Cigar Box Geetar Players???....

Subject: RE: Cigar Box Geetar Players???....
From: GutBucketeer
Date: 20 Sep 08 - 12:33 AM

Hey SharonA: That's me playing the washtub with Gerry. It is a small world. Bobert. You know I practice on those GBGs every once in awhile too.

Scott has a great Diddly Bow song on the first Archie's Barbershop CD.

David Williams, aka One String Willie, played an awesome set on his Diddly Bows at the NJ fest that Sharon was at. He really brings it to a new level.

JAB

Subject: RE: Cigar Box Geetar Players???....
From: Bobert
Date: 21 Aug 08 - 08:08 PM

Yeah, Murray, alot of the UTube stuff was put on there by TCRocker (Ted) who makes geetars, including my electric which is a 5 string and a primitave BoDiddly style geetar... Plays and sounds great, too...

B~

Subject: RE: Cigar Box Geetar Players???....
From: GUEST,iancarterb
Date: 21 Aug 08 - 08:01 PM

My first ax (ca. 60 years ago)was in fact a cigar box and what must have been about a 1x2 and had one string on a big peg with a handle. My brother helped me with fitting the crank through the 1x2 neck. It changed pitch continuously from where it was to where it had gotten when I stopped turning the crank. It did please me to have done it, but was unsatisfactory after a little while comparing it to the more predictable sounds my brother's guitar made. Fun to remember, though!
Carter B

Subject: RE: Cigar Box Geetar Players???....
From: Murray MacLeod
Date: 21 Aug 08 - 07:53 PM

There are a stack of videos on Youtube also, if you input "cigar box guitar" and apparently at least two more cigar box festivals in addition to the NJ one that Bobert attended, in Huntsville Alabama, and Carrolton Kentucky.

Fascinating stuff ...

Subject: RE: Cigar Box Geetar Players???....
From: Bobert
Date: 21 Aug 08 - 07:48 PM

Interesting article, Murray....

I found the notes of who is performing with them evem more interesting as I first got the bug when I heard Richard Johnston, who is mentioned, and then bought mine from John Lowe, who is also mentioned...

B~

Subject: RE: Cigar Box Geetar Players???....
From: Murray MacLeod
Date: 21 Aug 08 - 06:15 PM

Interesting Wikipedia article on the cigar box guitar

Subject: RE: Cigar Box Geetar Players???....
From: GUEST,Bob Coltman
Date: 21 Aug 08 - 05:37 PM

And of course the diddley-bow brings to mind Bo Diddley with his rectangular guitar and his often primitive-sounding songs. Who can doubt he was harking back to a cigar-box model? Probably began on one. Certainly his prominence in midcentury rock 'n roll must be the farthest the CBG ever traveled ... at least in inspiration. Got his name that way too.

I have been told that the original diddley-bow was a bowed wire from a store-bought broom that was fastened to a door, bowed with a hank of horse hair, and varied in pitch by stepping on a board fastened to the lower end. Ancestor of all stretch-one-string instruments like the Marxophone, I guess. (Soprano analog to the washtub bass too.)

Cigar box fiddles and banjos have been known. Biscuit tins and even frying pans were used in the same way. The much-legended frying-pan banjo (a bunch of us pickers wanted to build one in the 1950s, but the technical problems and lack of time always kept us from doing it) turns out to be very tiny-sounding, though ... no resonance. Picturesque all the same.

And oops, guess that constitutes thread drift. Sorry.

Bob

Subject: RE: Cigar Box Geetar Players???....
From: Bobert
Date: 21 Aug 08 - 12:18 PM

Yeah, my CBG has two *dowell rods* (broom sticks) for a neck, too and is played with a purdy much exclusively with a slide thouugh I can sneak in a little fingering on the middle of the 3 treble strings...

Actually cigar boxes have been used to make instruments going back to the Civil War days...

