Made in America: 21 year old shatters guitar, discovers dream career
His handmade instruments start at $2,650
Tobin McGlassion stepped through the front entrance of The Strand Theatre in Pontiac, Michigan, looking for his tickets at the Will Call window. He explained that he had come to see musicians who played guitars he helped create by hand.
McGlassion took a seat in the third row on the end, smiling. This moment, for so many reasons, was about dreams coming true. During a time when uncertainty and political anxiety dominate so much of life, the 21-year-old guitar maker from Sterling Heights was focusing on the future and possibility.
The packed vintage concert venue, which opened in 1921 as a silent movie and Vaudeville theater, felt a lot like the Fox Theater in Detroit (1928). So much history infused with young energy.
On stage, folk musicians Drew and Ellie Holcomb, he from Memphis and she from Nashville, talked about their three kids and a son Huck who loves the Detroit Lions so much that he went to career day at school as a Detroit Lion. (The crowd roared.) The kids tour with their parents sometimes. But on this night, with Ellie Holcomb wearing a hot pink dress and white go-go boots, they were home in Tennessee.
Their concert, part of a cross-country “Memory Bank Tour,” triggered a standing ovation along with times when the sold-out crowd sang along the words in a uniquely beautiful whisper. They sing about celebrating tiny moments and cherishing the people in our lives now.
Note: I had never heard of them. My husband loves their music. He purchased a VIP ticket that gave us access to an early Q&A that revealed favorite memories, their history — she was an English teacher and he swept her away only after writing a song. His father taught the family to never take a day for granted because people we love go away, and that inspired the tour name.
Drew Holcomb gave a shoutout to his guitar maker, McGlassion’s partner, from the stage.
And I wondered, how does a 21-year-old end up in the guitar making business. And there he sat with his 22-year-old wife, Bella, a wedding photographer from Howell. They both smiled and quietly took in the scene as the crowd cheered.
An accident leads to discovery
Tobin McGlassion of Howell, who turns 22 on Monday, found his path in life after shattering his $1,000 guitar after a Thursday night music rehearsal at Kensington Church, Lake Orion campus, a large non-denominational church known for its vibrant music programs. The shoulder strap snapped and, boom, the instrument slammed into concrete and shattered to bits.
“I had this Alvarez guitar I loved. I was 17, attending Henry Ford II High School in Sterling Heights,” McGlassion told me. “I talked to my worship leader and he introduced me to Mike Franks, who suggested I drop off the instrument. When I went over to his shop, I asked, ‘Do you have apprentices?’ I had been in wood shop since middle school. I built my own snowboards, skateboards and stand up paddle boards. I said, ‘I can learn on you.’”
Within the first 18 months, McGlassion built a ukulele and two guitars.
McGlassion is now part of a team of five craftsmen who work together building custom guitars, and he oversees production and quality control at Cirrus Guitars in Sterling Heights that he co-owns. Their typical handmade guitar sells for $2,650.
Custom: From $4,500 to $20,000
Meanwhile, custom guitars with intricate detail and rare tone woods may start at $4,500 — sell for an average of $6,000 — and can even climb up to $20,000 with a themed design that’s handout in rare materials. McGlassion mentioned a Noah’s Ark guitar under the M.J. Franks label that took five months to build and topped out near $20,000.
“We’re going more off a medium-sized business idea. We don’t want to be be like Martin or Gibson, but we’re bigger than a small, one-off custom shop,” he said.
“We want to bring quality and do it in a larger quantity so people can get a really good instrument at an affordable price.”
The acoustic guitar industry is thriving these days, reaching $321 million in sales in 2023 and growing, according to Decipher Market Research.
The industry is cautiously monitoring President Trump’s tariff discussion because guitar parts often come from China.
Hiking through trees, finding freedom
McGlassion grew up the son of a church pastor. His mother is a project manager at a data company who leads a team on contract for Ford Motor Co. in Dearborn.
“She’s got a cool job. She loves to tell me about it,” he said.
