Wayne Henderson Interview

September 30, 2008

Wayne Henderson Inteview

by Rick Landers.

Modern Guitars had the good fortune to catch master bluegrass guitarist and guitar builder Wayne Henderson while at a gig in Rockville, Maryland. Henderson has played all around the globe and getting a chance to see him in an intimate setting was something we didn’t want to miss. Bluegrass and guitar lovers sat quietly in a church, while Wayne and his long-time partner, Helen White, pulled out their instruments for a delightful set of bluegrass.

Henderson guitars are superbly and painstakingly built by hand in Rugby, Virginia, a speck of a town in southern Virginia with a population of 7. Wayne’s lived in the Appalachian region his entire life, but his his guitars are considered masterpieces throughout the world. Guitar players lavish praise on their craftsmanship and tonal qualities and ache over the ten year wait to own one. Wayne’s guitar building craftsmanship gained worldwide interest in 2005 when Allen St. John’s book, Clapton’s Guitar: Watching Wayne Henderson Build the Perfect Instrument, was published.

Wayne’s musical dexterity and talent have been recognized world-wide and his awards have included a National Heritage Fellowship (1995), over 300 ribbons won at a series of fiddlers’ conventions and 12 first place awards at the Galax, Virginia, bluegrass event. He’s toured the globe with the United States Information Agency, performed at the Smithsonian Institution, Carnegie Hall and in 1992 was a featured artist at the Presidential inauguration.

When Modern Guitars met with Wayne, he was surrounded by his fans and chowing down dinner before he went on stage. Still, he was gracious and generous, meeting with us twice that evening to make sure we got what we needed for our interview – a true gent.

Rick Landers: How about a rundown on where you grew up, and how you discovered the beauty of guitar playing?

Wayne Henderson: Well, I grew up in southwestern Virginia, within a mile and a half from the North Carolina line and thirty miles from the Tennessee line. Down in the corner of Virginia in the Blue Ridge Mountains area, where it’s really beautiful and just crawling with old-time music.

So, that’s where I grew up and I’ve lived there all my life. And I learned about the music from my neighbors and my dad. My dad was an old time fiddler, and I had all kinds of cousins that played, and uncles, and everything; and it was just sort of a way of life for that community.

I always think, because there wasn’t too much else to do, it cost too much for any other kind of entertainment, so we entertained ourselves with instruments and playing. And that’s a fairly common practice for the area down there anyway. And I sort of discovered the music stuff just by family, the neighborhood and community.

Rick: Front porch pickin’?

Wayne: Yeah, front porch stuff. There’s been an awful lot of music played on my mom’s front porch.

Rick: Yeah?

Wayne: And when I got into building instruments and working on them, lots of good musicians would travel to come to see me, to get me to work on their instruments and things. I got exposed to a lot of real good musicians like that, too. And so it was that kind of thing that got me into it and caused me to discover music. I got into building stuff mainly, I think, because I couldn’t afford a nice Martin or something like that. But, I knew what they were. Every time I’d get a nice instrument in, I’d take measurements and look at it and get the feel of it.

Rick: Inside and outside?

Wayne: Yeah, inside and outside. Every time I could get a chance to see, or work on a nice old Martin. I measured everything, and as much as anything, look at the sand and chisel marks on the blockette. I’d try to figure out, “Now how does this bend and how did they do that?”

You know, back in those days, it was all done by hand. And I did the best as I could to figure out how to do it. There were, you know, some people around to help a little bit. A fellow named Albert Hash was a real good friend of mine. My dad took me to see him when the first guitar I ever tried to make came apart. I didn’t have any glue or anything like that.

Rick: Oh, really?

Wayne: Just this old rubber cement-like stuff that my dad put weather-stripping on his truck doors, and some veneer that I sneaked out of my mom’s dresser drawer, and then put the board back before she missed it.

Rick: How old were you?

Wayne: I was probably ten, twelve, somewhere along there at that time. And when I’d worked all summer on that guitar, and it came apart like that, my dad sort of felt sorry for me, and he said, “I’ll take you to see Albert Hash. He’ll know, he can tell you how to glue that together so it’ll stay.”

