Celebrity

For Freeman Vines, Guitar Making Is a Way of Life

“Art of Craft” is a series that depicts the work of specialists elevated to the level of art.


Freeman Vines was chasing the sound.

I couldn’t remember where I heard it, but it echoed in my mind. His attempts to recreate it on production guitars were fruitless, so Vines took matters into his own hands and began building guitars in 1958.

“I didn’t care what the guitar looked like. I didn’t care what color it was,” Vines said in the 2020 documentary. “The Hanging Tree Guitar: The Art of Freeman Vines” It was produced by the Music Maker Foundation, a non-profit organization that supports Southern artists like Mr. Vines. “I was looking for a tone.”

Mr. Vines, now 80, never recreated the sound, but in the process used wood from barns, valleys and other unexpected and meaningful sources to create dozens of created a unique guitar. A series of his guitars are featured in a traveling exhibition (currently Maria V. Howard Art Center at the Imperial Center in Rocky Mount, North Carolina) was made from wood extracted from trees used to lynch blacks.

Vines, who now works on a storefront in Fountain, North Carolina, grew up on a plantation in nearby Greene County during the Jim Crow era, working the fields with his mother for a meager wage.

Growing up, he toured a bit as a jazz musician. But his quest to recreate that one sound turned out to be the energizing force in his life. He sculpted various forms of guitars with specific designs and electronic configurations. Some are made to look like traditional African masks.

“These guitars here have their own personality and sound,” Vines said in a video accompanying the exhibit. “For others it’s just glued wood together. For me it’s something else.”

Chris Bergson, a musician and associate professor at Berklee College of Music in Boston, said there has been a significant increase in independent guitar building in recent years. “You get something really special and unique. It’s like the antithesis of an off-the-shelf guitar.”

Vines has multiple myeloma, but his symptoms haven’t abated. “He takes a little nap and continues his work and creation,” says Timothy Duffy, who is the founder of the Music Maker Relief Foundation.

Mr. Vines was recently discharged from a rehab facility after serving on the cancer ward. “They really wanted him to stay there,” recalls Duffy. “He said, ‘Hey, you can sit here and get bored.’ I may die within, I am alive now.”

The wood used to make the “hanging wood guitar” has “unique characteristics,” Vines said. “People thought I carved everything there, but I didn’t. It’s there.”

“The wood speaks to me,” Bynes reportedly said in his book, “Hanging Tree Guitars.” “A tree has a personality.”

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