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Mill Point is a blink-and-you’ll miss it wide spot off the twisty mountain roads of Pocahontas County, West Virginia. It’s also the home of Bill Hefner, a luthier who isn’t just making guitars, he’s passing his tradition of meticulous craftmanship down to the next generation.

A Music Filled Life

Bill Hefner grew up in a house filled with music. His mother and aunt would harmonize to popular songs on the radio, and his Uncle “Dude” Irving played guitar, mandolin and banjo. Bill and his brother Richard both learned to play on Harmony Archtop guitars, delivered by Santa Claus in the late 1950’s. Richard said Bill was inspired by county music star Chet Atkins.

“He ordered a Chet Atkins book, and he’d play that guitar and study that book,” Richard said. “And he’d come down every now and then and ask Uncle Dude how Chet Atkins did this or how Chet Atkins did that or how he would do it, and he would show him. Billy would take the guitar and go back upstairs again.”

When Uncle Dude formed his band, he recruited Bill to play guitar and mandolin. Richard played the banjo. And with the addition of a couple of cousins, they formed the Black Mountain Bluegrass Boys, a group that still performs in Pocahontas County and surrounding areas.

Bill played with the band until Uncle Dude passed away in 1973. These days, Bill performs with his wife and daughters as The Hefner Family Band in church and at local festivals.

The Black Mountain Bluegrass Boys, circa 1972. Richard Hefner (sitting), Bill Hefner, Uncle Dude Irvine, Harley Carpenter, Dwight Diller

The Calling

Bill has played the guitar for most of his 76 years, but about 14 years ago, he decided playing the guitar wasn’t enough; he wanted to make the instrument. So, he prayed about it.

“I told the Lord, I feel like I’m supposed to be doing this,” he said. “I told the Lord if He’d get me in this business, I was going to dedicate it to him for the rest of my life.”

Bill quit his job at the rock quarry in Mill Point and started making guitars full time. His workshop is right next to his house. There are pieces of uncut wood everywhere and a few guitars under construction. Local sign maker Eric Warner taught Bill how to bend wood and cut semi-precious stone for the guitar inlays. Bill also learned some tips from luthier John Greven, who built guitars for musicians like Johnny Cash and Mary Chapin Carpenter.

“I used to call John when I first started, every week,” Bill said. “I called him up and asked him questions hundreds of times. And he was nice enough to explain everything and talk as long as I needed to.”

Bill said the most important component to guitar making is the wood. He used to import walnut from Oregon and Sitka Spruce from Alaska, but then about 10 years ago, he switched to woods native to Pocahontas and Greenbrier counties in West Virginia, because they were easier to acquire. Wood such as Black Walnut, Maple and Cherry.

He’s used Pocahontas Red Spruce in his guitars because John Greven told him it has a real high head room.

“It means that the harder you play it, the better is sounds,” Bill said. “And some of the other woods will start breaking up if you play them real hard, the notes won’t be clear. Red Spruce just gets louder and prettier.”

Happy Customers

Bill sold one of his Red Spruce guitars to old time musician Doug Stalnaker, who said he loved it for the sound and the ease of playing it.

“Just like playing with butter, it’s just so smooth,” said Doug. “And the fact that I got what I wanted: I got a West Virginia artist doing West Virginia woods!”

Retired naturalist Pat Parr purchased two guitars from Bill. She said she loves them not only for their deep sound, but for the intricate stone inlays she designed and Bill handcrafted. One is of a Swallowtail butterfly. The other is more complicated, with mountains, trees and a stream. She remembered the drawing she gave Bill.

Pat Parr with her 2nd Hefner guitar with the Mountain, trees and stream guitar head inlay

“When I showed Bill the picture, I said, ‘Can I get this inlay?’ I said, ‘that’s going to be hard to do, isn’t it?’ ‘Yeah’ [he said], but he did it, and it’s absolutely gorgeous.”

The Next Generation

The gamble to quit his day job paid off. Bill has been able to make a living, crafting guitars, for several years now. And he’s passing on what he knows about guitar building to his 24-year-old grandson Levi Hefner. Levi is mostly into rock music, and he builds and repairs electric guitars, but he and Bill are also building an acoustic guitar. Levi said the process has taught him a lot about patience.

“It’s a lot of fine finesse work and you’ve got to take your time with it and really slow down, that’s something I’ve never been great at so it’s really helped me out with that,” he said. “I’ve gotten to learn more about why a body is shaped this way and how different woods and different densities have a different sound to them and a different ring.”

Levi said the best part of making a guitar is imagining what a musician will do with it.

“Getting to see the progress of making something knowing that wherever it goes, someone else is going to make something else with it,” he said. “There’s always a unique sound to each guitar and each musician has their own unique sound so you can see how far it travels and how far things ca go with it.”

Bill said he’ll keep teaching Levi and his other grandson Ben what he’s learned to extend the craft as far as possible, even beyond his own lifetime.

“I’d like to teach them everything I can do, the tools and the woods and stuff,” he said. “There’s a lot I don’t know but I’d like to get them started and keep this thing going from now on and bring it on down to their kids later.”

Bill said passing on his skills is the best way to inspire his grandsons to create their own legacy.

This story is part of the Inside Appalachia Folkways Reporting Project, a partnership with West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s Inside Appalachia and the the Folklife Program of the West Virginia Humanities Council.