Rick: He’s a local man?

Wayne: Fairly local. He just lived over at Lansing, North Carolina, which is fifteen miles away. But, that was like going to Washington, D.C. back then. So that was a real thrill and a thing to get to know Albert. And he turned out to be a good friend and somebody I knew long as he lived, and I played music with him and everything. That was a big influence.

Another influence was E.C. Ball, who lived in my neighborhood, the same community, really, and he’s the one that had the nice old guitar that I could go look at and play.

Rick: Was it a Martin?

Wayne: It was an old D-28 Martin, made in the late forties. He would let me play it once in a while, and that would give me, certainly, an inspiration to want a better guitar. And I just couldn’t believe what made that thing sound so good. So, I got to play and look at that a lot.

Rick: What kind of tools were you using to build your guitars back then?

Wayne: Well, I almost had nothing. I had my pocket knife, that I did all my inlay work with and I still do that. I just got so used to it; This neck right here was covered out with a pocket knife.

Rick: This is your 400th guitar, right?

Wayne: Yeah, the 400th guitar. Now I have better tools. I have routers and things to go around the bodies. But, those the first guitars, I cut all these channels, grooves, around with a knife.

Rick: You must have a steady hand and patience.

Wayne: Well, yeah, I had lots and lots of patience and I take like a little compass and draw the circles, whittle them out around. And I had number seven guitar I was able to buy back a few years ago that’s actually been used on a cover of a Virginia Living magazine. And it’s got a real good picture on that. And that’s number seven. And it was all done with that pocket knife.

Rick: That’s pretty amazing.

Wayne: That’s how I’d file a head. And I’d take files and hacksaws to cut out abalone, and I still do by hand. But, at least I do have a little hand jeweler, sized to modify this stuff with. And places where you get stuff is, things – I mean, a friend of mine, or his neighbor, went back and got the shells out in California. They eat them, and then just threw the shells out in his driveway, you know; and I said, “Send me some of them, send them to me. So, that’s where all this abalone comes from. It comes out of the shells and I can get pretty colorful stuff.

Rick: Pretty interesting that you got it from an individual as opposed to Chuck Erickson or somebody.

Wayne: Yeah, you can buy it in flats from places like the Duke of Pearl. So, that’s pretty cool when it comes from somebody I know.

Rick: Yeah, it makes it very personal. Were you always focused on bluegrass or did you find some interest in other styles along the way?

Wayne: Well, down home there’s sort of old-time music, is what we call it. It’s what we’re exposed to the most and that’s sort of the forerunner of bluegrass, you know? Bluegrass is a little more refined, they do fancier singing, and a three-finger style of banjo with it.

Rick: That’s what you use, a three-finger style, right?

Wayne: Yeah. But, it’s all close to the same, about the instruments and stuff. I might play a swing tune once in a while. But, we come from that kind of music and it’s still done in our old-time way of doing it, you know? Little bit different kinds of music. I like any kind of music. I really like blues.

Rick: Do you?

Wayne: : Some rock stuff, especially the old-timey kind.

Rick: ’50s or ’60s?

Wayne: I like ’50s.

Rick: Who do you like, Scotty Moore, and Elvis?

Wayne: Oh, yeah. Absolutely, Elvis and Jimmy Bryant and Stevie West. I used to listen to a Cincinnati radio station, WCKY, when I was a kid. I learned to play “Steel Guitar Rag,” which they used for a theme song. That was one of my favorite ones in that band. The theme song that they used for that came from Spade Cooley’s western swing band. He had a really hot band and a steel guitar player named Noel Boggs that could really play.

Rick: Yeah, and they all used Telecasters back then, the guitar players.

Wayne: Yep.

Rick: How would you describe your style of finger picking? I know that you use picks rather than just using the flesh of your hands, which a lot of people like to do.

Wayne: Well, it’s a little bit of an unusual style of playing. The tunes I ended up being exposed to when I was a kid were mostly my dad’s fiddle tunes, like “Ragtime Annie,” “Soldier’s Joy” and “Flop-Eared Mule,” all those old tunes they played.

