Ronnie Swaim, owner of Jubilee Music in Kill Devil Hills, is a guitar doctor. Well…luthier if you want to be technical about it. But what he does is take broken and often forgotten guitars, and mandolins, banjos, violin—any stringed instrument, really and bring them back to life.
He’s fun to talk to—has a slow sort of southern drawl as he speaks—probably from growing up in the mountains of North Carolina. But that slow southern drawl can’t hide a quick wit and remarkable skill when it comes to bringing a treasured instrument back to life.
Some of the repairs are pretty simple stuff—getting the way the strings feel just right, or tweaking the bridge—where the strings come across the body to make the instrument maybe just a little more responsive.
It’s the type of stuff a musician understands, and along with being the owner of a wonderful music store, Ronnie’s a really good bluegrass musician. Played banjo and guitar for a number of years with a couple of groups. And, because he’s a musician, he understands that every musician want that guitar or fiddle to respond a certain way—something that is unique to them.
He’s been open about seven or eight years now—started at the old Jubilee Theater in Kitty Hawk, where the Theater of Dare is now calling home. That’s a whole other story.
But along the way he began to realize that people who should know better sometimes don’t and there was an opportunity for him with that.
Seems people were bringing their guitars to the Outer Banks and would leave the instruments in the car in the summer heat when they would stop for lunch. That high heat in the car is not good for the glue that hold a bridge in place.
Regluing the bridge is a pretty simple repair, but it takes three of four days for the glue to set properly and in the meantime, the vacationer didn’t have a guitar…unless someone would be willing to rent one to them.
Which he does.
Ronnie Swaim is just one of the many people the Outer Banks such a wonderful place to live or visit. Make your reservation with Brindley Beach Vacations today a discover what life on a sandbar is all about.