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Striking a nostalgic chord

In 1972, the winner of the first national flat-picking championship in Winfield took home a guitar that 22-year-old luthier Steve Mason, d’86, had helped craft. In the half-century since, that contest has blossomed into the Walnut Valley Festival, an annual bluegrass and acoustic music showcase; Mason has become nationally renowned for his stringed instrument repair; and that guitar has traveled a rough road, including being run over by a vehicle.

So when the instrument arrived at Steve Mason Luthiers in Lawrence this year—to be restored for display at the Walnut Valley Festival’s 50th edition, Sept. 14-18—Mason wasn’t surprised it needed some care. What he didn’t expect was to find a message he’d written five decades before (top right) on the spruce under the fingerboard tongue.

“When the neck came off, there was my handwriting,” Mason laughs. He didn’t write in his handiwork often—“only when the spirit moved me,” he says—but had decided to label this guitar as the top picker’s prize in ’72. Back then, “I absolutely had no concept of 50 years from now,” Mason says.

Perhaps the new inscription he added beneath the old will someday spark similar awe: “Restored for 50th Anniversary 2022.”

Photograph by Steve Puppe