Rotten Roger. Photograph by Thomas Crone.
Generally speaking, visits to subcultural events are fun. Even without having a full idea of the subject, you can usually find someone with enough enthusiasm to run you through the basics. We applied this theory to the Cigar Box Guitar Festival, a first-annual event at the Highway 61 Roadhouse and Kitchen in Webster Groves’ Old Orchard district, held this past Saturday.
Like a lot of fests of this sort, the event took place on a normally unremarkable parking lot; in this case, the one just to the north of the big, ol’, wooden Roadhouse. (It’s a structure that has a musical heritage itself, as the one-time home of WG’s popular Streetside Records outpost.) Vendors ringed the lot in shade tents, about a dozen of them in total, with cigar box guitar dealers on-hand from Missouri and Illinois, of course, but also Kentucky and Tennessee. A couple hours into the event, at around 2 p.m., around 150 attendees milled about.
They were there to buy, build and show off their guitars, as well as to play the afternoon’s open mic. Justin Johnson, regarded as the nation’s wizard in building and (especially) playing the guitars, was also on-hand, filling in sets of music, a night after headlining a show at the blues-based restaurant and venue.
While the literal quality of cigar box guitars was certainly true, some builders called on other forms of construction. Among them, a fella by the name of “Rotten Roger,” a Staunton, IL, cigar box guitar maker who also builds instruments out of things like fuel cans and bed pans; the latter, he dubs “The Stratocrapper.”
Set up just to the right of the stage, where The Thin Dimes were running through a set, Rotten Roger was getting a good dose of sound at his well-appointed stand. His wife was also sitting nearby, there to handle any monetary exchanges (“She’s the one with business sense, while I’ve got the goofy ideas”). But it was Roger who working the crowd, inviting people to play guitars and generally making merry.
Standing next to his display of 25 distinctive, colorful, all-for-sale guitars, Rotten Roger said that the turnout was “excellent. There’s a beautiful turnout, beautiful weather, plenty of people.” His only regret was having to look at all of his homemade instruments, instead of handling them. “If I could play a little more,” he said, “I’d be heaven.”
CROWDFUNDING FOR SAMUEL BECKETT (AND THE UNION ELECTRIC)
The Union Electric songwriter and KDHX deejay Tim Rakel’s reached out to note his group’s recent Kickstarter campaign. The crowdfunding site’s up, with a release targeted to later in the year.
Rakel says that “The Union Electric has recorded three songs and a fiddle tune/spoken word piece all of which we will be mixing and releasing as a four-track 7" EP later this summer. Much of this depends on raising some funds through a Kickstarter campaign. The loose theme of the small collection is Samuel Beckett, whose influence I discussed on ‘Literature For The Halibut’ on Monday night, June 10, on KDHX.
“Kevin Buckley is doing the engineering and contributing some fiddle playing, as well,” he adds. “UE members Melinda Cooper, Glenn Burleigh, Mic Boshans and I are all involved in the recordings in addition to Irene Allen-Sullivan who sings on two of the songs.”
You can stream that broadcast here.
