There's probably going to be a shakeup in the cigar box guitar community soon. I'm starting to see signs of it already.
After pushing this stuff for more than 2 decades, with huge thanks to Cigar Box Nation, C. B. Gitty and so many people, the humble cigar box guitar has experienced a Renaissance like it has never seen before. All over the world, people are making and playing their homemade creations in hopes of finding that elusive, deep and soulful music. And there's more tools than ever helping them along the way.
"So what's the problem, Shane?" you ask. Well, I'm starting to see cigar box guitar builders try to create modern marvels... cigar box versions of Strats and Les Paul guitars. They want to make them better and better, in order to compete with actual conventional guitars.
I've also seen college educated guitar teachers don the hats of a cigar box guitarists and pretend to be part of this steamrolling movement in order to profit from it. But they don't get it. (This is why my free video lessons are all simple "tricks & cheats.")
We, the soulful searchers in life are looking for something deep, not precise. We didn't build our first cigar box guitars to play nice things. We wanted to play primal, gritty, salt-of-the-earth music.
And this is where the shakeup will happen. Just watch.
I think there's going to be a contingency of cigar box people who are buck the trend and get back to the gritty stuff. The more homemade, the better. It's my hopes that they remember that this entire movement was built on the mantra of "NO RULES." We all have room in this boat. May the hobo dance with the upscale guitar maker.
Stay primal...but love your neighbor, too.
Shane
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