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First Posted: 9/3/2014 Children were building them as early as the 1870s. Blues and classic rock legends, such as Jimi Hendrix, Carl Perkins and Buddy Guy started out by learning to play them. Paul McCartney used one just last year to co-write &#8220;Cut Me Some Slack,&#8221; winning Best Rock Song in the 2014 Grammy Awards.
Cigar box guitars have been around almost as long as cigar boxes, and the story of these homemade instruments is just as rich as the music flowing from them.
This history is one aspect which first attracted Clarks Summit resident Dave Whetsell, who began learning to play the guitar about two years ago.
&#8220;Along the way,&#8221; he said, &#8220;I came across the cigar box guitars and it kind of interested me &#8212; the history of it.&#8221;
Since so many great musicians learned to make music on them, he reasoned, maybe he should, too.
&#8220;The only problem was,&#8221; he said, laughing, &#8220;you had to make one.&#8221;
But, thanks to YouTube and various online tutorials, along with his own creative improvisation, the beginner-guitarist-turned-luthier accomplished the task on his back deck.
&#8220;I just kind of roughed one out and put it together in about five or six hours,&#8221; he said. &#8220;And it sounded okay. I played with it for a bit, put it up on the shelf and that was it.&#8221;
Or, so he thought.
After the instrument was brought out for a Christmastime session of show-and-tell at his home, cigar box guitar orders from his family and friends started piling up. As his skills improved, he decided to try selling a few of his creations on the e-commerce website Etsy.com.
After a couple months, his first sale came in and he did a double-take at the shipping address &#8212; Sunset Boulevard, Hollywood, Calif. Thinking it was some sort of joke at first, he looked into it and learned the purchaser was opening a cigar bar on the Boulevard and wanted the item as wall decor.
As sales opportunities continued to arise &#8212; Whetsell now makes cigar box guitars for the online shop bourbonandboots.com as well as his Etsy page &#8212; he also began exhibiting them locally as artwork. He named his business Snikle Cigar Box Guitars after his original hometown of Elkins, W.Va. (spelled backwards).
Some of Whetsell&#8217;s instruments were displayed at Sole to Soul in Clarks Summit for the Downtown Go Around art walk in June. He then installed a display at the Dietrich Theater in Tunkhannock in August. His latest exhibition adventure brings him to the historic Tripp House in Scranton, where he will display some of his hand-crafted instruments during PocoNotes&#8217; Faces and Voices of the Blues III.
The two-day event, set for Oct. 4 and 5, will also feature a concert and guitar workshop with Nashville, Tenn. blues/rock artist Patrick Sweany and a museum quality photography exhibit by acclaimed documentary photographer Jim Gavenus, of Luzerne and Berks counties.
Sweany, who was described by &#8220;Rolling Stone&#8221; magazine as a &#8220;soon-to-be-legendary guitar man,&#8221; and has 2.5 million quarterly &#8220;plays&#8221; on the Internet radio station Pandora, will perform in concert at 8 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 4 with doors opening at 7:30 p.m. He will also host a &#8220;Porch Time Jam Session&#8221; from 3 to 5 p.m. that afternoon and a guitar workshop from 1 to 3 p.m. on Sunday, Oct. 5.
Gavenus, who teaches photography at Luzerne County Community College, will hold a workshop from 1 to 3 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 4. His work is exhibited in galleries and museums worldwide and was recently seen by 40 million viewers of the 55th Annual Grammy Awards when a photo he took of legendary musician &#8220;Doc&#8221; Watson was included in an &#8220;In Memoriam&#8221; clip and still package during the Feb. 10, 2013, ceremony, broadcast on live television.
His photo exhibit, featuring legendary &#8220;faces of the blues,&#8221; along with Whetsell&#8217;s cigar box guitars display, will open from noon to 6 p.m. on Saturday and from noon to 4 p.m. on Sunday.
PocoNotes was co-founded by Dolores Hippler and Patrick Harper in the wake of their personal experience in the Sept. 11, 2001 tragedy, with the goal of leaving the world in better shape than they found it. To date, the pair has hosted 17 events and 62 artists.
Whetsell was first introduced to PocoNotes last year when his wife bought him tickets to Faces and Voices of the Blues II as a Father&#8217;s Day gift. The event featured Gavenus as the &#8220;faces&#8221; and blues artist Roy Book Binder as the &#8220;voices.&#8221; Whetsell said his favorite aspect of the event was &#8220;the interaction with the artists.&#8221;
&#8220;It was a very intimate-type setting,&#8221; he said, &#8220;like a house party feeling, that I liked. Roy Book Binder is an excellent musician and storyteller.&#8221;
He looks forward to seeing Patrick Sweany this year.
&#8220;I&#8217;ve always loved the blues,&#8221; he said, &#8220;and there&#8217;s just something about his [Sweany&#8217;s] music that I enjoy. The stories that are in the music, the feeling that it presents. And, of course, his guitar picking is really good.&#8221;
Whetsell also admires Gavenus&#8217; work, and especially the stories behind his photographs, which he makes while &#8220;hanging out&#8221; and spending time with his subjects &#8212; the musicians &#8212; rather than just showing up, snapping some pictures and taking off for the next gig.
&#8220;He has a way of capturing people that&#8217;s just unique,&#8221; Whetsell said. &#8220;And Jim&#8217;s a great guy.&#8221;

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