And to play those tunes real good, it’s usually done by a flat picker with a single note thing, up and down picking. And Mr. Ball sort of taught me to use a thumb pick. He had sort of a Travis style almost, Chet Atkins Travis style thing, and he told me, he said, “Boy, if you’re going to learn to be a guitar player, you got to get you a thumb pick.” And I thought he was, you know, telling it right.

Rick: Might give you a little more speed.

Wayne: And actually, the only guitar pickers I’d heard to start with were Mr. Ball, Merle Travis, Chet Atkins, and Maybelle Carter. And every last one of them used a thumb pick. So, I thought maybe he was right. I didn’t know, I hadn’t heard of Doc Watson and people like that then, and so that’s how I sort of got started using the thumb pick.

But, the tunes I was trying to play all the time were the fiddle tunes. So, I had to develop a style that sounded a little bit like flat picking and stuff, down with my thumb and up with my finger. My finger’s curled up under there. So, it works like a flat pick, working up and down. [Plays some licks]

And once in a while I’ll put all three of them on, if I’m playing really fast, or I can actually do a finger style, which I do a little of, not too much. But, most of my picking is up string. It just sounds like flat picking if you’re just listening to it. But, I’m actually doing it with the thumb and finger.

Rick: Yeah, interesting. Tommy Emanuel did the same thing, I think, or similar.

Wayne: Oh, yeah, that guy can do anything.

Rick: Yeah, he’s pretty amazing.

Wayne: Yeah.

Rick: How did the Wayne Henderson Musical Festival and Guitar Competition come about?

Wayne: Well, several years ago, the state park, there’s that where I live.

Rick: Grayson, Virginia?

Wayne: Yeah, Grayson Highlands State Park. And there was a couple of rangers, people that worked in the park, came down; and I’d been asked a time or two before about doing a festival with my name. I didn’t know what to do or what I thought about that or anything. But, when the park came down to do it, that’s pretty much in my back yard. And they had a nice proposal and people knew me around there enough. They’d got to use my name on a festival, and they’d like to have it up in the park. And I said, “Well, I was real impressed and flattered.” I said that’d be good, and then we got to thinking about doing it, and said, “Well, if we can, we need to do something good with it.”

So, we got like a scholarship thing going. The money we make from it was a way to get kids started and help them in the world of playing old-time or bluegrass music. The money we make from it, we give out to scholarships every year. And that’s what we do with every bit of the money we make, except operating expenses. And it’s grown real well, and got to be a pretty good festival.

We raise a lot of money for kids to learn to play music, and we support all kinds of things, and the jam program that Helen [White] started. That’s a really cool thing too. Now, she started an after-school program that’s really cool, junior Appalachee musicians. And we always support that every year. And she’s doing it on even a bigger scale and she does it all year long, all school year long. And they expose kids to old-time music and stuff. And that’s a life-saving experience there. I’ve seen it happen.

RRick: When’s the festival?

Wayne: Festival’s always the third Saturday in June.

Rick: What did you think when you became sort of the centerpiece for the book, Clapton’s Guitar?

Wayne: Well, I didn’t know quite what to think. I wasn’t all that crazy about that either, you know? But, when Allen St. John said, “Eric Clapton asked for a guitar like ten years ago.” And I thought, “He ain’t never going to come down here and how could I get it to him if I did make him one?” He’s pretty much inaccessible anyway.

Rick: Yeah, he is.

Wayne: And I just never did do it. But, Allen said he was interested in writing a book about something, and said, “If you’ll make that guitar, I’ll get it to him somehow, If you’ll make two of them, a matching set with consecutive numbers, I’m going to the Clapton auctions at Christie’s.”

Rick: Yeah. I was in New York for that.

Wayne: And said he’d got to know Cary Keane and some of those guys that do that at Christies and they were sort of interested. He said, “I think we can get them to sell the other one, then we’ll do your scholarship for you.”

So, that sort of got me in the notion of doing it. I thought, “Well, if that could happen, that’d be well worth doing.” So, that’s how that all came about. And it did work. They auctioned that other guitar and I think got like $31,000 for it.

Rick: Was that in 2005?

Wayne: I’d say it might have been, something like that. It wasn’t the first big auction, I don’t think they’ve planned to have one since.

