Charlottesville singer and songwriter Tara Mills hadn’t planned on falling in love with the Rockbridge OOO model guitar she has been playing for the last decade. A fellow musician and bandmate happened to be storing a collection of Rockbridge’s guitars in his house and, during a rehearsal, Mills picked up the OOO and started noodling on it. At ensuing jam sessions and rehearsals, Mills found herself gravitating to the triple aught more and more often. From the onset, there was a connection, and when the guitar unexpectedly became available for purchase, Mills knew she had to have it.
“It’s funny, because this was not the type of guitar that I ever thought I would pick out and buy. But I just loved the tone of it. It was so punchy and loud, and the range fit perfectly with my voice. I fell in love with this guitar,” Mills said. That sort of connection is exactly what Rockbridge Guitar Company Founders Brian Calhoun and Randall Ray were seeking when they built their first guitar together nearly 20 years ago.
Now headquartered in a 19th century cottage just a stone’s throw from Charlottesville’s Downtown Mall, where Calhoun lives above the 1,200 square foot workspace, Rockbridge Guitar Company began as a pipe dream in the hills of rural Rockbridge County. At barely 20 years old, Calhoun pitched the idea of building guitars to longtime bluegrass player Ray.
At the time, Ray was painting houses for a living while building guitars on the side and was unabashed in offering Calhoun his initial assessment of the idea. “Randall used to tell me that I was too young and stupid to realize you can’t build instruments for a living,” says Calhoun.
Cultivating a Passion for Custom-Made Guitars
To the good fortune of all, Ray’s prediction was wrong. Rockbridge Guitar Company has become one of the premier boutique guitar companies in the world, turning out custom-built instruments for the likes of Dave Matthews, Jason Mraz, Brandi Carlile, Amos Lee, Keith Urban, Sara Bareilles and many more.
Calhoun’s journey to master guitar builder began in his youngest days, when he was tinkering with radios and taking things apart just so he could put them back together. It wasn’t until high school that he began learning woodworking and instrument crafting.
“I was a senior in high school and needed an independent study course, so I started one on mandolin building. I eventually had apprenticeships with John Schofield, a mandolin builder in Rockbridge County, and Sam Compton, who was building violins. But I didn’t play either mandolin or violin, so neither of these instruments made perfect sense to me.”
Calhoun did play guitar, though, having gotten into bluegrass flat-picking as a teenager and even studying at the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston. He was able to parlay the skills he learned in those early efforts at mandolin and violin building with his love and understanding of guitar into a partnership with Ray, and what both soon realized was a match made in acoustic heaven.
Forming an Artistic Partnership
Ray and Calhoun put their heads together, studying the fabrication of vintage guitars, borrowing ideas and experimenting with designs until they hit upon a blueprint that has remained virtually unchanged for nearly two decades. “We kept working, taking guitars we loved and splitting them down the middle and combining aspects that we liked. We purposefully set out not to replicate any one guitar or sound, so there were a lot of little tweaks here and there, and we eventually were making guitars that sounded the way we wanted them to.” And it was evident, pretty quickly, that the guitars they were making were special.
“Early on, we were lucky enough to build guitars that we felt were exceptional. I realized that when I found myself playing a guitar we had built, instead of the vintage guitar my father had gotten me for my high school graduation. I wasn’t playing it just because we had built it. I was playing it because I actually liked it. And I figured that if I liked it, other people would, too.”
“We were lucky enough to build guitars that we felt were exceptional.”
Calhoun soon found himself on the road during festival season, guitar cases in tow, intent on getting Rockbridge’s guitars into the hands of pickers and players.
“I’d head out to these bluegrass festivals and carry a couple guitars with me. I’d track down the musicians and try to share the guitars with them. I was essentially a kid back then, so sometimes I’d get brushed off, but sometimes I’d get a courtesy strum, which often led to a, ‘Whoa, let me get this back somewhere where I can really hear it.’”
Custom Guitars from a Small Virginia Workshop
That revelatory moment was the foot in the door Calhoun, Ray and their burgeoning business needed. More and more bluegrass players began buying their guitars, and the company hasn’t looked back since.
Demand for one of Rockbridge’s guitars continues to grow. If you are interested, patience is a virtue. Current wait time is between 15 and 18 months, even with up to 30 guitars regularly around the shop and in different stages of production. According to Calhoun, once a guitar begins, from the earliest steps of shaping the soundboard and cutting the soundhole, it takes around six months before the curing of the finish is complete and the instrument is ready to head to a customer.
While Calhoun and Ray began building guitars in the bluegrass world, their scope has widened over the ensuing years. Calhoun and company have added a variety of models to their stable, from original big body, traditional bluegrass dreadnaughts to more intimate parloresque guitars like the O, OO and OOO guitars. Rockbridge even offers a double-necked acoustic beauty, a model originally commissioned by Richie Sambora of Bon Jovi fame, and the SJ, a versatile slope-shouldered guitar favored by Southern rock icon Warren Haynes and South African troubadour Vusi Mahlasela, among others, and it remains their most popular seller.
Calhoun notes that the success of Rockbridge Guitar Company rests on the quality of their instruments and their desire to keep the partnership small and familial. Calhoun and Ray have added just two luthiers to the company—Jake Topping and Adam McNeil. It isn’t uncommon that all four have a role in every instrument that leaves the shop, from carving necks and bracings to setting ornate inlay on fingerboards and headstocks, even with Ray continuing to work from the shop in his home in Rockbridge County while the other three crafters are in Charlottesville.
The builders even weathered Calhoun’s four-year stint in California, sending custom-built insulated shipping containers full of fragile guitar parts back and forth between Los Angeles and Virginia, all in the spirit of maintaining the intimate feel of each build.
“We’re a four-man team. We’ve had the opportunity to grow and change the dynamic of the company, but I am glad we haven’t. We’re all friends, and we’ve all put so much heart and soul into this thing. It doesn’t feel like work, and that’s something I am really proud of.”
Nearly 20 years later, the gravity of passing along one of his guitars to an appreciative patron and the joy it brings are not lost on Calhoun. “It’s amazing to see one of our guitars on stage in front of 20,000 people, but it’s just as powerful to see a new father who had his baby’s footprints inlaid on the guitar talk about how he’s going to pass the instrument on to him someday. It’s the whole spectrum. Every time someone gets a guitar from us, we’re pretty excited about it.”
This article originally appeared in Book 12 of Wine & Country Life. Start your subscription here or give a gift subscription here. Read more about Virginia artists, authors and musicians on the Style and Culture page. ~
DAVE STALLARD has been writing about music in the Southeast for over 15 years for Blue Ridge Outdoors. A middle school math teacher by day, he lives in Keswick, Virginia, with his wife and family, and is an avid road cyclist, mountain biker and appreciator of craft beers.
JEN FARIELLO has been taking beautiful photographs since 1996, specializing in journalistic, fine art wedding and portrait photography. Jen’s work has been featured in many regional and national publications like Time, People, Rolling Stone, Southern Weddings, The Knot, Weddings Unveiled, Southern Living and Wine & Country Weddings.
you might like
