Luthier Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Asheville Luthier Honors Family Trade With Environmental Focus

Elizabeth ‘Jayne’ Henderson is a notable luthier who is following in the footsteps of her father, famed guitar builder and musician, Wayne Henderson. Jayne is maintaining the family tradition, but doing it her way.

This story originally aired in the Jan. 28, 2024 episode of Inside Appalachia.

On a recent afternoon in Rugby, Virginia, Wayne Henderson is in his workshop alongside his daughter, Jayne Henderson. Wayne checks out a guitar Jayne recently built.

“Let me look at it and play on it a little,” Wayne tells Jayne. He plays a few cords. “Very nice sound and tone.”

Wayne Henderson tests a guitar his daughter, Jayne Henderson, recently built in his workshop in Rugby, Virginia. *Credit: Margaret Leef/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

Coming from Wayne, this is high praise. Wayne has made guitars for everyone from Vince Gill to Eric Clapton. He charges about $5,000 for a new handmade guitar, but they can fetch much more on eBay and other secondary markets.

He taught his daughter, Jayne, to build guitars, though it was not something she learned growing up. Jayne said back then, she was not interested in hanging around her dad’s shop. There were too many other people vying for his attention. It wasn’t uncommon for fans to hang around.

“I wanted to be special. I wanted to feel like he was my dad and not Wayne Henderson, this is the guy that everybody just reveres and thinks is just the coolest,” Jayne said. “I was like, I don’t want anything to do with this because I don’t want to have to stand in line for my dad’s attention.”

So Jayne followed her own path. She attended college and earned a master’s degree in environmental law and policy. However, she soon realized her nonprofit salary was insufficient to pay off her student loans. So she asked her dad for help.

“She said she had this loan, student loan going on, I guess like all kids that go to school do,” Wayne said. “And she said, ‘I’d love to pay this loan.’ And said, ‘I see what your guitars bring. Would you make me one that I could sell on eBay?’”

But Wayne had another idea.

“I told her, ‘What you need to do is make it yourself.’ I told her, ‘I’ll help you. I’ll give you my best wood. It’ll be one of my guitars, which means it’s got to be done exactly right. And I’ll probably make you do stuff over,’” Wayne said.

Jayne was reluctant at first.

“When I started that first guitar, I thought it’d be terrible. I’m like, ‘Fine, I’ll do it.’ Because, you know, they sell for a lot of money on eBay, and I gotta pay back these law school loans,” Jayne said. “And what happened was I just, I loved it so much, and I got to stand next to him instead of in line to be the next groupie or whatever. I got to stand there with him, and he showed me how to do things.”

Working side-by-side with her dad, Jayne began to develop a common interest with Wayne. “It was the relationship that I got that I never really got to have growing up,” she said.

Turns out, Jayne had a knack for building guitars. That first guitar sold for $25,000, putting a hefty dent in the loans. It wasn’t long before Jayne was hooked. Within about six months, she quit her environmental nonprofit job to build instruments full-time. But Jayne didn’t leave her environmental convictions far behind.

Typically, guitars are made from imported woods like Brazilian rosewood and mahogany. They’re not always environmentally sustainable. But Jayne makes hers from locally sourced and reclaimed wood. She also makes ukuleles from smaller scraps of wood that might otherwise be discarded.

“My passion lies more in preserving the natural world. I want to do that. I get to use this platform to push the things that I like,” Jayne said.

Jayne gets wood from a few different sources. One is just around the corner from her home studio in Asheville, North Carolina. It’s called Scrounger’s Paradise, a 50,000-square-foot wholesale wood shop filled with stacks of flooring, decking, tile and furniture.

Jayne Henderson inside Scrounger’s Paradise in Asheville, North Carolina, with owner Mark Olivari. Mark keeps tabs on the wood Jayne might like and shows her when she visits.

*Credit: Janie Witte*

On a recent visit to Scrounger’s Paradise, Jayne greets owner Mark Olivari as she walks inside, past the stacks of cut and planed wood that come from all over the world. Mark keeps tabs on wood that he thinks Jayne might want. He directs Jayne to a stack of wood in the back corner of the warehouse.