Rick: Yeah, it would have been the second one. So Cary, is Cary the person who works for Christies, out of London?

Wayne: He’s their instrument person, I think he’s in New York. But, I got to meet him and he’s a super nice guy, and was really interested in helping us too, and did. That was really a cool thing.

Rick: Yeah, it’s nice to be able to tie in your altruism with your music.

Wayne: And we got to know him the last time they had their instrument auction. Which I think happened sometime around this time of year.

Rick: Yeah, it did.

Wayne: I think about a year ago, he had us come up and they were inviting me to come up and play Merle Travis’s guitar.

Rick: Merle’s guitar?

Wayne: You know, his old Martin that had that Bigsby neck.

Rick: Yeah, yeah.

Wayne: And they sold that, like last year. Allen made some connection and I got to come up, and I got to play that guitar and look at it. While I was in there, the fellow there said, “You might be interested in seeing this,” and it was a Stradivarius that I got to hold. But, Helen wasn’t there, and I’d have loved to heard her play it.

Rick: What impact did the book have on your guitar playing and guitar building careers?

Wayne: Well, not too much on the playing, as I can tell at all. But, I’ve been sort of behind on orders for the last twenty years. I can’t tell too much difference from that, except I got a whole lot more calls and I have to tell people I don’t know if I’m going to live long enough to get to all of them or not. But, I’ve got calls, I’ve got calls from pretty much everywhere; foreign countries,calls from Holland and Malaysia and Australia.

Rick: You just put them on the list?

Wayne: Yeah, I tell them, if they just want to drop me a letter and no deposit, nothing like that. My family would never get that straight if something happened to me, you know? But, I’ll put them on a list, and if I can ever get to it, I’ll do it; and I ask them to keep in touch. You know, if I don’t hear from them, I’ll forget about it.

And that sort of thing, so it did get an awful lot of exposure like that. And I think the main thing it did, it exposed people to my instruments, caused them to be so classy. I mean, I sell them for like I always have pretty much. But, Lord sakes, I see them going for $30,000 on eBay, I don’t know what to think.

Rick: Yeah, that’s pretty amazing.

Wayne: I don’t know whether that’s good or bad or partly. But, somebody makes money on them!

Rick: Can you tell us what qualities the National Endowment for the Arts looks for when they name someone like yourself for the National Heritage Award. What’s the criteria?

Wayne: Well, you know, I really don’t know for sure, it seems – all I know is that it makes me awful proud to be in that crowd, because they’re all –

Rick: You’re not even close to dying yet!

Wayne: Well, I hope not! But I don’t know what they look for. But, I’m sure it’s something a little unusual. I think in my case, I’m certainly not a good enough picker to be in that bunch. But, not too many people build and play.

Rick: True.

Wayne: That might have been a little bit unusual thing, you know? And there’s lots of instrument builders out there, and lots of people I figure deserve that more than I do.

But, I’m certainly proud to have it and I’ve just always been real gracious toward it. And I use that award every day, because I put that money they gave me, which is $10,000, which is a lot of money to me, and I took that and sold the antique stuff I had and everything, and built a new shop.

Rick: Oh, did you?

Wayne: So, I figure I use my Heritage Award every day when I go to work. And so I built a lot nicer building than I’d ever had to work in before. But, that was really a high honor to get that award, because, you know, my heroes are all in there, you know, Doc Boggs and Lester Flatt, and Ralph Stanley, and B.B. King, and all the other kinds of craftspeople and musicians that I don’t know, but I know who they are.

Rick: Yeah, a good crowd to be with.

Wayne: Oh, I’m real proud to be in that bunch.

Rick: How many guitars do you typically have underway at any given time?

Wayne: Well, I’ve got so I make probably, last year, I made about 30.

Rick: That’s quite a few for a small builder.

Wayne: Yeah. I work hard. I work every night. Mostly, I visit with people and talk on the phone in the day and work in the night.

Rick: Oh, do you?

Wayne: Yeah.

Rick: Are you a night owl, then?

