge, nut, or tailpiece adjustments.
Arthur Hatfield of Glasgow makes banjos for well-known players
like Doyle Lawson and Quicksilver and leads the bluegrass band Arthur
Hatfield and Buck Creek:
“The best
instruments are not being made by big companies. Your individual builders are
making the best.”
Scott Leedy of RS
Guitarworks in Winchester explains the satisfaction that comes from making
an instrument:
“You get done with this
piece of wood you’ve been hacking on and carving on and sanding on
forever, and just working on so hard. When you get to put all the pieces on it
and plug it in for the first time, that’s what we refer to as “the
lightning hitting Frankenstein effect.” You get that first sound out of
it. That’s when I get my reward, right there. That’s when it all
comes full circle for me.”
Art Mize does repair work at Mize Violin Shop in
Lexington:
“Repair is a funny business,
because you hope that you fix it and you don’t see them again. You have to
have new people discover you all the time.”
“The really
interesting repairs are the ones where you have to think a lot about what to do
to restore it to functionality, and restore it to its beauty, and to the
quality that the instrument was. Violins tend to have very long lives, so I
have to conserve the historical voice of the instrument.”
Kentucky is filled with musical communities that play old-time,
bluegrass, gospel, rock and roll, country, and many other styles. Whether
performing in a concert hall, a recording studio, or in a family jam session, a
string player depends on a luthier who, in many cases, lives and works nearby.
Luthiers, as an occupational folk group, interact with groups of
musicians who require great-sounding, great-looking instruments that also feel
good in texture, weight, and balance.
Cathy Currier works on instruments at Currier’s Music
World in Richmond:
“I’m a woman,
and I think it’s a very, very male-dominated trade. To this day, people
come in and go, ‘Where’s the repairman?’ And I go,
‘You’re looking at him. Here I am.’”
Neil Kendrick of Menifee County makes guitars and other
instruments:
“The late Homer Ledford gave
me a lot of information on how to do things the correct way. It’s really
good that the family of luthiers are friendly with each other, and they will
share so-called secrets with each other on how to do
things.”
Frank Neat lives in Russell Springs, where he makes
banjos:
“We go and pick our wood out, and
we’ll pick it out for the instrument and the player. We try to get ours to
where they feel good in your hand, so that whenever they put their left hand on
it, they want to play it.”
John Harrod, musician and fiddle scholar from Owenton, descibes
his luthier, Gary Cornett:
“Musicians depend on luthiers to find good instruments,
and to keep them in playing condition. So I’m absolutely dependent on Gary
Cornett. I owe him just about my life. He’s found great instruments, and
he’s taken care of all my friends and everybody in the band.”
Luthiers learn to use a variety of tools, ranging from complex
computers to simple pocketknives. Some prefer old methods over new ones, but
all luthiers are innovators and make many of their own tools.
Materials
are very important, and a luthier must know how to select the most appropriate
woods, metals, finishes, and other goods, sometimes years before they will be
used.
The luthier’s workshop is where everything comes together.
The combination of tools, materials, hard work, and inspiration result in
instruments that are works of art.
Cathy Currier of Richmond
describes her most-used tools:
“Being a
luthier a hundred years ago may have been romantic, but being a luthier now is
really neat because [of] all the really nice tools we get to use. What I use
the most is my belt sander and my band saw, and then all my hand tools. Lots of
clamps, lots of little spatulas, tape, lots of low-tech stuff. I made thousands
of dollars of tools that I would have had to have bought. I didn’t have
to.”
Warren A. May, who runs a shop in Berea, discusses different
types of wood for dulcimers:
“Well,
overall, each piece of wood will sound different. Generally, poplar was the
most common wood available. The wood was very light, very resonant. Then, a lot
of times, walnut would be very, very mellow. It’s a very soft, forgiving
sound. For a little bit more precise sound, the cherry has the real bright,
crispy, just a good clear tone sound. The aging of the wood is something that
just can’t be duplicated. There’s more volume, more clarity, just a
little bit more interest using the older pieces of wood, as opposed to new
wood.”
Bryan England began the business Custom Inlay with
Larry Shepherd in Caneyville. Bryan explains the growth of his
workshop:
“I’m on the kitchen table,
making a mess, with another one. Then another one later, then another one, and
then eventually I’m taking over the utility room, I’m taking over my
garage, and then gradually take over the carport, take over this, add here, add
there. We moved on out on the farm. And my old shop was just a garage here, and
I added and added. And I ended up taking that over, and we just kept
growing.”
Everyone expresses artistic sensibility in daily life, such as the way
one prepares food, participates in work and play, or celebrates special
occasions. These sensibilities, or aesthetics, are shared among groups of
people, or folk groups. Luthiers are no exception; their group and individual
aesthetics stand out in the details of their work.
Doug
Naselroad of Clark County makes guitars and mandolins:
“I think anybody that really refines guitar making has
to be an artist. You have the craftsmanship, but you also have the sense of
taste, and you can’t have one without the other. You really have to find
that balance. And I think a lot of it comes from spending time with that
community, with peers.”
Frank Neat, of Russell
Springs does inlay designs on his banjo necks:
“If you do it with a computer, everything looks just
the same. If you hand do it, then it looks like it’s been done by hand.
There’s a little bit of difference in all of it. If it’s hand done,
you can tell that it’s hand done.”
Warren
May of Berea explains how extraordinary-sounding instruments are
born:
“There will be, occasionally, maybe
one in fifty, maybe one in a hundred, that will have really, really distinctive
properties. The instrument will just have an exceptional tone quality. Probably
it’s the certain combination of pieces of wood, along with the
playability. Now when you get down to super fine points like that, you probably
couldn’t make one on purpose to sound better than another
one.”
Neil Kendrick of Menifee County uses his engineering background
to control all aspects of an instrument’s construction:
“I approach my instruments from a precision standpoint.
I like to think my instruments are as accurate as a manmade thing can be.
There’s not really anything magical about a musical instrument. It’s
all engineering principles, and a matter of design, and then the part of being
meticulous about how everything happens. To do everything as perfect as a man
can do.”
Traditional art forms are always changing. Change is what keeps folk
culture alive and relevant. Luthiers draw from generations of traditional
knowledge about musical instruments. Along the way, they make their own
discoveries and contribute to that knowledge.
Warren May of
Berea talks about his innovations:
“I’ve come up with an hour drop, which is a wider
body with a teardrop side on it, to make it more gutsy sounding. I do a
wide-bodied dulcimer that has a stronger, hummier sound. But I still keep in
the traditional format, the traditional playing
style.”
Scott Leedy of RS Guitarworks in Winchester describes
the process of aging, or “relicking” an instrument:
“Roy [Bowen of RS Guitarworks] was pretty much the
whole pioneer of the aging process, going through the right steps by trial and
error, from the checking to the stains to the scratching, to Roy bashing a
guitar against a rusty pole in the back. There’s been a lot of debate
about the aging of the guitars and restoring them to their original look.
I’ve always said it’s like trying to explain a joke. You either get
it or you don’t. It can’t be explained. So we’re just lucky that
a lot of people get it.”
Doug Naselrode of Clark County learned many techniques from
Homer Ledford, who was known for being an innovator:
“Part of his ethos, if you will, the way that he viewed
the world was as an inventor. He was going to figure out what needed to be
done. If he made a mistake, well, he’d do it better next time, and he
wasn’t afraid to think up things.”
Kentucky Arts
Council
500 Mero Street
21st Floor, Capital Plaza Tower
Frankfort,
KY 40601
502-564-3757
Toll Free: 888-833-2787
FAX:
502-564-2839
Page Updated: 07/02/2009
