Rick Faries has been playing bluegrass music professionally since he was 14 years old.

He's been studying the Art of Lou theory, the building or repairing of guitars for almost just as long.

Now he runs Kentucky Guitar Works in Owensboro, which aims to support both of those passions and that.

Tune out of all Alone.

No place to call my own.

I ain't had no one love me more.

So Kentucky Guitar Works came about because of a need of Lou Reed to be passed down from.

It's not usually from father to son, but from from apprentice to apprentice.

You know, like over the years, it's lineage of knowledge that goes back four centuries.

If COVID taught us anything, we lost quite a few very prominent repair luthiers and they weren't training people like they could have been.

So a lot of that knowledge that they possessed was gone.

Now we want to keep that from happening and we want to bring new people in as luthiers and train them up and send them out in the world so they can repair instruments, so they can build guitars.

We're in a boom right now of guitar building.

Since Covid's happened, guitar sales are up 200%.

So it's there's there's a need and Owensboro has been doing a bluegrass music initiative, which is to cultivate bluegrass culture right here in Owensboro.

So they needed a luthier and they, they reached out.

And so this is kind of been part of their pillar, one of their pillars of the Bluegrass Music Initiative.

So we're here to educate and build guitars.

This is how how your next come and you can cut to out of this one if you get creative.

So this facility here, Kentucky Guitar Works, we have 1700 square feet plus and what we can handle five students at a time for building classes and for small classes like repair or, you know, action sets, maintenance and things like that.

We can handle a whole crowd full of folks.

But this space makes it possible to bring people in and let them have a wonderful environment to assemble a guitar or to learn to repair their own or to start their budding luthier career.

Someday she'll be my wife and we'll settle.

Down for love.

Oh, she don't get paid more than me.

We hope to not just enhance bluegrass but music in general.

And shining a light on bluegrass is kind of what I've always wanted to do because it's done so much for me through my lifetime as an artist or as a luthier.

You know, take your pick.

It's bluegrass has been there for me, so I'm very happy to try to be there for it as it goes forward.

So I hope it piques people's curiosity and gets them thinking about things and building things, making things that are going to outlive them.

Kind of gives you a broader perspective on.

The world and what you can do to it.

Our thanks to Kevin Combs for that piece.