Wayne: I’m a pretty night owl. I always have been. My momma used to have to scold me to go to bed so I could get up and go to school. I used to work all night when I was a kid, if they’d let me. I got so I make about 30 a year now. And I have lots of general loafers that hang around the shop, that I put to sanding and stuff like that when I find out what they can do. And they usually like to do that.

Rick: Yeah?

Wayne: That helps some, you know, have somebody sand up, do sanding work that I don’t have to do, while I’m doing something more important.

Rick: So, how many do you have going at any given time?

Wayne: Oh, I have usually ten.

Rick: Ten at the same time; so if you get bored with doing something like sanding, you can go and –

Wayne: Yeah, there’s always an interesting job to do, whether it’s inlaying the pearl. This stuff you can get tired of doing that and get a headache.

Rick: Yeah, pretty intricate.

Wayne: And get that kind of stuff that, you know, you need to go sand a while when you do that.

Rick: Would you mind telling us the steps that you take in order to build a guitar? Like the wood selection, how do you decide, and where do you get the wood; the design, how do you decide on all the bracing that you’re going to do and other work?

Wayne: Well, I study pretty much every piece of wood. I listen to them. You know, pieces of wood ring? They have tone when they’re a board, before you even start on it.

Rick: So, you’re tapping on them?

Wayne: You tap on them and listen to them, and try to get wood that does have sound in it. I guess occasionally you find a piece of wood that don’t, you know, just sounds like it’s a dull thud. It might look good and everything. But, still there’s something about certain pieces of wood that have tone and the others don’t.

Rick: Do you find that, when you’re doing that, you end up with a gorgeous piece of wood, and one’s not as gorgeous, and that one just sounds perfect?

Wayne: Oh, yes.

Rick: Too bad they’re not, like, conjoined.

WWayne: Well, you find that every once in a while. I have some blocks of Brazilian rosewood that are two-by-two, that sometimes I split up and make a guitar back out of.
But, you hold those things up to balance and hit them with a hammer and they ring like nothing less than a piece of brass. Or something. It’s hard to imagine how much sound and tone is in a piece of wood.

Rick: Is that old Brazilian wood?

Wayne: It’s real old stuff I traded for a bunch of two-by-twos. I’ll look at those things sometimes, and how I wish that they were eight-by-eights, you know? But, I still use them sometimes, just for fun, and they make the best sounding guitars you ever heard. Just put together out of eight pieces when you get done. But, it’s just really got the sound,top wood especially.

I go by stiffness more than anything else, and the way it taps and rings. And as I make a top, I have bracing patterns that I use that are pretty much the same stuff that Martin designed back in the 1850’s, you know, the x-brace pattern. I don’t vary off of that too much, maybe a little. As I carve and shape braces, I carve scallops in them. I listen to them. I hold them up and tap them, every top that I do.

Rick: Individually?

Wayne: Yeah.

Rick: On the top that’s got the braces.

Wayne: After the top gets the braces on it, mostly.

Rick: Okay.

Wayne: : I listen to the piece of wood before I start cutting the braces out, and that wood seems to speak to you if you know what you’re listening to. The way I usually try to voice and brace a top, I tap it and listen to it, and without a piece like the bridge plate.

You know the little plate that’s right in under, it’s a thin piece of maple that goes there, that keeps the bowels of the strings from pulling up into the spruce. And if I can tune those things so I can detect a slight bit of nuttiness or going the wrong way, after you get them shaped as good as you think you can get them, I stop at that.

And then, when you glue that other little piece of wood back in there, it will bring it right back at its best, I think. And that’s sort of the way I gauge how much I’m going to try to take out of it.

Rick: And when you put it all together, do you find that just the components, because they all sound great individually, when they come together, they give you a certain extra special sound?

Wayne: Yeah, if you tune all the pieces and get them to whether they all got sound, and when they get together you usually got something good, almost every time. Almost never misses.

Rick: And you do it by ear?

Wayne: Yeah.

Rick: Do you have perfect pitch?

Wayne: Oh, no, not really. I just get those things so they have sound, and I can’t tell for sure which is the best. I’m not sure I know that much about frequencies and things like that. But, when I tap them and listen to them and know they’ve got sound, you know, and then put all those pieces together, it seems like you’ve even got more than ever then, when you get everything together.

