Old Crow Medicine Show - Guitjo

Guitjo

After three years playing guitar, Kevin Hayes, switched over to the guitjo (or "guit-jo"), adding a distinctive note to the group's sound. He "has been Old Crow’s full-time guitar-banjo player since the band started recording in 2004," but began playing the "six-string banjo by accident." As he puts it . .

". . the guit-jo is a very percussive instrument, and it's got the kind of hollowness that the banjo has, that kind of plunk that the banjo has, but it doesn't have a twangy thing. It's not really high end. It's like an empty, hollow, bass-y sound. If you need to identify it on the record, once you hear it, once you identify it as the guit-jo, then you'll be able to determine where it is through the record. Because once you know what it sounds like, I mean, it only sounds like a guit-jo. You'll never have it confused with anything else."

Ketch Secor "My first one came as a gift at a gig, probably around 1999. I don’t know whether this person had made it or found it somewhere, but he just handed it to me and laughed. And I had so much fun with it that night that I didn’t want to stop. It stuck."

He keeps the 1929 Guitar GB-1, "his primary instrument", in standard tuning "which allows him to play three-note chords up the neck, flatpick on fiddle tunes, and fingerpick on slower songs" in what Hayes describes as a "plunketty" tone. It gives him "a range of tones on the high strings, little response on the low strings, and virtually no sustain." As he says . .

"The biggest difference between a guitar and a guitjo is that the guitjo has no bottom. I rarely touch the low strings, because people wouldn’t hear them. And even on the high strings, the sound decays as fast as you can hit it. So I find myself taking a different approach than I would on guitar. I play really aggressively, like a rock ’n’ roller, which gives the guitjo a real thwack. It’s a very percussive sound, and when that guitjo starts to hum, when its mojo gets rolling around, and kicks into overdrive, you can feel it in your body."

When not playing with Old Crow—he released a solo album in 2011 as Kevin Paul Hayes—he plays acoustic guitar, electric guitar, and lap steel. Hayes, who co-wrote “Carry Me Back to Virginia,” “Country Gal,” and “Sewanee Mountain Catfight” from the group's 2012 album, "almost always uses his Harmony parlor guitar" when he writes, but he advises others: "If you’re thinking about trying guitjo, I say go for it. You’ll instantly be able to play chords, and as you play more, the way you hear the music will change, and the way you approach your instrument will change."