B~

Subject: RE: Cigar Box Geetar Players???....
From: CupOfTea
Date: 21 Aug 08 - 10:20 AM

I recently saw a most astonsing version of a cigarbox instrument - though I think it was more designed to be banjo-ish. I'd gone to the concert to see David Francy, and the double bill had Harry Manx, who plays around with electronic modification of acoustic instruments & some truly odd things (a six string guitar tricked out with 21 strings and played like a slide guitar- kinda slide sitar) including a cigarbox instrument with two broomsticks for the neck. All of his stringed instruments seemed to have some sort of pickup for electric percussion systems on them as well.

Subject: RE: Cigar Box Geetar Players???....
From: Bobert
Date: 21 Aug 08 - 10:03 AM

Yeah, some folks do call what I play a diddley-bow... Mine was made by John Lowe in Memphis and he calls his "Lowebows"...

Nah, Shaa-roonA, I try to stay the heck outtta New Jersey... BTW, the CBG Festival that used to be in Hinton, WV ain't no more and BTW, Part 2, since you were last 'round here I moved outta Wes Ginny... That was 'bout 3 years ago and now live on a farm back deep in another holler in Page Co., Va...

BTW, Part 3, bigchuck... Yeah, Scott is one fine geetar player... I met him at Blues Week in Elkins, WV a few years ago... Nice guy, too...

B~

Subject: RE: Cigar Box Geetar Players???....
From: bigchuck
Date: 21 Aug 08 - 09:10 AM

I've made one for a friend, but I don't play. Scott Ainsley, who's a great blues guitarist and songwriter plays one that he calls a diddley-bow and has recorded with it.

Sandy

Subject: RE: Cigar Box Geetar Players???....
From: SharonA
Date: 21 Aug 08 - 08:59 AM

Wow! Small world indeed, BB. Do you play the NJ Cigar Box fest? (Sure would be closer for me to go hear you than West Virginnieee...)

Subject: RE: Cigar Box Geetar Players???....
From: Bobert
Date: 21 Aug 08 - 08:38 AM

Small world, Sha-roonA... That video was put on UTube by TCRocker who lives in New Jersey and amke CBG's and other strange instruments... He prolly made those two CBGs... Mine does not have the fraditional fret board like they are playin'...

BTW, TC made my "Back Porch" geeter which is a croos between Bo Diddley's and firewood (lol)... but plays and sound great...

B~

Subject: RE: Cigar Box Geetar Players???....
From: SharonA
Date: 21 Aug 08 - 01:20 AM

Hey there, Bobes, do you know Gerry "Cigar Box" Thompson from New Jersey? He writes deliciously dark songs. Here's Gerry playing at the 2008 New Jersey Cigar Box Guitar Music Fest.

Subject: RE: Cigar Box Geetar Players???....
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 21 Aug 08 - 12:21 AM

Pop Wagner, a friend of mine, has a unique instrument he calls a shingo. The body is made from cedar shingles and the neck is made from an old chair leg—from a chair that was broken in a bar fight, or so he says.

I believe you can hear him accompanying himself on the shingo on his recording of OLD PAINT, which you can hear at his MySpace page.

Not quite the same as a cigar-box guitar, maybe, but pretty close, I'd bet.

Subject: Cigar Box Geetar Players???....
From: Bobert
Date: 20 Aug 08 - 08:43 PM

Well, here's one we haven't talked about or talked about recently...

Anyone out there in Mudspace playin' CBG other than me???

Mine was made by John Lowe in Memphis and ain't got a real fret board like lots of 'um... No, mine has two dowell rods and three pick-ups in the top of the cigar box... It is played exclusively with a slide 'cause that's 'bout the only way to play it... Mine has two output jacks... One picks up the big-ass bass string (maybe an .090) and the other picks up the three treble strings...

The way that mine sounds best is playin' the bass string thru a bass amp and the treble strings thru the PA...

If anyone out there is playin' a similar CBG then what I'm about to say is fully underswtoof by them and that is that when this thing gets goin' it ain't for the faint of heart... No way to play it but full bore...

Any CBGers out there??? Hello??? Hello???

Bobert