If WT Bryant isn’t working with his hands, he says his world just doesn’t feel right. It’s that maker spirit that’s led him to reimagine objects like the cigar box. For nearly four years, Bryant has ...

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, ...

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 ...

HUNTSVILLE, AL. - What is a cigar box guitar? Technically, it’s a discarded cigar box with a hole for a 1-inch-by-2-inch fretboard. A hodgepodge of random items. Perhaps with a leather cord attached ...

Cigar boxes may have intrigued you - dovetailed wood versions that seemed so wonderfully crafted, and perhaps overbuilt, to their purpose. The subject may be gaining currency as relations thaw between ...

LIVERMORE — Ed Roudebush heard something different in a song that didn’t quite sound like a guitar, but wasn’t a banjo either. After some research, he found the cigar box guitar, and now months later ...

HUNTSVILLE, AL. - About five years ago, Bill Jehle decided to build the perfect electric guitar. Dissatisfied with all of his equipment, Jehle began to take note of certain features in his dozen or so ...

Homemade instruments emerged in 1930s, when people couldn't afford "real" instruments Modern revival fits in with DIY culture He works with the precision and concentration of a surgeon because, well, ...

It has been said that no zydeco band is complete without a rubboard and an accordion. But deep in the birthplace of zydeco, an exhibit at the St. Landry Parish Visitor Center features a different type ...

There isn’t much about the small house on an average street in a typical Royal Oak neighborhood that would make people think anything out of the ordinary is happening inside. But the cigar box guitars ...

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 ...

He works with the precision and concentration of a surgeon because, well, he is one. But in the basement workshop of Kirk Withrow’s Birmingham home, the stakes are much lower. The ear, nose and throat ...