Today we’d like to introduce you to Dylan Keel.
Hi Dylan, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
It would be difficult to give a clear picture of how I got to where I am today without starting from the beginning, so for what it’s worth, that’s where I will start. I was born in Nashville Tennessee in January of 1983. My parents Bobby and Tana Keel were songwriters and had just achieved success having songs recorded by some high-profile musicians. On December 26, 1983, on a trip home to Louisiana for Christmas a few weeks before my first birthday, my mother was run over by a drunk driver in the driveway of her parent’s house. She was transferred to Shepard Spinal Center in Atlanta and received treatment and then to Warm Springs Rehabilitation Center. At 28, she would be a quadraplegic for the rest of her life. My father chose to go back to Nashville to pursue his career as a songwriter and my mother and I stayed in South Atlanta with my Uncle Greg.
My mother was very strong-willed and intelligent, and although she was unable to walk or sit up on her own, once in her wheelchair she was a force to be reckoned with. She got an apartment in Riverdale and for the most part, we lived alone with the help of her in-home health care. Through the Americans with Disabilities Act, she attended Clayton State College in Morrow, and got a bachelor’s degree and then a Master’s Degree in Business. After she found getting a job with her level of injury impossible, she went back to school at the Art Institute of Atlanta and received a Fine Arts degree.
Because of my mother’s condition, I moved to live with relatives in Texas and Tennessee a few times during elementary school but went to elementary and middle school in Riverdale. I finally moved to live with my grandparents in Northern Tennessee after getting in trouble in school, and I stayed there through graduation.
The day after graduating high school I moved to Nashville and got a job in a big nightclub as a bar back. I worked in several service industry jobs there until I was about 22 and then through a breakup ended up moving back to Atlanta briefly before enrolling at Murray State University in Kentucky.
My mother passed away for complications from her condition when I was 25, and after finishing the semester as she would have wanted I decided to go on a trip to the West Coast to spread her ashes. A friend and I flew to Seattle, and then took a bus to the North-Western corner of Washington, and then spent the next three months hiking and hitch-hiking the coast, on thru Nevada, to Colorado and eventually back to Kentucky. After returning to school the following semester and feeling like I’d seen the other side of the mountain, I applied for a one-semester transfer to Humboldt State University in Arcata, California, met a girl and ended up staying for 10 years (after going back to Kentucky to graduate). I received my degree in Organizational Communication with a minor in Fine Art in the spring of 2010.
The one element I have failed to mention in all of this is my connection to and obsession with music and art throughout my life. Both provided a constant escape as a kid and continued into my adult life. I began playing guitar around 11 years old but never had the interest in being in a band. I have always been very interested in the aesthetics and construction of especially electric guitars. After college, I got into buying and selling vintage guitars online, which led to needing to do repairs. Many of the guitars I had, were cheap old Kays and Harmonys that luthiers would say weren’t worth doing major repairs on, so through my own determination, I eventually fell down the rabbit hole. I became a sponge for anything guitar repair related and continued buying guitars in poor condition and testing my knowledge. I took a job at a pawn shop that specialized in guitars in order to learn more about the buying and selling aspect of the vintage guitar market, and through that was able to get my hands on many more valuable guitars.
Through a friend of my father’s in Nashville, I was offered an apprenticeship with a Luthier in a music store in Nashville, so I loaded up and moved back to the city I started in twice before. It was short-lived for many reasons, but suffice to say, we just didn’t work well together. I was 30 and maybe too old for the endentured servitude required for a classical apprenticeship. I moved back to Arcata California and was able to get my foot in the door at an electric guitar parts factory there as a Sander. Over the next six months, I worked my way up to the guitar neck department, and for the next few years spent 8 hours a day learning the in’s and out’s of the guitar construction, and the evenings building a repair shop in my garage and immersing myself in literature and videos about Luthiery.
