Tradition
Appalachian flatpicking
A style tradition
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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
