We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jack Brunson a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Jack, appreciate you joining us today. Earning a full time living from one’s creative career can be incredibly difficult. Have you been able to do so and if so, can you share some of the key parts of your journey and any important advice or lessons that might help creatives who haven’t been able to yet?
My business started as a “side hustle.” I was working at a pretty prominent luthier in Murfreesboro — Mario Guitars / Guitar Mill. I got a job there right after college, and worked there for 7 years. Somewhere around 2-3 years in, I realized that I should start using the skills I was gaining to buy some broken guitars with the intention of repairing and “flipping” them.
I spent $500 (which was a lot of money to me at the time) and bought around 10-12 broken guitars, fixed them, flipped them, reinvested the profits in more broken guitars. I just kept repeating that process over and over again. I kinda joke that I am not 100% sure how the whole thing got this big. I just kept pulling at the thread until I landed here.
In April 2021, I was able to quit my day job and in November 2021 we signed the lease on our location on the square in downtown Lebanon. It has been a lot of hard work — waking up and working for 2-3 hours before going to work for 8 hours and coming home to work for another 2-4 hours. 14-6 hour days, nights of little sleep, missed social engagements; stuff like that. Hell, I really only started paying myself about a year ago, and I have been doing this for seven years this July.
I have a lot of people who come in to the store and say some variety of “You are living my dream, man!” and I am not going to sit here and try to tell you that owning a guitar store is not a sweet way to make a living. It beats the hell out of working fast food or retail, but I think if most people actually saw the day to day, and all the work it took to get here, they might reconsider. It was and continues to be a lot of work. We have a saying around here that “The Ride Never Ends.” As soon as you get through one pile of guitars, there is another two piles waiting to be processed. I fix guitars a lot more than I play them these days, and I think most people see owning a guitar store as an excuse to sit around and play guitar all day. Frankly, my experience has been the opposite.
All that being said though, I am not really sure I could see myself doing anything else. I wake up every morning feeling like I am on the right path, and not a lot of people can say that.
Jack, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
My house was filled with music as a child — my mom played the piano and my dad would entertain family gatherings with renditions of John Prine songs played on his 1982 Alvarez Yairi. My musical career started as a hobby around the age of 13 after a quick guitar lesson from my father. Shortly after learning to play guitar, I started playing retired YMCA gymnasiums and “hall shows” with my friends near my home town of Mayfield, KY. My first bands, Thicker Innocence & Fahrenheit 514, were horrible by my own admission — but hey, everyone’s first bands are bad.
In the early years, my friends and I could only afford cheap instruments. If there is one thing teenagers are short on, it’s money. Thus, my passion for gear repair was born of necessity. When my Squire Strat or P-bass broke, there was no “taking it to the tech.” I was left to my own devices to get my gear up and running, and hopefully before the next show.
I had to become the tech. Luckily I came of age with the internet, so I was able to figure out most fixes on my own. My earliest fixes were pretty primitive and meant to be temporary, usually including a lot of electrical tape. I remember once, I even fixed a solder joint on my high school’s trashed Kustom Kasino strat copy with chewed bubble gum because I didn’t have a soldering iron at the time. Surprisingly, it held for three months…luckily my skills have gotten MUCH better since then. By the end of high school, I was making extra money fixing guitars on the cheap for my friends and classmates. The prototype of Guitarcheology was born.
In the summer of 2010, I moved to the Nashville area to attend Middle Tennessee State University. School work, delivering pizzas, shows and “the scene” took up a lot of my time, and I found myself working on guitars, short of mypersonal guitars, very little for those four years.
However, there was still plenty of playing. During the course of college I played bass in Uncle Skunkle & The Scarecrow Family Band, Pig Party, Badge Collector, Parasite Diet & numerous cover bands. I became a regular fixture in the Murfreesboro house show scene and at larger Nashville venues. In 2014, I graduated from MTSU with a Bachelor of Science in Recording Industry with a concentration in Music Business.
After college, I was left with the “Well, what now?” feeling that a lot of college graduates have after they turn the tassel and collect their diploma. After a couple weeks of collecting my thoughts, he began a job hunt.
In July of 2014, I found an opening at Guitar Mill & Mario Guitars. Two businesses operating under the same roof, Guitar Mill makes replacement guitar bodies and necks for hobbyist builders and OEM manufacturers, while Mario Guitars is a boutique line of vintage re-creation “F-Style” guitars. The helm of both companies is held by master luthier Mario Martin, who is heralded for his attention to detail, vintage-correct nitrocellulose finishes and hyper-realistic aging.
