For three years, Archie Storey had been on a steady diet of Mississippi blues and was looking for a way into the music. The longtime BeBop Records employee listened to the blues constantly and ...

When Diane Sutliff started making cigar-box guitars in late 2008, she was driven by curiosity, some innate craftiness, and the desire to improve upon someone else’s work—the same things that seem to ...

MEMPHIS, TENN. -- — They’re built around wooden cigar boxes, just like untold thousands of homemade guitars patched together across America since the 1800s. But no minstrel-show performer or ...

Back when cigars were plentiful and money was not — especially during the Civil War, for example, or the Great Depression — some musicians decided to work with what they had close at hand and built ...

Memphis, Tennessee: The American South's conflicted Mecca. For its size and location, Memphis should be much more than it is. At the very least, it should be the rightful home of the Rock and Roll ...

The passionate advocates of the ‘Cigar Box Guitar Revolution’ express their love of making unique hand-made instruments and the democratic, re-cycling ethos of the movement. Many of these musicians ...

ST. JOSEPH, Mo. (AP) - It started as a search for a different sound. Kevin M. Kraft spent years unsatisfied with the instruments he had and was considering commissioning a custom-made guitar when he ...

Anyone who saw the funny little square-shaped guitars at Mikel Doktor’s booth stand at the Music is Art festival might have thought Doktor had created some unique, alien-type of instrument. However, ...

For the past few years, Anthony Walker has been elbows deep in sawdust, perfecting his latest consuming passion. In his workshop outside Columbia in Blythewood, the luthier — or guitar maker — who ...

Shane Speal, whose Snake Oil Band headlines the first New Orleans Cigar Box Guitar Festival on Saturday, started out playing something with a little more firepower. “In the ’80s, I was a bass player ...

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (WHNT) — The 19th annual Cigar Box Guitar Festival is set for Saturday, June 3rd, but that may leave some wondering… what is a cigar box guitar? The do-it-yourself instrument is ...