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Wash. man crafts guitars out of lowly cigar boxes

By SHEILA HAGAR | Walla Walla Union-Bulletin • Published November 09, 2009

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WALLA WALLA, Wash. – For his pay-the-mortgage job, Kurt Schoen flies cargo for UPS.

For his live-the-dream work, the Walla Walla man drives to a somewhat-secret location to play a different sort of tune.

Schoen, 44, has been creating custom, "cigar-box" guitars for nearly a decade. His tools consist of old wood, glue, antique metal and more old wood.

"You see this piece?" he asks, selecting a length of rugged lumber. "This wood is from New Orleans, from homes that didn't make it through Hurricane Katrina."

Running his hand gently over the wide plank, Schoen (pronounced "shane") explains the wood originally came from a barge that brought supplies down the Mississippi River once upon a time.

The primary stars, however, are the wooden boxes sitting here, there and everywhere in the ramshackle workshop. Those will eventually become the bodies of Schoen's signature instruments.

Little did he know back in 2001 that a project for his kids would become an abiding love. In hopes of inducing daughters Cheyenne and Daisy to become interested in music, Schoen took a couple of cardboard cigar boxes, ran a stick through and attached a pair of guitar strings to each. "They were not much," he recalled with a laugh.

Enough, though, to ignite a desire to keep going.

Schoen began experimenting with wooden cigar boxes, then wondered just how nice he could make the homemade instruments, he said.

Eight years, countless experiments and hours of research later, he has his answer - nice enough to make his creations sought after by unknown and renowned musicians alike. And not just cigar-box guitars, but handmade electric guitars, as well.

He calls the cigar-box instruments, outfitted with hand-punched aluminum resonator cones, "Turbo Diddley" after the Diddley bow homemade instruments significant to blues history.

Cigar-box music is, like the wood it comes from, going to be a little "rough around the edges," Schoen noted. "Cigar-box guitars have really come to mean homemade instruments. Cigar-box music is not going to sound all that well produced."