The How-To Repository for the Cigar Box Guitar Movement!
How to Build and Play Cigar Box Guitars and other Homemade Instruments
Watch the entire Gitty Gang Show episode #124. In this episode, the Gitty Gangsters share performances by Jimmy Driftwood and A.j. Gaither. Plus, you get to see Watt Corner and the triumphant return of At The Bench With Gitty, and a whole lot more!
See more detailed information about this installment of the Gitty Gang Show, along with a host of other useful details and links here.
Shane Speal hosted the Gitty Gang Show and dropped an insane amount of knowledge on the audience. Grab a pad and paper for notes and watch for yourself. You don’t want to miss this.
Continue reading “Shane Speal Shares 25 Years of Wisdom in Under 45 Minutes”In this post, you’ll see how Shane Speal “stays curious” with two incredible autoharp-like instruments called Nightingales.
Continue reading “Shane Speal Gets Weird With Dick Bozung Prototype Nightingales”In this post, you’ll learn how to play Led Zeppelin’s “When The Levee Breaks” from Shane Speal on your 3-string cigar box guitar.
Continue reading “Led Zeppelin’s “When The Levee Breaks” | 3-String CBG Lesson”Learn how to play Led Zeppelin’s “10 Years Gone” from Shane Speal on your 4-string cigar box guitar.
Continue reading “Led Zeppelin’s “10 Years Gone” | 4-String Cigar Box Guitar Lesson”
If you have been wanting to try your hand at a four-string, these videos are for you! These two lessons from Shane Speal walk you through getting started playing sweet, sweet music on a 4-string cigar box guitar tuned G D G B (open G).
Click here or on the image to the left to see the full post on CigarBoxNation.com!
We just added a new entry to the library, an article telling the story of the man who is largely responsible for the existence of the modern cigar box guitar movement.
Shane Speal started building cigar box guitars in 1993, and from that time has been tirelessly promoting the instrument, performing onstage with them, and creating online communities to help people discover the instrument and start building their own. He took the title “King of the Cigar Box Guitar” back when such a title seemed full of irony – who would want to be the king of such a crazy, primitive, mostly forgotten instrument?
This article by Glenn Watt re-introduces Shane Speal to those who may never have heard of him. For 22 years he has been building, playing, and preaching cigar box guitars.
Click the image or link above to view the full article.
Shane Speal may be King of the Cigar Box Guitar, but he doesn’t just stop there – he has built and collected an amazing variety of crazy homemade instruments. In the article linked below, he walks you through how he built a dobro (resonator guitar) using a cheap metal mailbox. I’ve seen him play this monster on stage and it really has a great sound, so if you have been looking for something cool and different to build, click the image below and check it out!
Shane Speal, the man who started the modern Cigar Box Guitar movement, talks about how he rediscovered the cigar box guitar, and why he continues to play them 22 years later.
Have you heard of CigarBoxNation.com?
“King of the Cigar Box Guitar” Shane Speal founded it back in 2008 to be the home of the Cigar Box Guitar revolution, and since then it has grown to over 13,000 members worldwide, with tens of thousands of photos, videos, dozens of topical groups and hundreds of thousands of forum and blog posts.
It is a great place to get to know other builders, share photos and videos of your creations, ask questions and learn about this wonderful, crazy hobby. Stuff posted on Cigar Box Nation is a lot more “permanent” and easy-to-find than posting things on Facebook groups, too – your stuff can always be easily found on your profile page.
So if you are just getting into cigar box guitars, or are a long-time enthusiast, you should discover (or re-discover) Cigar Box Nation! Long live the Cigar Box Guitar revolution!
In this documentary, which is currently running on the local TV station in York, PA, Shane Speal and Ben “C. B. Gitty” Baker explore the secrets of the York Steam Whistle Christmas Concert – the last of its kind in the world. This steam whistle concert has been going on since the early days of the 1900’s, and the current whistlemaster has been at his post performing the concert every Christmas Eve for the past 60 years.
While Shane explores the story of the steam whsitle concert, Gitty builds a 116db pneumatic slide whistle from and old bicycle pump which Shane later plays onstage at a live concert. Along the way, Shane and Gitty discover and play an amazing forgotten instrument known as a “horse fiddle”, and they manage to get all giddy schoolboy-excited over crazy homemade instruments. Shane even performs an original song “Chasing Steam” on his cigar box guitar.
The Chasing Steam documentary starts around the 14 minute mark; the portion of the show before that features a poetry reading of a forgotten female poet from York, PA, with Shane playing in the background.
Have you seen this? It’s a video lesson where the King himself, Mr. Shane Speal, walks you through how to tune your cigar box guitars and play them like Seasick Steve!
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