The Current's Guitar Collection: Brad Barr of the Barr Brothers, 1951 Gibson J-45
by Luke Taylor
November 19, 2014
When the Barr Brothers stopped in to The Current's studio on Saturday for a live session hosted by Bill DeVille, Brad Barr's vintage guitars attracted notice.
After the session, he took some extra time to talk about his guitars, one of which has great sentimental value.
You mentioned in your interview with Bill that these guitars are from the '40s and '50s.
Yeah, the lap-steel is an Oahu — we think it's late '30s, early '40s. I found it in an antique store in Austin, Texas. Got it for about 75 bucks, and I put about six or seven hundred into it. Right when it got back to Montreal, it started committing suicide — caving in and so forth. But a great luthier in Montreal helped me get it in shape. It's an amazing guitar. Really fun to play.
And then the other is a 1951 Gibson J-45. I found that one in Chelsea Guitars in New York.
My uncle passed away in the late '90s, and he left me a J-45 from about the same year, and it was stolen in New York out of the back of a car. So I sort of made it my mission for a few years to replace it — for myself because I loved playing it so much as well as for the family.
My uncle also had a daughter who was very sad when that guitar was stolen, so my way of replacing a family heirloom was to buy this one, and it's been my favorite guitar to play since.
In your interview, you described an uncle who was into the Delta blues. Is this the same uncle?
Yes, exactly. Uncle Ted. Ted Barr. He was a painter and a guitar player. He lived in Ashland, Oregon. I guess he moved out there in the '60s, and I went out to visit him when I was about 18; I hadn't seen him since I was maybe 12. I went to visit him and just sort of pillaged his record collection and played his guitars and hung out at his house for about a month, just sort of soaking it in.
He lived in a little, tiny house out there and he was in pretty rough shape; he died of a heart attack, but I think it was like his third heart attack. He tried to heat his house just by turning his oven on and opening it, and that nearly killed him.
He lived pretty hard, pretty rough, but he was a great teacher to me, and I'm ever grateful for him.
Do you write a lot of your songs on the J-45?
I do write a lot on that guitar. I also write on my other one — I have a Martin nylon-string guitar that I write on a lot. I like to use that. I don't know; there's something about the quality of that guitar — it's a '69 nylon-string Martin that never comes on the road but is sort of my house guitar, and I write on that one a lot. But yeah, the J-45 has given me a lot of great songs. It's got a great growl to it.
It sounded great in the session today. Do you feel OK taking it out on the road with you?
I do, yeah; but I hope to find a guitar that's not quite as precious and fragile. This one has really thin wood, which is why it sounds so good. But it's seen a lot of road and I don't know how much it has left in it. I want to make sure it's always there for recording and also, just to be there!
Maybe it could take another 20 years on the road or maybe it's ready to retire. If I can find someone who can make a guitar like this or something similar to it, I would probably try it out at the very at least, if not bring it on the road.
But so far, there's nothing that really compares to this guitar for me.
Resources
The Barr Brothers - official site
