Longtime furniture maker Freddy Hill has returned to an old passion. However, he isn't just playing his guitars again, now he's building them.
“There's an old adage that learning to build an instrument is the skill of a thousand steps. They're incredibly complicated machines,” Hill said. “Visually, they may not look like it, but the inside of a guitar is a very well-engineered and complicated piece of machinery to build.”
As he approaches his 50th birthday, Hill decided now was the time to pivot from making furniture to making guitars.
“Furniture has been great. [It’s] kept me afloat, kept a roof over my head. But, you know, it's hard and it's a grind,” he said. “I was tired of chasing clients and trying to hunt down work. And I thought, ‘If I don't do this now, I never will.’”
His Townsend’s Guitar Company based out of a studio inside the Screw Factory in Lakewood is almost a year old and makes acoustic, electric and bass guitars.
Hill said his 20 years of experience making furniture prepared him for this new venture, which requires skill and “meticulous detail.”
Start in Music
Playing music came first for Hill. Growing up in Stow, he started on violin when he was 4 years old and then piano at the age of 7. But by the time he was 12, he’d fallen in love with rock ‘n’ roll and got his first guitar.
While in his 20s, Hill played in several traveling bands that toured the country. By the time he reached 30, however, he said he was burnt out from the road and looked to change careers.
A woodworking friend gave him a part-time job, and that’s when Hill first came up with the idea of building his own guitar.
“I recognized pretty quickly that I didn't have the skill set to do it. And it was far more complicated than I had anticipated,” he said.
So, he focused on furniture making. Close to two decades later, he’s combining his experience as a guitarist and as a woodworker to this passion project that’s become a full-time job.
“I really want to cater to the musicians that are local, the people that are out there playing nightly, people who are passionate about music, and then keep it here, keep it in Cleveland,” Hill said.
Freddy Hill plays his guitars with the band Clockwork Wednesday nights at 9 at the Spotlight Cleveland music club at 8701 Madison Ave.
