Ever played a cigar box guitar? The customarily homemade instrument follows the design of a regular guitar. But they traditionally use a cigar box as the resonator. Of course, creative musicians who ...

Shane Speal, whose Snake Oil Band headlines the first New Orleans Cigar Box Guitar Festival on Saturday, started out playing something with a little more firepower. “In the ’80s, I was a bass player ...

Shane Speal sits at his picnic table in Shiloh, just outside York, PA. The unassuming fellow in an old Devo t-shirt is nonetheless passionate, about music, his band, and cigar box guitars. Three of ...

MEMPHIS, TENN. -- — They’re built around wooden cigar boxes, just like untold thousands of homemade guitars patched together across America since the 1800s. But no minstrel-show performer or ...

A cigar box is just a cigar box — except when it's a guitar. In the hands of Gipson Shoemaker III, the simple wooden box becomes a musical instrument worth hundreds of dollars and capable of producing ...