Rick: Okay. So you don’t use any electronics to tune?

Wayne: No, just a guitar tuner.

Rick: So, it really just has to ring true to you.

Wayne: Right, yeah. And when I get it set where there’s a lot of sound and stuff going on, and get it together, that always seems to sound good.

Rick: What kind of glue do you use, a hot glue?

Wayne: I use hot glue part of the time; lots of times, especially these days, it almost seems to me like a selling point or something. People come in, they want their guitar just like a 1930’s Martin back, and that’s all they had back then, and it was good. Those guitars never come apart. It’s no big deal to use it. I have a nice little glue pot and I just have to flip the switch, and it comes on.

And it’s no real big deal to mix up the glue. I don’t mind using it at all. It’s just a little bit more aggravating to clamp stuff. You have to be quick, doing something like the whole top or the whole back, where you have to put the glue all the way around the rims. And you have to do it in a hurry, so it don’t start drying or jelling up, that kind of thing.

Rick: And then you just compress it with clamps and just hold it.

Wayne: Yeah, use my regular system of clamping and works pretty good. Otherwise, I use Titebond on a lot of stuff. It’s a kind of modern glue that almost everybody uses, and it’s just wonderful stuff. It dries out hard.

Rick: For your inlay, do you use Elmer’s glue? That’s what Martin uses, and I was kind of surprised when I saw that.

Wayne: Well, on my inlay work, I mix dust with epoxy.

Rick: That’s sort of the old-time way of doing it too.

Wayne: Yeah. And sometimes I have, if they want really authentic, I mix up hide glue and dust and glue them in with that. But, it ain’t quite as good a job as the more modern stuff, and they do look like Martins though. And sometimes I’ll do that kind of stuff. And sometimes, if I can get me a good set of visors or glasses on. Now they make little router bit with a sub-spiral or down spiral cutter so it blows the dust off and you can really see your line, what have you, and sometimes I get them inlaid. Well, the inlay in this guitar here, as elaborate as that is, I didn’t do anything but just drop some Superglue on top of it. And got it set to hold really good.

Rick: It’s a pretty piece.

Wayne: And it takes a little more patience with those little bits that you can see what you’re doing better, and they’re tiny, one thirty-second of an inch, and you can really get that stuff down pretty fast. And some of them, the first guitars I made, I had nothing but a pocket knife to cut those inlays. I made D-45 copies back then.

Rick: You whittled D-45s?

Wayne: With all the pearl work and everything, and they were every bit of it done with a whittling knife.

Rick: Have you ever seen those old guitars lately? I mean, see the old guitars that you built?

Wayne: Yeah. I actually have one of them. I was able to buy it back a few years ago. It’s a really cool guitar.

Rick: Have you talked to Doc Watson at all lately?

Wayne: I’ve talked to him. I’ve been meaning to call over and see how he’s doing. But, he had to have some stuff done. And he cancelled a show down close by us last week.

Rick: This might be the toughest question. What do you prefer, building guitars or playing guitars?

Wayne: Well, that is pretty tough. Normally, I say I like building better, because that’s something I feel like I’m better at, for one thing. And like tonight, when you go out and do a show like tonight, where the crowd’s so good and the sound’s so good, you got to say you can’t like nothing better than that.

But, I guess the worst, the thing involved with playing is the traveling. I’ve got so I really don’t like to do that. I dread the thoughts of getting back out, and getting here, and all this traffic, and it seems like it’s got worse in every big city I’ve ever been in, you know?

Rick: Yeah.

Wayne: And that’s always hard. But, like always, when once you get here and get into playing, that’s just –

Rick: Being on stage…

Wayne: Yeah, just really, really great fun.

Rick: And nice appreciative crowds.

Wayne: Yeah, an appreciative crowd like we had tonight, you just can’t hardly beat that. But, I just have to tear myself out of that shop. Even as long as I’ve been doing it, I’ve been doing it for, I guess going on fifty years now, and messing with instruments and making things, probably at least fifty.

Rick: So, do you do most of the work yourself? You mentioned helpers earlier.

