Newspaper Page Text
I 111! M14 feature
Classic City Vintage Guitars
LUTHIER DYLAN KEEL GIVES NEW LIFE TO OLD
By Patrick Barry music@flagpole.com
C lassic City Vintage Guitars recently celebrated its
one-year anniversary, and you may not have even
heard of it.
It’s a small, unassuming shop in the Chase Park Ware
houses district, a renovated and revitalized cotton ware
house built in the early 1900s. It’s squeezed in between a
tattoo parlor and a brick room with a giant mulberry tree
growing in the middle, so large that it’s supported by chains
from the ceiling.
The inside of the shop is roomy, with rows of vintage
guitars and gear stretching to the high ceilings. Dylan
Keel, the man you’ll have a good chance finding behind
his workbench, owns and manages the shop. His big black
lab, Loretta Lynn, is entirely unaware of the concept of an
anniversary, but loves very much when a new face comes in
the shop, and perhaps loves it even more when a longtime
client comes in just to take her on a walk around the ware
house district.
Keel, the son of Nashville songwriter Bobby Keel,
received his first guitar at the age of 11. After a protracted
hitchhiking experience led him to settling in California, he
developed a love for budget vintage guitars. Brands like Kay
and Harmony, cherished for their character, playability and
affordability, became Keel’s bread and butter. After working
at Wildwood Manufacturing, he launched his own custom
guitar brand, Keelkraft Guitars, and began doing guitar
repair out of his home shop, Humboldt Guitarworks.
In 2020, Keel and his wife Liz took a leap of faith, mov
ing from California to Athens without ever having visited.
Keel worked a guitar repair job in Athens through the brunt
of the pandemic before deciding to strike out on his own.
While searching for a space to start his shop in, he stum
bled upon a place that seemed perfect. “I kind of in my head
just saw it instantly. It was this kind of cosmic feeling,”
Keel says about the space, which was formerly an alteration
shop. He’s repaired hundreds of guitars since the shop
opened a year ago, instruments from all walks of life and
from people across the U.S.
Despite their vintage patina, the guitars Dylan finds and
restores aren’t your typical collector’s vintage instruments.
They’re meant to be played, and they’re restored with care
that comes with a deep knowledge of an instrument’s pos
sible past. “Guitars are artifacts of a musician’s life,” says
Keel. “They’re deeply personal. There’s always this forensic
part of my job, where I’m like ‘Where
has this guitar been? How did it get
these marks? What do I do to fix this?”’
These were all questions Keel had to
ask himself recently, when he worked
on a guitar sent to him by a client from
the Catskills in New York. CJ Harvey,
a photographer and tour manager for
several large bands, reached out to
Keel after finding a guitar in her late
grandfather’s closet.
“My grandfather passed away last
year during the height of COVID,”
Harvey says. “So no one was able to
properly say goodbye or celebrate his
life afterwards. When we eventually
met up to share stories and clear out
his home, I found this beautiful guitar
in his back closet under a pile of dust
and mold. It was warped from the
humidity and probably would have
gotten tossed out since no one else in
the family plays.”
The guitar was a 1968 Martin D-2,
a coveted model. “I knew it was some
thing extremely special that deserved
to be properly restored,” Harvey says.
So, she brought it to Keel on a friend’s
recommendation. “It’s in incredible
condition now,” Harvey says.
Keel chooses to preserve certain aspects of a guitar,
for example not painting over an area that has been worn
by years of playing, out of respect for the instrument. He
knows that any musician who buys a vintage instrument
buys it for the history as well as the playability. “I’ve always
thought of myself as a janitor,” Keel says about his work.
Classic City Vintage Guitars has come to be defined by
a fiercely independent ethos. Much of the shop’s traffic
is driven by word of mouth. Keel advocates endlessly for
local musicians and artists, and despite his recent arrival
in Athens, has become remarkably ingrained in the local
community.
“You leave there feeling better than you did before,” says
local musician and Keel’s client Drew Beskin. “It definitely
fills a niche. He just becomes everyone’s friend.”
The shop is a hub for local musicians, a harbor for ships
which would have otherwise passed in the night to meet
each other, become friends and maybe start a band. Keel
also facilitates and encourages the mutual sharing of music
through his youtube channel, Classic City Limits, a live con
cert series recorded in his workshop. So far, the series has
produced a dozen installments by local artists such as light
hearted, Sarah Mootz, Spencer Thomas and Liz Farrell.
Local musician AG, who goes by the stage name Clover
County, played her first recorded live performance ever on
Classic City Limits, on one of Keel’s 1920s parlor guitars.
“I go back to him at least once a week. He has helped me
make my biggest decisions regarding music,” AG says. “He’s
definitely more my friend than my luthier.” O
NG EVENTS
Good Fun Parties • Holiday Bookings & Hirings
info(a)eptingevents.com
^p\E_ s 0Q /y
16ili Annual
Holiday Hooray
130+ Makers &
Curators
December
10th & 11th
10 5pm
Shop Your Values
This Holiday Season
Building Coiniiiunhy in
Athens since 2006 @thGindwsouth
20 FLAGPOLE.COM ■ NOVEMBER 23, 2022
KARMEN SMITH