Shane Speal

For those of you who saw the Seattle episode of  Zimmern's List, this is the guy with the cigar box guitar.  It's our own  Ronn Benway! 

The beauty of cigar box guitars is that you can try any combination of strings and tunings without judgement!

In this video, Shane Speal has his Rumbler cigar box guitar tuned to a low Open D tuning (DAD) and talks about the pursuit of creativity.   

I'm building an old fashioned one-string cigar box guitar and decided to use copper wire frets.  Here's the simple way of doing it. 

You'll need

• bare copper wire (found in the picture hanging section of a hardware…

HAHAHA!  I put a $70 Lace Alumitone Matchbook pickup in a $25 cigar box guitar!   This has to be the most unfair gear review ever!  This was my version of a Mythbusters challenge where the gnarliest equipment was used for maximum results...

Swamp Witch Guitars built me this tribute to my friend, Wesseh Freeman.  I review the guitar and tune it to "Wesseh Tuning."

Ok, so I finally broke down and got a shovel guitar.  Guess what...  I LOVE IT!  This is the top-notch Shovel Caster built by Richard Newland of Bakersfield, CA.   I also talk about WHY you should play a shovel guitar...  

(Scroll down for links.)

Shane Speal newsletter... new slides, the kids got the barrel (pics below) and a "big damn show" next week.

There's a snarky meme floating around the sewer of Facebook that has the Charles Bukowski quote, "Find what you love and let it kill you."

Ah Facebook, you never fail to disappoint.

Tonight, I looked up the exact quote and realized the meme was criminally incomplete.  The full text of the quote is inspiring, profound and something I needed to share with you.

Here's the full Bukowski text:

• New Seasick Steve lesson
• Cool brass guitar slide
• Concert this Friday

February can bite me!  How about you?

Hi all, it's Shane.
Well, I'm still on the one-year sobriety thing...plus now I added a diet to the mix.  On…

MMM SOOKY!

Back -mounted resonators in banjos are a commonplace item.    A resonator provides a hard surface for the sound to be reflected back to your audience via the sound holes in the flange. Put simply, a resonator banjo is going to be louder and brighter.