Shane Speal, the Snake Oil Band and the Return of the Cigar Box Guitar!

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 these curious instruments, all from Speal's hands rest on the table between us. A close inspection reveals the bodies are all completely different: the cigar boxes are of varied sizes and thicknesses, and instead of a tuning rig, at least one has hook-and-eye screws to keep the strings in tune.

It is guitars like these that are the foundation of Holler!, the new CD from Shane Speal's Snake Oil Band. Recorded in nearby Dallastown, Holler! is put out by C.B. Gitty Records, a label created specifically by the New Hampshire-based guitar parts dealer. Speal explains, "Ben Baker, the owner said to me, 'Shane, the more people hear your stuff, the more people want to build cigar box guitars. So he financed this album."

This album is the blues, from the opening guitar line, harmonica blasts and stomp of "49 Years," Speal's voice an eerie, threatening growl. "We are probably the world's first hard rock jug band," Speal says. "We use cigar box guitars, washboards, an electrified washtub bass and harmonica. We also peppered in the rhythmic chants of old prison songs and field hollers.

'These field hollers," Speal goes on, "were the old call and response things they used to do in the south. That is the great grandfather of blues and hip-hop. It's very rhythmic and very pulsating...you have a gumbo that nobody has ever tasted before."

This one hour is a rollercoaster ride through songs that are indeed throwbacks to all the blues came from. "How Long Will You Make Me Suffer" and "Whiskey Blues" cover familiar ground, then there's the humorous "When She Gets Drunk, She Gets Horny." There too is "Dink's Song," which is considered the oldest documented blues song. "In 1904, a woman named Dink was singing this song washing her clothes in a stream when Alan Lomax discovered her."

Most curious of all is a slow, bluesy reworking of "Billie Jean." Yes, that "Billie Jean." The song no longer sounds like its original, and nearly steals the performance away from Speal and his Snake Oil henchmen.

The foursome became a band as organic as their music, when they drifted into the weekly open mic shows Speal used to host at downtown York's First Capital Dispensing Company, better known as First Cap. "I would perform the first 40 minutes," Speal recalls. "Well, then as I'm performing, Ronn Benway showed up and saw that I had a washboard there."

Harpist Aaron Lewis, a veteran of the Little Ivory Blues Band, Shrimpboat and other bands soon followed, along with "Farmer Jon" Sprenkle, a real-deal local farmer. "He ended up making a washtub bass for fun, and showed up at my open mic," Speal says. "And with the four of us just jamming, I looked at these guys after a couple of months, and I said, 'We're so good, I'm gonna start booking us some gigs.'

The homemade instrument has come back in a big way, and Speal believes it's more than just a passing fancy. "The cigar box guitar is a poverty instrument," Speal explains. "It dates back to the mid-1800's, back whenever they first started using smaller boxes to pack cigars. Before that, they packaged them in barrels. The government imposed a tax on cigars, so then they would just package them in 25 or 50 at a time in a smaller box. So these wooden boxes were everywhere.

We're talking about the American poor here, that couldn't afford a guitar from the Sears catalog. So what'd they have around the house? They had an empty wooden box, they had a stick, and for strings sometimes they used old screen wire, they would use baling wire or broken strings from someone else's guitar. And they would cobble together something with one string, two strings-if they were gonna get fancy they would use three."

Speal then takes up one of his creations, merely a stick, with two holes drilled through the box and two guitar strings. There is no fretboard, and Speal uses a ¾ inch Craftsman wrench socket for a slide.

These are the components to make a cigar box guitar, popularized in recent years by bluesman Seasick Steve, someone Speal acknowledges. "When (he) came out, I had been doing this for over ten years. When I first heard him, I saw a video of him on Jools Holland, I think I screamed it out loud, that somebody gets it!"

Without arrogance, Speal says, "I was the one that brought the cigar box guitar back from obscurity. I didn't think anything of it, but I posted free plans online over ten years ago and how to build these, and it took off to a worldwide movement."

That movement is taking Speal to Hollywood. On Saturday, August 16th, Speal will appear at the Musack Rock and Roll Carnival, to benefit underprivileged children (see below). Among those on the bill will be Superchunk, Mike Watt and Lisa Loeb.

http://www.eventbrite.com/o/come-to-the-4th-annual-musack-rock-and-roll-carnival-4422271717

Locally, Speal will appear at the annual Pennsylvania Cigar Box Festival in downtown York the following Saturday, August 23rd. Speal also promises the band will perform the entirety of Holler! live at the event.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Pennsylvania-Cigar-Box-Guitar-Festival/122995721068990

If you can't make it to York, the CD is available at www.cbgitty.com. The novelty is over, I think. Listening to Holler! should prove without doubt that these are not sideshow Vaudevillians or people fooling around. These are true musicians; doesn't matter what you play, but what you put in and what comes out.

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