“Is that beautiful or what? That’s original chestnut before the blight came into North Carolina,” Mark said.

Jayne likes the wood. She said it reminds her of white oak. Jayne taps the wood to see if it has a good tonal quality.

“It doesn’t ring quite like Brazilian rosewood, but the density is really similar,” Jayne said. “This stuff has more of a bell-like [sound].”

Choosing the right wood is just one part of Jayne’s process. After visiting Scrounger’s Paradise, Jayne returns to her home workshop, where she uses a jeweler’s saw to carve an abalone shell to make a pearly decorative inlay on a guitar neck. Jayne is known for her custom inlay. It is one part of how she meticulously designs each instrument for the individual who will play it.

An abalone shell sits on Jayne’s work bench with a photo book of her work. Jayne often reaches for her pink polka-dotted pocket knife when carving wood for a guitar.

*Credit: Janie Witte*

“I like getting to know people. I like to hear their stories — where they’ve walked, what they’ve done. I love that. So I really try and focus on the person, the human that is asking you for something,” Jayne said.

Each guitar takes a little over a month to build. Jayne said making guitars has become more than her livelihood.

“I don’t do this because I want to make a guitar. I do this because I can’t not do it. And because it brings me so much joy to use my hands, and this is the way with which I can do it. But I love that I get to do something that makes somebody really happy,” Jayne said.

It has been fourteen years since Jayne built the first guitar with her dad. She no longer needs Wayne to oversee her work, but she often does her finishing work in his workshop in Rugby, Virginia, where she spent weekends growing up.

Jayne Henderson begins work on a guitar neck.

*Credit: Janie Witte*

“My stamp in my guitars has ‘EJ Henderson,’ where my Dad’s says ‘WC Henderson.’ They both say ‘Rugby, Virginia’ on them, and I never changed that,” Jayne said. “No matter where I move, it’ll always say that because my heart’s here, and my dad’s here.”

Wayne is proud of Jayne’s work and appreciates it all the more as a luthier.

“I’ve just always had that interest, you know, in guitar making. And you can imagine your youngin doing it, too. There can’t be nothing much more exciting or better than that,” Wayne said.

Sometimes, when Jayne visits, Wayne coaxes her to play music together. Though, Jayne said she’s not the musician, her dad is.

Back in Wayne’s studio in Rugby, the father-daughter duo tune their instruments and play “Freight Train,” a song written by North Carolina musician, Elizabeth Cotton. Wayne plays a guitar Jayne made for the songwriter and guitarist Doc Watson, another North Carolina musician who was also a close family friend of the Hendersons. Doc died a week before the guitar was finished.

“This is a guitar she made for Doc. It’s made out of white oak,” Wayne said. The white oak is the first sustainable wood Jayne used to build a guitar. According to Wayne, Doc said using environmentally sustainable wood for his guitar was just fine.

Jayne plays one of her dad’s favorite instruments — a ukulele she made for him as a birthday gift. The ukulele has special meaning for Jayne.

“The present was, ‘Look what you did for me,’” she said. “You know, ‘See what you showed me, that I can make something really special and that’s just ‘cause of you.’”

As “Freight Train” ends, the chords linger briefly in the shop. Each strum tells a tale of family legacy, sustainability and heartfelt dedication to luthiery and to each other.

Wayne Henderson and his daughter Jayne Henderson outside of Wayne’s shop in Rugby, Virginia.

*Credit: Margaret Leef/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

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This story is part of the Inside Appalachia Folkways Reporting Project, a partnership with West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s Inside Appalachia and 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 Virginia Public Broadcasting Foundation. Subscribe to the podcast to hear more stories of Appalachian folklife, arts and culture.

Troublesome Creek – Building Instruments As A Form Of Recovery

In the mountains of Eastern Kentucky, jobs are scarce, and an opioid crisis continues to inflict pain throughout the region. But where many see hopelessness, Doug Naselroad, a master luthier from Hindman, Kentucky, sees an opportunity to help those in need.

