Last month, at the Minnesota Bluegrass & Old-time Music Association’s annual Homegrown Kickoff Festival, our guitar player, Marty Marrone was the recipient of an amazingly generous gift of appreciation from a fan– a beautiful, handmade, acoustic dreadnaught guitar!

This surprise offering came from the hands of a man named Jim Stadin, who was inspired to learn to play guitar and bluegrass music after seeing Marty play live a few years ago with his band Tanged Roots. Although he is not an instrument builder by trade, Jim is a talented craftsman and soon after starting to learn to play the guitar, he decided to try his hand at building one as well.

Marty had the honor of playing Jim’s very first guitar when he brought it backstage at a festival the High 48’s were performing at last summer. Marty liked the sound of the instrument so much, he played it during our following set. Little did Marty know, not long after that encounter, Jim would set out to build another guitar, one that he would bestow on him as a gift less than one year later. Here is how Marty described it:

I played his first guitar last summer during one of our sets at the Lakes Bluegrass Festival. Unbeknownst to me Jim started building me a guitar sometime this past winter. Jim surprised me with the guitar at this years June kickoff at El Rancho Mañana. It has a spruce top, rosewood back and sides with a Mahogany neck. It’s a great guitar!

We’d like to thank Jim for his generosity and for reminding us why we do what we do!