Tradition
Appalachian flatpicking
A style tradition
Flatpicking's home ground runs down the Appalachian spine, and its guitars have home addresses too. J.W. Gallagher's family shop, established 1965 in Wartrace, Tennessee, built the dreadnoughts Doc Watson flatpicked — the association that fixed the shop's place in the repertoire's history. Wayne Henderson builds in Galax, Virginia, with a backlog measured in years; his guitars are iconic among bluegrass and Doc Watson-circle players. In Staunton, in the Shenandoah Valley, Huss & Dalton came together out of bluegrass instrument building: Jeff Huss spent nine years at Stelling Banjo Works, Mark Dalton was hired there in 1994, and the two met at an early-nineties jam session before founding the company in the late summer of 1995. Their dreadnought and OM reputation grew from that ground. Huss retired in 2021; Brian Dickel, the shop's production manager from 2000, became Dalton's partner the same year, and the building continues. The territory is defined less by a construction recipe than by repertoire — guitars made where the music is from, for the way it's played there.
Builders of this tradition
3 documented members, listed alphabetically
