Carmine Street Guitars

Carmine Street Gui­tars is a musi­cal instru­ment out­let that has stood on the same site in New York’s Green­wich Vil­lage since 1990. Per the name embla­zoned on its front win­dow, it’s a sim­ple, zero-fuss estab­lish­ment that has remained vir­tu­al­ly unchanged over the decades, mak­ing it a liv­ing reminder of both the neighbourhood’s bohemi­an roots and its rapid gentrification.

Enter­ing the shop is like step­ping back in time, a feel­ing that is ampli­fied by own­er Rick Kelly’s USP: he makes bespoke gui­tars from old lum­ber reclaimed from derelict build­ings dat­ing back to the 19^th century.

Watch­ing Kel­ly hand craft his famous ​‘Bow­ery Gui­tars’ from ​“the bones of old New York City”, as he puts it, is to observe a mas­ter arti­san in his ele­ment. Any­one can play gui­tar, but very few peo­ple can do what Kel­ly does, as he trans­forms rot­ting hunks of wood into gen­uine works of art.

Direc­tor Ron Mann is evi­dent­ly enam­oured with his sub­ject – although over the course of the five days he spends film­ing at the shop, very lit­tle is actu­al­ly revealed about Kel­ly him­self. Per­haps it’s fit­ting that his her­met­ic exis­tence should go large­ly unin­ter­rupt­ed by the pres­ence of an (albeit small) film crew. Or maybe Kel­ly just prefers to let his cus­tom cre­ations do the talking.

With Kel­ly tak­ing a back seat for the most part, Mann acquaints us with the hand­ful of employ­ees who keep the busi­ness tick­ing over (at one point Kelly’s tal­ent­ed under­study, Cindy, tries to con­vince him to set up an Insta­gram account, to no avail) as well as the var­i­ous celebri­ty patrons who come in to get their axes restrung and test out Kelly’s lat­est creations.

It’s a treat to see the likes of Jim Jar­musch, the Roots’ Kirk Dou­glas and Wilco’s Nels Cline swing by for a nat­ter and an impromp­tu jam. To them, it’s Kel­ly who is the real rock star.