|
He's The Guitar Man
by Billy Ingram, June 2025
As someone who obviously lives and breaths guitars, Chuck Browder has opened The Guitar Shop Off Elm Street, situated on Bain Street one block north of Gate City Boulevard, you can’t miss the handsome sign.
Browder was somewhat inspired by David Sheppard’s guitar emporium, Sessions, where Freeman’s Pub & Grub is today. For more than a quarter century beginning in 1977, Sessions was a hip(py) hangout for beat lovers and bohemians sipping cold ones and conversating while the proprietor repaired mandolins, banjos and a sundry of string instruments.
In fact, Browder considered buying Sessions and continuing that vibe after graduating from Guilford College in 2003 but, “at the time, I didn't really have the confidence or the knowhow to do it.” Instead, for 17 years he was a top salesperson and assistant manager for Guitar Center.
A veritable guitar Gandalf, he even looks the part, Browder points out some of the exotic models from his impressively curated wall of sound, “We’ve got a lot of jazz boxes here. I've got hollow body, semi-hollow body guitars, Telecasters, Reverends, a 2007 PRS Experience and this Plum. That Copper Top 2002 Les Paul Studio has an ebony fretboard, no inlays. There’s a 2021 Fender Sonic Jazzmaster, this one does the Swiss Army knife thing better as far as being both acoustic and electric but it's not going to be a great guitar to plug through a Marshall Half Stack.”
Learn to shred here or have your instrument repaired after sledgehammering the stage with it Hendrix-style. Will this place become a hangout like Sessions? “There will probably be some hanging out after gigs,” Chuck Browder chuckles. With a newly reinvigorated Ziggy’s drawing rockers a block away, maybe it is time to get the old band back together, you with an enviable axe to grind on.
|
It is what it is!
|