In 2015, I began my custom guitar brand, Keelkraft Guitars, and built a few guitars the first year. I left the guitar factory that year and began doing guitar repair out of my home shop, and working on growing my online presence. I continued this for the next few years before attempting to expand to a brick-and-mortar in 2018, but because of the cost for warehouse rental space in California after marijuana legalization, I was unable to find a suitable venue. In 2018 I married the girl I’d stayed in California for and she finished her master’s degree. We were ready to leave Northern California but were unable to find a direction out.
In January of 2020, a well-known guitar repair shop in Athens, Georgia flew a hiring post on Instagram, and after discussing it with my wife, I applied and was immediately offered an interview. I flew to Atlanta, and for the first time ever came to Athens to interview over two days, and was offered the job and committed to begin on April 1. Soon after returning, I began breaking down my shop, she put in for a transfer at her consulting job, and we let our friends know we were moving to Georgia. Within the next month, Covid-19 began to slowly shut the whole world down and we realized the move was going to be much more difficult than we could have ever imagined. We left California the second week of March 2020, and by that time most restaurants were closed, masks mandates were in full effect, and paranoia was very high worldwide. We made it from Northern California to Athens in three days.
I took over management of the repair shop I came to work for in April and worked thru the pandemic. The shop was appointment only and all but one of the staff members worked from home. The owner stayed quarantined in Colorado where he lived part-time before the shutdown. Because live music had stopped, players who had put off repairs decided to finally have their instruments updated, modified and restored. Industry-wide, 2020 was one of the busiest years for guitar sales and repair shops.
I realized after managing the repair side of the shop for nearly a year, that the reputation of the shop was not very good locally, and the owner was a difficult character to with a mixed reputation as well. I think many people had revelations and came to conclusions during Covid, and for me, after working to restore the repair reputation locally for about a year, I decided it would be best to start fresh if possible and open my own shop.
I began searching for a new space to open a repair shop and within a week found a perfect retail space at the Chase Park Warehouses in Athens. I opened the shop in September of 2021 and so far things are going very well. Through my new shop, Classic City Vintage Guitars, I buy, sell, and trade vintage guitars in the shop and offer full-service repairs from minor tweaks to full restorations. Up until two weeks ago I managed the shop and did all of the repairs entirely on my own, with assistance from my wife on the admin side of things. I have recently hired an assistant and have already begun expanding the showroom to an upstairs acoustic guitar lounge. Other than the repair and buy/sell/trades, I offer custom guitar pickups made for the shop by a well-known boutique pickup maker, and have started a line of locally themed guitar effects pedals made by a friend who recently graduate from UGA (HWY 316 Overdrive, Georgia Peach Fuzz, and Bulldawg Boost). I have a youtube channel called Classic City Limits that showcases local Athens musicians playing their original songs in my workshop, and in the fall hope to start a podcast that discusses trends and absurdities in the vintage guitar culture. I have had a huge amount of support in the community since opening just eight months ago, and have a great appreciation for the talent and culture within the Athens music scene.
I never thought I would be back living in North Georgia, but now can not imagine being as fulfilled anywhere else. I feel extremely fortunate to have had the ability to follow my intuition and heart throughout my career, and truly feel the strength of my mother living on through my own determination.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I specialize in vintage guitar restoration and repair at my shop Classic City Vintage Guitars in Athens Georgia. I also build my own brand of custom electric guitars under my brand Keelkraft Guitars. Starting out in this field, my ultimate goal was to be an artist using the guitar as my medium, but I quickly learned that in order to make a good guitar one must understand every element of a guitar’s construction. Repair has become my main source of income over the last 10 years, but building custom guitars is still my passion and I hope to eventually manage the repair shop at CCVG while continuing to build my brand as a builder.
Any big plans?
There is no retirement plan for a craftsman. My goal with Classic City Vintage Guitar is to build the most reputable vintage guitar repair and restoration resource in Georgia. My long-term goal is to continue managing CCVG while beginning a technical school in Athens that focuses on Luthiery and Repair.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.classiccityvintageguitars.com
- Instagram: @classiccityguitars
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnvOWYT4VfhkbcrMEETQa4A
Image Credits:
@toneparty (Kyle Martin)