Wayne: I do the most of it myself. But, I do have helpers that come in and do things. I have one guy, a friend of mine named Don Wilson, from Florida, who I’ve known since he was fourteen years old. He’s almost as old as I am. He and his family have been coming to the mountains down in Virginia ever since he was fourteen and and they have a place there where they bought land. He’s a magnificent worker and he’s a mechanic. He builds tour buses like you would not believe and the detail is as good as my guitar here. And the work that he does on those things, the electrical and plumbing systems in them, and you walk in that thing, it’s all in marble and gold and stainless steel. It really looks like a Taj Mahal when you look in that thing. Every trick in the world, and he’s just a wonderful craftsman like that, and he’s really into, even more, these guitars. He’s talking a lot about making them; he’s made a few, he sells. But, he loves to come work in my shop and I love having him too.

Rick: Sort of like teaching people to make guitars so you have that legacy thing going.

Wayne: Well, there’s a few people I’ve taught. I’ve had Jimmy Edmunds, who’s a younger person who lives close by, his dad used to have me carry him around when he was a little kid to play. He’s a wonderful player, just an excellent monster fiddle player. I mean, up in Mark O’Connor league, and that kind of stuff. He was good like that when he was just a kid and he’s made his living playing music. But now, he’s sort of retired from playing so much. But, I’ll have him come out and play with me sometimes. I taught him a lot about making instruments and he got in the business now and doing really good. He’s backed up for ten years now, too.

Rick: Good. That’s amazing.

Wayne: A lot, anyway. And he does gorgeous finish work and he helps me do finishes sometimes. That’s something I don’t like to do too good,and I do it on the most of mine. But, I get behind and he’ll do finish. He’ll finish the body and neck, and then I get it back and put it together. He’s really helpful, that kind of stuff. And Bob, when he comes up, he loves to glue rims together and that kind of stuff, and he’ll work me to death when he’s up there! He’ll keep me busy doing the brace system and shaving and carving and tuning. He’ll glue the box together and stuff, and does that kind of thing. And he’s good! He researches how to do good in business, every detail of it, and he’s really into that kind of stuff.

Rick: He researches a lot?

Wayne: He does his studies.

Rick: Have you ever done any arch-tops or electrics at all?

Wayne: Never done too much electric stuff. I’ve never made an arch-top guitar, but I’ve made a hundred and some mandolins, like the one tonight, which is sort of the same process.

Rick: Have you ever had the urge to build an arch-top?

Wayne: Oh, yeah, I always wanted to make one. I’ve even got sets of wood down there that I’ve collected and got wood thick enough to make a nice arch-top. And I’ve just never gotten into doing it. I always mean to and want to and I’ve studied them. I have a D’Angelico in the shop right now for repair work. It was one of those made in the early fifties. The binding deteriorated, just went to nothing. Outside of that, it’s just perfect. But it’s got to have a new set of binding put on it.

Rick: So are you measuring it all like you did the Martins?

Wayne: Yeah, so I’ll study all that up.

Rick: If you hadn’t got into guitar-building, what do you think you’d be doing now?

Wayne: Well, I don’t know. And I never would ever have thought, see, I didn’t foresee any of this stuff too much, I was just a kid at home that liked to make things. I made my cars when I was a kid and all that kind of stuff. And it wasn’t long that somebody brought a guitar that needed something done to it, and I played some.

I always knew how to make them play to feel good. And then, you know, people come, wanting me to come play music. When I was a kid, I couldn’t drive or anything, so people would come get me and haul me off to their house for their jam session. And I’d play guitar. I loved doing that. That was fun, you know? And I had a lot of fun doing that. But, I never thought I’d travel all the places I have.

Rick: Yeah, you’ve been all over the world now, right?

Wayne: Pretty much all over the world, and doing stuff for NCTA [National Council for the Traditional Arts], The Smithsonian’s sent me places and stuff, and I got to see Malaysia and Africa, the Middle East. A lot of those things, they send you to Third World countries, but not where you’d really want to go.

[Wayne’s very significant other, Helen, motions to Wayne that it was time to hit the road back to southern Virginia, a long haul to get home.]

Wayne: Get what you need?

Rick: Yep, we’re all set. Thank you.

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