A Redneck Christmas Story

The story doesn’t include a leg lamp with black fishnets, a tongue frozen to a flagpole, or an Official Red Ryder carbine action 200-shot range model air rifle. Perhaps surprisingly, the degree of Southern twang, while linguistically interesting, plays no role. It doesn’t begin with “Twas the night before. . .” Harlan Howard might have said it best: it begins with “Three Chords and the Truth.”

Mark Oliver is almost surprised to realize this is the third Christmas season he has relied upon John Bradley’s workshop for what might be called his most important gifts. Last year his wife, Kotoe, said all she wanted for Christmas was to have her Martin Junior guitar fixed. The guitar that Mark admits, he dropped, causing two cracks all across the bottom: damage so severe he wasn’t sure it could be repaired.“It plays, because that’s the history of it.”

Mark Oliver (L) and John Bradley

The Christmas before that, Bradley restored Oliver’s first guitar: the one his dad gave him when he was 8 years old: “My dad bought it from a flea market for $10. That thing’s been in the attic and everything else. John ran the serial number for me and it’s a 1964 Airline Tenor, sold out of the Montgomery Ward catalog. So he restored it for me and it sounds better than some of my six string guitars. He put a little ‘Redneck’ tag inside of it, saying it was restored on this date and gifted to Mark by his parents.”

But Mark Oliver’s reason for visiting Bradley’s shop this year is a bigger deal. Actually he’s visited several times over the last three months or so. It’s almost like charting the growth of a baby from poppyseed at week 4 to kumquat at week 10. What he’s expecting is his very own Redneck guitar–number 43–and Bradley’s workshop is the delivery room.

It will be a Christmas gift to Mark from his wife, Kotoe, but he said it also counts for Father’s Day and his birthday.

“It’s something I’ve wanted a while,” he explained. “Growing up, my dad had a ‘58 Gibson J-45 and he said, ‘That’s your guitar one day.’ Well, the condition for getting that guitar means he’s got to leave this world, so I hope I never get that guitar. But I was kind of looking at guitars online and to get something like my dad’s, I could pretty much buy a vehicle.”

Oliver remembers the first time he ever saw a Redneck. Sam Weatherly was playing with Joe Shingara at the waterfront in Washington and they told him the story behind it. When he got to play it, he said it felt like his Dad’s J-45.

That’s not a coincidence. Bradley said his two favorite guitars were the Gibson J-45 and Martin D-18 from 1928. His design was inspired by aspects of both of them, like the round shoulder.

“You know he takes his guitars and puts them in front of his Bose speaker and plays music to them,” Oliver said. It reminds me of my wife talking to her plants at the house. I’m looking at a guitar my unborn grandchildren will own one day–number 43.”

“I started building in 2004,” Bradley said. “That’s when I retired from TRW. So, it’s been 20 years and I was told just make all the mistakes you can on that first one, and then get them out of the way. And I sort of did that, you know, the first I just started building with a set of prints. It was a good start. But even two and three were just good starts. I tried to make the next one better.”

By number 5 he was able to pass the Nashville studio quality test. He went to Nashville and took number 2 to Harold Bradley, the most recorded guitar player in the world.

“He was 79 at the time and I handed him number 2, and he would tap me on the knee and say, ‘You gotta correct that’,” Bradley said. “I remembered everything he said. I could make them look nice, but getting them intonated and playing like they’re supposed to was the next level.”

And Bradley treats his guitar builds like progeny. He’s bought back two of them that ended up in pawn shops after their owners’ passed. He restored them back in good condition and re-homed them to musicians who would play them. He gets Christmas cards from number 6 and owns number 23 himself. It became his personal guitar after Tommy Emmanuel signed the front of it.

Number 20 is the one that got away, or got taken away to put a fine point on it–from his locked truck with a smashed window in a Toledo hotel parking lot. He ran into someone who said they saw a Redneck guitar being played by a street musician in New Orleans. In spite of it being stolen, Bradley said, “The idea that number 20 is out there being played makes me happy.”

Dan Bacon bought number 42 earlier this year. He told Bradley back when he was building in the single digits, “Let me know when you get to number 42.” The number was the answer to every cosmic question in the book The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Bradley remembered and called him to tell him number 42 was almost ready. Bacon said he’d be right over.

Redneck owners are like family and it’s exciting for Bradley to spot multiple Rednecks being played at a venue. The Stokes Barn has even hosted “Redneck Night,” where all the musicians on the schedule were Redneck guitar owners. It’s a running joke: How many Rednecks are there in the room?

How long it takes to finish building a guitar is not entirely predictable. Bradley spends a lot of time on getting the intonation just right. Some days are too cold, affecting the wood. Some days musicians drop by with an instrument emergency and a gig in two hours.

Will number 43 be ready by Christmas? Like Ralphie Parker anticipating his Red Ryder BB gun, Oliver says to Bradley excitedly, “I can’t wait!” But he quickly amends, “But I can wait–you don’t rush greatness.”

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