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John Taylor converts the former Cain’s Ballroom floor into custom guitars.
Taylor with his completed guitars and the wood — the original floor of the Cain’s Ballroom — he used to build them.
John Taylor works a full-time job at a local Mercedes dealership.
He dabbles in woodworking but never to replace his day job. He enjoys building things and figuring out how to solve the puzzles of carpentry.
One day 10 years ago, Taylor was out looking at guitars with his son. His son kept coming back to the older rockabilly guitars from the ’50s and ’60s.
But the cost was prohibitive.
“My son said, ‘You could build one, Dad,’” he says. “And the guy behind the counter laughed and said, ‘That would be impossible.’
“So I went home, went online, started talking to people about guitars, read a book on it, then built my first guitar for my son. From there, I built them for friends or others.”
Taylor has converted half of his garage into a guitar room, where he repairs guitars for his son and his son’s friends.
“Everyone calls me the ‘American Chopper’ guitar builder because every one is a challenge,” Taylor says.
And for a time, that was enough. Taylor worked during the day and came home at night to build guitars.
“I never really built them to sell them; it’s just been a passion for me just to build them,” Taylor says. “The owner of the Cain’s (Ballroom) approached me at work. I found out he owned the Cain’s and I always keep a picture of guitars I built for other people on my desk. He said, ‘You’re a guitar player.’
“And I said, ‘No, I’m a guitar builder — I build custom guitars for people.’
“He goes, ‘Oh, we need to talk.’”
And talk they did. The owner, James Rodgers, told Taylor that the original 1924 floor from the Cain’s had been removed and he was looking for someone to convert it into guitars. So far, no one had accepted the challenge.
Taylor said, “I’ll take that challenge. I’ll try it.”
He picked up some of the Cain’s wood, which was almost 100 years old, and began sketching two guitars.
“Getting the wood to where it was useable” was one of the major difficulties, he says, “because there were so many years of varnish and time on those floors. I didn’t want to cut away the wood that was going to be a part of that guitar. I wanted to keep as much of it as I could and use the wood that was there.
“There were a lot of nail holes in that floor. Once it started becoming a guitar, it started becoming really beautiful wood. I was shocked the way it came out.”
Taylor says the decision to embark on the project was a no-brainer.
“It’s just the biggest honor to do it,” he says. “ … It’s just something I love doing.”
The guitars feature accents such as inlaid, hand-cut mother-of-pearl stars; music notes; and “Cain’s Ballroom” written in mother-of-pearl.
Taylor says he asked a few of his guitar-playing friends to try out the guitar and asked them, “What do you think?”
“Everybody loved it,” Taylor says.
