Guitar Making
Marion, VA
Michael Brewer was raised in Grayson County, Virginia. At eleven years old, he started taking music lessons from Jim Lloyd of Rural Retreat. Lloyd also fostered Brewer’s interest in instrument making and repair, giving him broken instruments to take home to work on. When Michael was thirteen, his father took him to see Gerald Anderson at his workshop in Volney, Virginia. After visiting and talking with Anderson, Brewer knew that he wanted to pursue instrument-making. Shortly thereafter, his parents bought him his first guitar-building kit and he was hooked.
Brewer began teaching music in 2015 at the Wayne C Henderson School of Appalachian Arts in Marion. While at the Henderson, he started to sit in on guitar building classes, and began to build his first guitar in 2016. However, it was not until 2020 that Brewer completed the instrument as the first recipient of the Henderson’s Gerald Anderson Scholarship (established following Anderson’s untimely death in 2019). Brewer has completed eight guitars so far, with several more in progress. He is proud to incorporate as much local wood into his guitars as he can, and is currently building a guitar for his son using cherry wood from his father’s land in Grayson County. Brewer will be in the Instrument Makers Workshop in the Virginia Folklife Area on Saturday and Sunday.