Canadian Artist's "Smokin" Guitars Are All the Rage
Posted: 6/12/2007

MONTREAL (AFP) -A Canadian artist is giving new meaning to the "smokin' guitar" by making the instruments out of discarded cigar boxes, and his creations are selling like mad on the Internet.

And as irony would have it, the craft revives a century-old tradition born out of poverty -- though modern-day maker Lenny Piroth-Robert can command top dollars for his product.

"It takes between six and eight weeks to get one of my guitars," said a tousled Piroth-Robert, clad in a Ramones T-shirt and wearing dark shades.

In an industrial area in northern Montreal, old Dobro and Gibson guitars hang on the walls of his studio, and piles of cigar boxes litter the floors.

Rather than make a guitar out of wood, he uses empty cigar boxes to form the body of the guitar and then attaches a neck and strings.

Plenty of artists have played these types of guitars over the past 150 years. Among them, the legendary Jimi Hendrix, who made his musical debut at the age of five, plunking strings on a homemade cigar box guitar.

In the beginning, Piroth-Robert worked on his paintings by day and transformed into a guitar-maker by night, purely as a hobby.

"When I started, I was doing five, six guitars per month and I was selling them on eBay," said the 30-something as he plucked one of his guitars, a warm, ample sound emerging from the strings.

"Then, Playboy magazine did an article on my creations," known as Daddy-Mojo guitars, he said.

The musical artisan soon learned that the magazine, known for its photos of nude women and "playmate of the month," is also apparently known for its articles.

"After Playboy published, I made 150 guitars all by myself. I was working seven days a week."

He said he was "forced" to set up his own website and recruit a friend to help satisfy the demand, 95 percent of which he said came from the United States. The guitars, depending on the model, sell between 175-375 dollars (130 to 280 euros).

Even Montreal's cigar sellers were hard-pressed to sell their wares fast enough to allow him to grab the empty boxes and make guitars out of them.

"The owner of a big cigar store in the United States was getting his hair cut at a barbershop. He was flipping through Playboy, and called me on his mobile phone to tell me he had 300 cigar boxes in his warehouse and he didn't know what to do with them," Piroth-Robert recalled.

Now, US merchants and a manufacturer in the Dominican Republic send him the boxes, which are typically made of cedar and mahogany.

"Daddy-Mojo makes some great cigar box guitars," said Shane Speal, curator of the National Museum of Cigar Box Guitars in the United States, who believes these handmade creations have a special place in North American history.

"The cigar box guitar has always been the instrument of poverty," he said.

"The oldest cigar box guitar that I have dates back to 1886. These instruments have been built since approximately 1840 and that's when cigar manufacturers started using smaller boxes," Speal said.

"Back then, people, if they could not afford to buy a guitar, or anything, they would start to build it themselves. So you started to see cigar box guitars, cigar box violins, cigar box banjos."

But many advances have come along since these ramshackle instruments of yore.

"I pushed the idea further," said Piroth-Robert, who makes models with anywhere from three to six strings, according to his clients' desires.

He also incorporated a soundboard -- a circular piece of metal molded into the guitar -- and a hookup so that the guitar can be electrically amplified.

"I have made a lot of instruments for bluesmen, amateurs and pros. They tell me, 'I heard about your guitars but I didn't know where I could find them'," he said.

"Now, they are rediscovering the past through my instrument."

©2007 AFP.
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COMMENTS

Submitted by dave on 2/10/2010 12:56:11 AM
These guitars are awe-some! I don't have a web site, but they do...

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