Don't fret, Wesley Crider talks about strings and things

photo Guitarist Wesley Crider plays one of his signature guitars made by Wallace. Photo by Mike O'Neal

The path to fame and international acclaim for Wesley Crider started when, as a child on a North Georgia farm, he decided he wanted to learn how to play guitar.

"I was raised in Calhoun where a dirt road ran in front of our house," he said. "After doing chores, I'd sit on the front porch and practice."

Wesley said he was 6 when his father gave him a Harmony acoustic guitar and taught him to play G, C and D from a Mel Bay chord book. But it was four years later when brother Lloyd, a traveling preacher 10 years his senior, returned home one Thanksgiving and gave his young brother something that would be life-changing: an 8-track tape of Chet Atkins playing.

"That's when I knew I wanted to be a thumb-style player," he said.

Soon after, his father bought him a "Play Along with Chet" album and that's when he started woodshedding on the front porch.

"I listened to my dad's records, slowed them down by stacking coins on the turntable, and tried to learn a song a week," Crider said. "Mom would buy [phonograph] needles and Dad would keep me stocked in turntables. That's how I taught myself to play."

To master the styles of Atkins, Merle Travis and Jerry Reed took hours of practice. Then, at 25, Crider became intrigued by the sounds of Albert Lee, Ray Flack and Vince Gill.

"I always had big dreams," he said recently. "When Dad bought a Gretsch Tennessean with Chet's name on it, I dreamed that some day I'd have a guitar with my name on it. My grandfather heard me playing and said, 'One day I'll see a guitar with my name and your name - I'm named after him - on it."

That "one day" happened after the 2004 International Home of the Legends Thumbpicking Contest held in Muhlenberg County, Ky., at Central City's Paradise Park. That was when Crider, then 36, won first place in both the traditional style of Atkins and Travis and in contemporary style.

Following his being crowned a double champion, Crider was approached by luthier David Wallace about endorsing instruments made in Wallace's atelier in Niota, Tenn.

"I started with an acoustic, then a nylon string model," Crider said. "Wallace had the design for the guitars but all mine have a cross on the head stock and three cross at the 12th fret that are inlaid with mother-of-pearl. The crosses are my signature."

There is also a Fender Telecaster style guitar bearing Crider's "signature" crosses, and he recently helped design a small body arch top that combines the shape of a Gibson Les Paul and a three-inch thick body.

"It's the 9/30 model; that's my birthday," he said.

While Crider says his Wallace guitars "make me sound better," even without endorsement deals, he is well-known and highly regarded in the music industry.

"Years ago, Sonny Thomas [internationally acclaimed repairman and guitar tech for Chet Atkins and Paul Yandell] told me, 'Son, I'd like to break your fingers," Crider recalled.

About seven years ago Crider married and moved to his wife's hometown of Ringgold.

Today, in addition to performing as a sideman on recordings of Southern gospel groups, releasing his own YouTube videos, performing at churches and in concert, Crider teaches guitar and banjo at ChattaMusic in East Ridge.

"Several teenage boys from Heritage High School have just started thumb-style picking," this king of the six-string said. "It is a dying breed. You carry the bass line while simultaneously playing the melody. Not everybody is wired to play this style, but my students are making me proud."

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