It’s always great news when we learn of someone in our bluegrass community who is able to take their passion to a full time profession. Whether it’s an artist or songwriter being able to earn a living from their music, to a photographer, festival promoter, or radio broadcaster finding a career in bluegrass is a good sign for the business, and the strength and ultimate survival of the genre.
We’ve recently learned that Johnny Gray, of Gray Guitars & Mandolins, is taking his occupation in luthierie full time in November. With next to zero effort at promoting his work other than word of mouth and Facebook, Johnny is finally able to realize his dream after almost 20 years of building professional grade instruments for bluegrass pickers.
Johnny builds dreadnaught guitars in either rosewood or mahogany, and both A and F-style mandolins in his London, KY shop, located in Laurel County in the central part of the state. Now the number of pro players who are using his instruments have created enough of a backlog that he is leaving his job as a natural gas pipe welder and launching his new business officially on November 27.
He says that he’s spent two decades hoping to see this happen. It’s quite a story.
“I’ve been waiting on this for 19 years. I got started as a guitar player when I was 13, and fell in love with it. I was always one to try to figure out how things ticked, so I got intrigued with guitars and how they were made. So I got a guy to build me one, and I got him the wood. It was black walnut. I would go over to his shop whenever I could and fell in love with guitar building, though I didn’t know how to do it.
Soon I got married, and was raising kids, so I put building on the back burner until about 20 some years ago when I came on a fiddle and took it to a luthier to ask him about it. When he told me it would cost $400 to fix it, and I couldn’t afford that, I said I’ll just take it home and see if I can’t do it myself. I had zero experience, but I had met a guy who said that he built fiddles, so I asked him if he could show me how to do it.
About every weekend I’d go down to his shop and he would show me stuff. He let me borrow one of his molds and a book so I could build a mold. I started in 2005 to figure out where to get the right kind of wood, and had no idea where to go. I found one of my jam buddies down the street had a bunch of curly maple and he gave me the wood to start my first fiddle. Finished my first in 2007, working a full time job and working on the fiddle when I could.
In that two years time I learned how to carve, what graduation was, though I’ve learned a lot more since.”
During this time Gray was playing bluegrass as well, working with The Smith Brothers. He tells us that he is one of 13 children, but the only one of them who is a bluegrass fanatic.
“I just fell in love with it when I heard the Stanleys on an 8 track tape.”
After making a couple of fiddles, one of his picking buddies threw out a challenge.
“Our banjo player said, ‘why don’t you build a mandolin?’ I had never thought about it, but I said, ‘why not?’ I met a guy in Clay County, way back in the woods, and he was making beautiful mandolins and guitars. He showed me a lot, and I learned from Roger Siminoff’s book.
I worked on my first for about three months, and a guy called and wanted to see it before it was finished, and he wanted to buy it! I come home and went to work on it, with my first one already sold.
He liked it so much he wanted buy my next one too. I sold the next few as well, and #8 went to Randy Jones with Lonesome River Band. I’ve built 50 mandolins while working a full time job. I’m at #17 on guitars. Through Randy and Lonesome River Band I was selling mandolins like crazy.
For guitars I got acquainted with the Hampton brothers, who do a lot with John Arnold. They brought a pickup load of curly maple and red spruce.
My nephew got ahold of John Arnold’s pattern that everyone loves, a digitized version.”
The dreadnaught guitar world is crowded with small builders, but again, Johnny’s familiarity with what bluegrass players want, and his knack for picking things up quickly really came in handy.
“I got to show a guitar to David Parmley at a show about a year and a half, two years ago. I came home and built him a guitar from scratch and he and his wife came here to see it, and he loved it and he carried it off. They went to Florida and sold me three guitars down there.
Then David called me one evening and was telling me how much he liked it, but the neck was just a little bit wide. He said, ‘If you don’t care, I’m going to give this guitar to Del McCoury, and you build me another one.’
He showed it to Del, and he fell in love with that guitar. He used it for his latest album, and took it to use on somebody else’s album too.”
The guitars are patterned on a 1937 Martin D-28, and he says that since Jesse Smathers with Lonesome River Band has been playing one, he’s getting hit up by all sorts of players.
“Trey Hensley is wanting one.
I built one for Dan Tyminski in a week, in the white, and he fell in love with it. He asked if I could have it finished in two weeks, because they were playing at The Caverns. I took it to him there, and he took it to soundcheck and played it on stage that night for air on PBS. He’s took it everywhere and played it.”
Naturally, Gray is excited about making this decision to go full time.
“I just have such a passion and drive to do this. I have 14 guitars already sold that I need to build. Doing that while working full time was tough.
At the same time, my day job was killing me with overtime, so I talked to my financial advisor and we ran some numbers, and it looks like I can retire and just build instruments.”
The prices for the Gray guitars and mandolins are quite reasonable, if you don’t mind waiting for delivery. His A-model mandolin, based on a 1920 teardrop, sells for $4,000-$4,500, depending on appointments. F-styles are $6,000. His mahogany dreadnaught runs $4,000 and a rosewood is $5,000. Johnny also has a stock of Brazilian rosewood which he can use for about $2,000 more.
Players say that the instruments really sound alive, tremendously responsive with great volume and projection. Johnny says that it’s all in knowing how to stress the wood, But that’s a secret he’s not sharing.
Now one man’s dream will benefit bluegrass musicians all over the country.
Johnny Gray can be contacted through Facebook.