Naselroad founded a nonprofit instrument manufacturer, The Troublesome Creek Stringed Instrument Company, to train and employ people in recovery, helping them find purpose and belonging as they work their way through recovery.

This short film explores Doug’s mission and the positive impact he and his team have had on a region and its people.

Watch this special Folkways story below:

The Troublesome Creek Stringed Instrument Company strives to make beautiful handcrafted instruments, including dulcimers, guitars and mandolins.

*Credit: Curren Sheldon/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

Troublesome Creek employee Anthony works on a guitar.

*Credit: Curren Sheldon/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

Founder and master luthier Doug Naselroad checks the sound of a guitar in progress.

*Credit: Curren Sheldon/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

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A Guitar Surgeon Gives Old Instruments Their Voices Back

Bob Smakula of Elkins, West Virginia has made a career out of fixing old musical instruments so modern musicians can keep playing them. He tries to make repairs to fix an instrument’s problems while also staying true to its history.

Walk through the front door of Bob Smakula’s workshop and — it’s a lot to take in.

Every flat surface is covered in clutter: chisels, screwdrivers, paint brushes, a fork, a bottle of lighter fluid. One whole wall is just wood clamps in various sizes and denominations.

But eventually you see past the jumble and begin to notice all the musical instruments, in various states of repair.

There’s a ukulele on Smakula’s workbench. It’s a Martin from the 1920s; a beautiful instrument and a real collector’s piece, but it has problems.

“For some reason Martin used mahogany for the tuning pegs so they’re fussy. Extra fussy,” he said.

These tuners are held in place by friction, like the ones on a violin. That friction caused one of these brittle mahogany pegs to break.

“I’m going to replace those with a comparable ebony tuning peg. And that’s going to work better for him. He’s going to be able to get things in tune a bit better,” Smakula said.

This is Smakula’s style. He could have slapped a set of modern, metal geared tuners on this uke. It would have stayed in perfect tune. But that wouldn’t be right for a 100-year-old instrument like this.

Smakula tries to make repairs that fix an instrument’s problems while also staying true to its history.

“I’ve definitely honed my skills to try to be invisible,” he said. “I don’t want anybody to know I was ever there, except to go ‘Hey, this plays better than they usually do,’ or ‘This sounds better than they usually do.’”

Smakula has been honing his invisibility powers for a long time. He’s originally from Cleveland, Ohio, where his parents were involved in the folk music scene of the 1960s and ‘70s

In those days, new acoustic instruments were overbuilt and heavy. Folk musicians tended to seek out older instruments, but those often needed repairs. So Smakula’s dad Peter, an engineer by trade, started fixing them.

Smakula also took an interest in the inner-workings of musical instruments. He learned to play his mother’s lap dulcimer and wanted one of his own. He didn’t have the money, so he sent away for a build-your-own dulcimer kit.

“My parents’ friends saw the instrument and said ‘Hey, you made that. Could you make me one?’ The next thing I knew I was 14 and in business making dulcimers for people,” he said.

Father and son eventually joined forces and opened Goose Acres Folk Music Center in Cleveland where they bought, sold, built and repaired folk instruments.

Instrument repair was a difficult trade to learn in those days.

“We were definitely inventing the wheel,” he said. “The information age of instrument work just wasn’t there. There were a few books out there, and so I’d grab everything I could in printed sources. But it’s not like now, where you can find dang near anything you want to know via the internet.”

Smakula learned much of what he knows from the instruments that appeared on his operating table.

“Maybe a part needed to be replaced. We’d study that and put on something similar. Every builder has their own little quirks, or their own little design style,” he said.

His work developed such a reputation that Smakula decided to leave Cleveland — and the business he started with his dad. He followed his new bride Mary, who worked for the U.S. Forest Service in Elkins, and moved his operations to West Virginia.

“I decided I could do my work anywhere in the world. It didn’t have to be in Cleveland,” he said. “Anywhere a UPS truck can come, I can fix an instrument and send it back to the owner.”

