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Cigar Box Blues

Hard economic times sometimes give rise to remarkable products, and here in Virginia one of them is making a comeback. 

The cigar box guitar was especially popular during the Great Depression, and these days you’ll find YouTube videos showing how to make your own. 

We talked with a retired plumber who’s devoting his life to the instrument.

Steve Armstrong has been many things in his life – a Marine who served in Vietnam, a biker with heavy tattoos, a plumber who supported a wife and kids, and a musician who was well-known in Richmond, Virginia.

“The whole weekend at a place called South of the James was strictly open mic blues, and by Sunday evenings, it was wild, because those same people had been jamming all weekend long, and by Sunday afternoon things were not out of control, but they were pretty close.  Pretty scary sometimes.

Now pushing 70, Armstrong has mellowed, but he still loves music.  He’s played the violin, the clarinet, and the harmonica, but not the guitar.

“ I never had the fingers – never had the chops for guitar.”

Still, he enjoys watching others play.

“I was watching Austin City Limits one night, and they had this guy on there, and he put his regular guitar down, reached around behind him and brought this thing out, and I said, ‘What in the world is that?  It looks like a cigar box with a stick,’ and it was pretty rough.  It was just cobbled together, but when he strummed the first strings and ran that bottle neck up and down the strings, it was delightful!  It sounded just like the old Delta Blues that Robert Johnston used to play, and I’m a big fan of the blues, and I said, I’ve got to get one."

He checked online and found some for sale, but being a frugal man, he decided not to spend the money.  Instead, he’d make his own cigar box guitar.  There were YouTube videos and websites to guide him.  Within a week, he’d made his first instrument, and since Christmas he’s created about forty more.  Some are electric,

Some CBGs from Weisel Guitars of Roanoke

“That hum, that back feed – that’s what they call dirty, and that’s what a lot of the early rock ‘n rollers were looking for – that dirty, gritty sound.”

And others are acoustic, but all are unique.

Historians find mentions of cigar box guitars as far back as the Civil War, but Armstrong says they gained favor in the 20th century.

“The big resurgence in them was around the 1920’s with the depression.  A lot of musicians, down South especially, were really hard hit.  Cotton fell through.  People lost their jobs.  They couldn’t afford to buy guitars, and they found that a cigar box – a wooden cigar box – made a really nice body, good resonance, and they would take a board off the barn for the neck.  They would take Mama’s broom and unwind the wire from around the straw, and that would have been a string, and actually that would have been called a diddly bo – a one-stringed wash tub type of thing, and later Bo Didley, the Blues musician, that’s where he took his name from – the Didley Bo.”

He buys wooden cigar boxes from a place called Havanna Connection.  Sometimes he likes the cigar box itself and adds no special decoration.  Other times he or his daughter take paint to the instrument, adding knobs made from dice or bottle caps.  John Gonzales Del Solar is co-owner of Fan Guitar and Ukelele, where Armstrong gets his strings and sells his works. 

“Some people have bought them just as art.  Like, ‘Oh, this is cool. I might play it or I might not, but it’s going to hang on my wall and make the room look good if nothing else.’”

Del Solar says Armstrong’s instruments sound great, and he likes doing business with a guy who cares little about profits.

“He’s just one of those guys that’s very creative and can’t really sit still for more than three minutes.  It’s hard to meet him and not like him.  A lot of the times when he’s in here someone will walk in that he knows, and after he leaves they say, “Oh man, Steve – he’s mellow now, but back in the day, I could tell you some stories.” 

Cigar boxes have also caught on at Weisel Guitars in Roanoke.  That’s where musician Cre Mitchell Creasy tried out this model. The instrument was made by the proprietor, Peter Weisel, who considers it a good fit with Appalachian culture.

“Appalachia has a history of wanting to be on its own, and not wanting to conform.  I think the instruments fits right in with that.  It’s a homemade instrument – something that anyone with a pocket knife and the will to build something can create.”

The cigar box guitar often has just three strings, and it’s usually played with a slide, but Weisel and Armstrong agree – less is more when it comes to the sound of this simple American instrument in the hands of a skilled musician.