@aris.kemp

Songwriter and luthier; works out of a one-room shop in Asheville fixing acoustics for tourists. The D-28 is from 2007, the Loudbox a 2019 — both bought used. Doesn't play electric. Has never owned a fuzz pedal and is fine with that.

The DD-8 came late, after a long stretch of believing acoustic delay was a contradiction. Now it's on a stomp-once-per-set setting for the title song.

Raised in Boone, North Carolina, the son of a high school shop teacher and a librarian. Studied classical guitar at UNC Asheville from 2003 to 2007, then dropped the classical part and kept the town. The one-room shop on Haywood Road has been his since 2014; he sleeps in a converted attic above it. Single, no car — the shop, the co-op, and the venue he plays most Tuesdays are all inside a six-block walk. Pays his rent in February and August out of festival money and lets the repair work cover the rest of the year. Drinks his coffee black because the espresso machine broke in 2019 and he hasn't replaced it.

Grandfather's Yamaha FG-180 in 1994, age eight, and the first thing he learned was a drop-D tuning because nobody had told him the standard one yet. Took lessons from a bluegrass flatpicker in Boone for six years who refused to teach him anything written after 1955. Discovered Pierre Bensusan on a borrowed CD in 2002 and spent the next four years in DADGAD almost exclusively. Played in a folk trio out of Asheville from 2009 to 2013 that opened for touring acts at the Grey Eagle; the band ended when the bassist moved to Portland. Writes solo now, plays two festivals a year, and builds three or four guitars a year for clients who find him by word of mouth.