The Folkways Reporting Project is made possible in part with support from Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies to the West Virignia Public Broadcasting Foundation. Subscribe to the podcast to hear more stores of Appalachian folklife, arts, and culture.

After contracting polio as a young boy, Glen Irvine spent most of his life in a wheelchair, but his mandolin almost never left his side.

Although he’s virtually unknown outside of Pocahontas County, West Virginia, Irvine–or Dude, as he was known–was one of the area’s most gifted musicians. One of the founding members of the Black Mountain Bluegrass Boys, Dude was a virtuoso, self-taught musician. Although Dude passed away at the age of 52 in 1973, his bluegrass band continues to play all around West Virginia today.

One of Dude’s nephews, Richard Hefner, says he used to wait up for his uncle every Saturday Night. It was the only quiet night inside his family’s Civil War era home, in the house that was almost always full of music whenever his uncle was home.

“Uncle Dude, lived with us most of the time, taught us all how to play music, he played in beer joints all the time. Just about every Saturday night. Somebody would come and carry him out,” said Hefner.

“They’d carry him out, put him in the car, and then they’d carry him in the beer joint and set him in the chair. I’d usually stay up until Dude would come home at night, listen to his tales.”

These tales usually included whatever beer joint brawl or late night escapade had taken place that night at the square dance. In that house that may or may not have been haunted—there are a few tales of possible ghost sightings—Richard grew up idolizing his uncle.

Bill Hefner (left), Richard Hefner (middle), and one of their sisters Susan, remembering their Uncle Dude inside the old Civil War-era home in Mill Point, W.Va.

When he was 14, Richard began going with his uncle to the beer joints—they definitely didn’t card people back in the 50’s. There was one beer joint he often took his uncle to, called High Rocks, in Stompin’ Creek. Richard remembers when a bad fight broke out at the High Rocks bar, right next to his uncle Dude.

“I guess I was 16 and had my license, and I took him up there. He was playing with Virgil and Vincent Rider. Dude played the mandolin. And there was this real small place, it was a small as this room, narrower,” he said.

“A bunch of guys came from Richwood. And Richwood and Marlinton, at that time, didn’t like each other. That guy come off there and said something to him and boy he come off there and hit that guy. I grabbed Dude and slid him back behind that stove, and grabbed his case and slid it back behind the stove. Two of them went right through the front door, tore the whole door off the beer joint. Went out in the parking lot! There was five or six of them that just got whipped up pretty bad that night.”

“But, just like always, you know, just as soon as they get everything settled down, I slid Dude back out in the floor, got back in tune, started playing again.”

Dude taught himself to play harmonica when he was 5 years old. He later taught himself to play mandolin, banjo, ukulele, slide guitar, and on the guitar he could finger pick any Chet Atkins tune. Night after night, musicians would come to the Hefner home to play with Dude.

Hefner siblings as children, playing with their Uncle Dude’s instruments. Bill Hefner (l), Jimmy (c), and Richard (r)

“There was always somebody at the house playing. Everybody on my mom’s side of the family played and sang. And uncle Dude always had somebody in here playing. And they did all kinds of country and blues. Old county, you know, when country music still was country music.”

Dude learned music by ear by listening to radio shows like the Grand Old Opry or the Wheeling Jamboree.

“So they got to mixing in country and Honky Tonk, Elvis, Chet Atkins tunes, and everything else,” Richard recalls.

He and his siblings remember that Dude didn’t let his physical limitations drag him down. He was born with a condition called Hydrocephalus, which causes fluid to swell near the brain. For some, this impairs mental intelligence.

But in Dude’s case, he was probably above normal intelligence—he taught himself to read and write, and even helped his own siblings with their homework. Because he suffered from polio as a little boy and couldn’t walk, Dude spent part of his childhood being pulled in a wagon, until one of the neighbors bought him a wheelchair. He never had a job, except for the cash he earned playing at local square dances and beer joints.

Glen Irvine, or “Dude”, as most people called him

“I remember one time Dude, they played for $5 a piece. And he come home and he said, ‘Gilbert gave us a raise. He’s paying us $6 now.’ He was tickled to death, you know, because he got a dollar raise.”

Eventually, Richard and his brother Bill learned to play from their Uncle. Hamp Carpenter had been playing with Dude for years, and his son Harley Carpenter got to meet Bill Monroe in Maryland. Soon they all began playing more and more of Bill Monroe’s tunes. This was in the late 1950’s and into the 1960’s, around the time when they formed the Black Mountain Bluegrass Boys.

“There wasn’t much Bluegrass. There wasn’t any Bluegrass around here, until we started playing.”

Soon, the Black Mountain Bluegrass Boys began writing their own songs, and in 1971 they recorded their first album, “Pure Old Bluegrass”. It was the only one of the band’s albums that Uncle Dude played on.

The Black Mountain Bluegrass Boys are still playing today-although most of the faces have changed. Richard Hefner is the only founding members who is still in the band. They play throughout West Virginia, including every Friday night at the Sweet Shoppe in Lewisburg. More information about the Black Mountain Bluegrass Boys and other bands that regularly play near US 219 can be found on the Mountain Music Trail website.

BlackMountainBluegrassBoys219.mp3

Another story about the Black Mountain Bluegrass Boys, by Dan Schultz and the Traveling 219 Project.

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