BREWER'S CHOICE

To cut House of Axes, bluegrass ambassador Gary Brewer picked a half-dozen vintage Martins from his collection of more than 100 - including a 19th century model among the rarest of the rare.

- JIMMY LESLIE

IF THERE'S A home where any true acoustic aficionado would dream to reside, it's Gary Brewer's House of Axes. Brewer is best known as the leader of the long-thriving Kentucky Ramblers, a family band whose 2020 release, 40th Anniversary Celebration, spent 16 weeks at number one on the Billboard Bluegrass Albums Chart, was the number-three best-selling project overall in 2021, and landed between releases by Ariana Grande and Rob Zombie on the Top Current Albums Sales year-end chart.

Brewer is quite a character, who prefers colorful clothes and refers to his high-octane Americana as "Brewgrass," but he's as legit as they come, with the history and testimony to prove it. Brewer's grandfather worked with the original Carter Family in the '20s, and the Brewer family is now a six-generation musical dynasty.

As Brewer explains, Father of Bluegrass Bill Monroe played his final recording session with him and was quoted saying, "This boy right here is 100 percent bluegrass! He comes from good stock." George Gruhn, acoustic guitar guru and owner of renowned Gruhn Guitars in Nashville, sings his praises as well, saying, "Gary Brewer is to the guitar what Bill Monroe was to the mandolin."

Brewer has amassed a monumental arsenal of guitars, including 100 vintage Martins that date back to 1899. His new guitar concept project, House of Axes (SGM), is a straight-shooting showcase for his rarest and most prized acoustics. It's a multimedia affair, captured at Brewgrass Entertainment, headquarters for the family business, where he sat down with nine select instruments and proceeded to play them one at a time, offering insights on each before launching into stellar song performances captured raw in the moment with one take and no overdubs. You can watch them in a revealing series of YouTube videos or listen to the audio versions, where each introduction is broken out as a separate track.