He was right. In addition to his repair work, Smakula also taught instrument repair classes at the nearby Augusta Heritage Center. That is how he found his apprentices Nate Druckenmiller and Andy Fitzgibbon.

Now customers from all over the country ship their banjos, mandolins, fiddles and guitars to this little shop in the woods so Smakula and his team can get them singing again.

Like one particular banjo from 1887.

“[It was] made by a talented woodworker who, maybe banjos wasn’t his main thing. But it’s really interesting,” Smakula said.

On a recent Monday morning, the instrument was laying on Fitzgibbon’s workbench. He has worked for Smakula for over 20 years and is the shop’s go-to banjo guy.

“You see a lot of unique, one-off home-built ones like this. [They] vary in quality anywhere from really crude to really nice. And this one is a really nice one,” Fitzgibbon said. “It’s nice to get them back up and running again.”

But as nice as it is, there are some things about this old banjo that don’t live up to modern standards.

Nowadays, builders know frets need to be precisely placed, down to hundredths of an inch, for an instrument to play in tune. The frets on this 1887 banjo weren’t placed with nearly that precision.

“At this point you have to balance playability with the historical aspect of it,” Fitzgibbon said.

Since this instrument is more of a collector’s piece, Fitzgibbon decides to keep the wonky fret job. But the balance might tip in the other direction if the instrument was going to be played onstage, or if the original construction compromised the banjo’s structural integrity.

In those cases, Fitzgibbon would apply a bit more modern know-how. That’s what happened with Smakula’s own 1903 Fairbanks banjo.

It’s a family heirloom. His uncle found it in a bar in Newton Center, Massachusetts.

“He goes in one day and sees this banjo in the corner,” Smakula said. “He says ‘Hey Tom, what’s with the banjo?’ And Tom says ‘Eh, somebody used it to pay a bar tab. You want it? You can have it.’”

It had a lot of sentimental value, but wasn’t a great player.

“All the time I’ve had it, I always thought there’s something missing. There’s something that needs to be done to make it the best-playing banjo for me,” he said.

The fingerboard was made from ebonized hardwood. That’s a technique where woodworkers imitate the look of ebony by creating a chemical reaction with the wood’s natural acids.

“The acid dies they used 120 years ago causes slow degradation to the wood’s cell structure,” Smakula said. “Without it being a good solid piece of wood, it would bend ever so slightly and make it harder to play.”

After years of working on instruments like this, Smakula and Fitzgibbon decided to rip out the old fingerboard and replace it with real ebony. They replaced the wood on the peghead with a special kind of poplar that matches the color of old ebonized wood but is more stable.

“And this banjo went from my favorite family heirloom to my favorite banjo to play,” Smakula said.

Smakula had been playing this banjo for nearly 40 years before making that repair. Why the delay? Well, the instrument really belonged to his dad. It didn’t pass into Smakula’s possession until Peter’s death in 2008. But that worked out perfectly. By the time it was actually his, Smakula had the years of experience necessary to know exactly how to fix it.

Smakula doesn’t make his customers wait quite that long for their repairs. Some take only hours. A severe case might take six months. You’ve just got to find a place in his unending wait list.

Which is why, when I was saying my goodbyes, Smakula made a request.

“When you’re airing this, I wanna make sure you don’t give away my exact location,” he said. “Say ‘North of Elkins.’”

I said I noticed he only had a PO box on his website. Was he worried someone would break in and make off with somebody’s vintage guitar? No.

Turns out, Smakula’s worried about something even more precious.

“You see how busy we are,” he said. “If I did have my address, people would just stop by. ‘Oh, just wanted to see what you have.’ I have … no time.”

Turns out, he’s got more than one reason to be invisible.

This story is part of the Inside Appalachia Folkways Reporting Project, which is made possible in part with support from Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies to the West Virginia Public Broadcasting Foundation. Subscribe to Inside Appalachia to hear more stories of Appalachian folklife, arts, and culture.