Though I was mostly confined to the business side of things, everyone at Guitar Mill was crossed-trained. I quickly picked up an education you can’t get with student loans — an in-depth knowledge of vintage guitars, guitar parts and the ins-and-outs of luthiery. Honestly, just being around Mario is an education in of itself. I would stake my name on saying he makes the best electric guitars being made in the world today.
In April 2021, I left Guitar Mill / Mario Guitars to pursue Guitarcheology full time, but maintains a good working relationship and deep kinship with Mario and the fine folks at the Mill. I guess you could say I have been promoted from employee to customer…
As I mentioned previously, in July 2016, I took $500 and bought a few broken guitars with the intention of honing my craft for guitar repair. After the work was done, I started an account on Reverb.com, sold those guitars and doubled my money. I reinvested that money into more broken guitars, and did it again, and again and on the cycle went.
I admit, at first, Guitarcheology was just an excuse to buy whatever gear I wanted and practice piecing them back together, but I had no idea how lucrative this would be. Within the first year, I was making more on Guitarcheology than I was on my paycheck. Besides, I love the work — some people build model airplanes or do jigsaw puzzles, I like to piece guitars back together. It is my therapy.
I found my niche in the early days in buying and selling what he likes to call “dimestore” guitars. These were made mainly in Japan and the US to be sold in department stores and catalogs such as Sears & Roebuck and Western Audio.
At first, I had a hard time keeping everything straight. I’d have to Google every single guitar that came through, but now, through first hand experience, I could tell you the difference between a Teisco, Kent, Norma and Decca — even though they were all made in the same factory. Same goes for Airline, Harmony and Silvertone, if you handle enough of them, you start to appreciate the nuanced differences.
To date, Jack Brunson has bought, repaired and sold over 4000+ guitars from vintage to modern and received more than 2500 positive reviews on Reverb. With each guitar, I have honed my craft to handle repairs ranging from changing the pickups in cheap Strat® copies to a full restoration on a 1949 Gibson J-series acoustic, from rats’ nest to playable.
The business took off faster than I ever would have imagined, and I have no intention of slowing it down.
Guitarcheology started out in a spare bedroom in a 900 sq. foot house. Now, Jack has a dedicated 650 sq. foot shop located on my acre property and a 1700 sq. ft. storefront in historic downtown Lebanon, TN just for my Guitarcheological work.
I remain active in the Nashville and Murfreesboro music scenes. I play guitar and sings in my band, Casual Sects, and currently play bass in These Heathens (Uncle Skunkle), Toxic Culture and Big, if True. Jack is still involved with Boro Fondo Festival, a non-profit music festival in Middle Tennessee, as well as working on numerous committees with the Lebanon City Government to bring free concerts and other events to our community.
When I am not playing guitars, going to concerts or working on guitars, I enjoy hiking, spending time with my friends, playing Nintendo 64, listening to records and taking trips and spending time with my beloved wife, Jayme.
Jack and Jayme Brunson live 5 minutes from downtown Lebanon, TN with their child — a one-eyed elderly beagle named Toby!
Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?
I am very dedicated to the environment and minimizing the ecological footprint of my business. That is why we focus more on “upcycling” guitars. We mostly try to focus on used and vintage guitars. There are so many good guitars out there that are basically just sitting in the garbage can. Our mission is to take as many of those guitars as possible and get them functional and back into the hands of musicians.
In addition, we use mostly recycled packing materials and building materials. We operate under the belief that no one should buy a puppy from a puppy mill when there are a ton of great dogs at the pound. Why should we be still mass producing new guitars when there are plenty of good guitars out there in the world.
Restoring vintage guitars is not only good for the environment, it is good for the soul.
Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?
Our labor pool is our greatest asset. I would be nothing without my small team of dedicated Guitarcheologists.
So many small businesses treat payroll just like any other bill. but they forget that rent doesn’t have needs or emotions…but your employees sure do. I try to treat my employees with a mutual respect and try to lead by example. So many managers get into delegation mode and forget that they themselves need to do some actual work. It is hard for your team to be sour at you if you are down in the trenches doing the grunt work with them. As a leader, you need to lead, not simply delegate.
I also make sure my employees are adequately compensated and have a nice little packet of benefits. This industry (the guitar industry) is full of jobs that don’t pay well as a form of “cool job tax.” They know that people love guitars and will work on them for low to no wages. I am adamantly against this. The level of enjoyment you are getting from your work has no bearing on the amount of work being done. Fair work deserves fair pay.
To boil it down: my philosophy is that I treat my team the way I would want my boss to treat me if the shoe was on the other foot.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://jacksguitarcheology.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jacksguitarcheology/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jacksguitarcheology/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCStC_gcp0LYDM7HbA09Ysuw
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/jacks-guitarcheology-lebanon
- Other: https://reverb.com/shop/jacks-guitarcheology
Image Credits
All of these photos were shot by me and my team.