His twin 18-year-old sisters are headed to college next year.
McGlassion has chosen a different path, an old-school profession that focuses on craftsmanship and relationships. He credits his ability to find a dream with a childhood that included LEGO plastic bricks, shop class, hiking and time spent on snowy mountains.
“I loved anything that I felt I could learn the nitty gritty of,” McGlassion said. “If I wasn't able to understand how something worked, it bothered me. I loved building. I loved playing with LEGOS and ignoring the instructional book. I loved things that let me feel creative and free.”
His father had him on a snowboard by age 4, McGlassion said. He loved riding the mountain runs but he preferred, as he grew older, strapping on a backpack and his snowboard and hike up a mountain and find his own path down.
“I’d go into back country and it was like an open canvas,” he said. “I grew up on Michigan mountains, then spent time in Colorado. We hiked in Kentucky and the Upper Peninsula. We did rock climbing with 4-H. I’d go to California and Arizona.”
While the Christian music scene has been core to the clientele, McGlassion said the guitar makers are making a name for themselves with orders from all over the country.
“Our desire is to fill the world with well-made instruments that people want to play,” he said.
The Cirrus team has outfitted Drew and Ellie Holcomb and their whole band with handmade guitars, McGlassion said proudly.
Ellie Holcomb is the daughter of Brown Bannister, a famous Nashville-based music producer who has won multiple Grammy awards for contemporary gospel albums. His client have included Amy Grant and CeCe Winans.
Drew Holcomb, whose lyrics and music and harmonica playing sometimes sounds like classic Bob Dylan, gently teased that his wife writes songs about God while he does the other stuff.
Arrive as logs, leave as custom works of art
Clients buying handmade guitars include musicians who do bar gigs and others just needing a good studio instrument without paying big money for a big name, McGlassion said.
The team is making an average of 10 guitars a month with a goal doubling production.
“Everything we do is very specific. I work down to 1/1000th of an inch,” McGlassion said. “We start with a tree. Logs come into the shop and we saw them down.”
Finding the best wood in Appalachia
The most requested wood is Adirondack Red Spruce from the region for which it’s named. A lot of guitar wood also comes from Indiana and Vermont, McGlassion said. They use Indian Rosewood and Mahogany from Africa and Honduras.
For music historians, Adirondack Red Spruce is the source of Bluegrass tones, where people lived in the hills and built instruments from what they found on the land.
Larger guitar companies used Adirondack Red Spruce but later shifted to materials that could be purchased in larger quantities for less money, such as Sitka Spruce found in Alaska.
“Sitka is an amazing wood. I work with it all the time,” McGlassion said. “Adirondack has more projection and voice and volume. It has a cool history.”
One thing McGlassion explained to me: Why musicians change guitars so many times throughout a concert. Each instrument has a different sound, and songwriters may choose a guitar based on how soft or loud they plan to sing or the size of the concert venue or control of the sound system.
“You'll notice that some of the bigger-bodied guitars have more depth and they just sound like they're more full. They fill the room easier, especially when strumming hard. When you’re cranking on the instrument, it will respond well,” he said. “But if you do lighter finger picking, you need to bring out some of those finer details.”
“Ellie switched out pretty constantly,” McGlassion said. “An artist may have written a song with a certain instrument. Wood dictates projection, how you articulate sound, whether it’s bass heavy or treble heavy. It’s all about controlling sound.”
Note: I’m a proud member of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative. Please check out our work here. Just a great mix of political analysis, features from the Heartland.
Great story of the emergence of a talented luthier who discovered his passion and is making a successful business happen in our region! Bravo!
Brian
Ms W H
Another heartwarming story about a pretty grounded, energetic, enterprising, creator who loves not only his guitar making success, but the world he chooses to live in. Sounds like his parents provided the platform upon which he built his life of satisfaction without leaning on anyone for help. He makes it happen, and thanks to you, we now know “the rest (and best) of the story.
Stay safe
PEACE
Gregg Wilczynski
Retired