The kick-off for the 19th annual Cigar Box Festival is slated for Friday, June 2, at Salty Nut Brewery. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. and anyone who plans to attend is encouraged to bring a chair.

MEMPHIS, TENN. -- — They’re built around wooden cigar boxes, just like untold thousands of homemade guitars patched together across America since the 1800s. But no minstrel-show performer or ...

If you’d like to see the guitars for yourself, check out the Sterling Street Market in Sterling, Massachusetts. It’s held every Saturday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on the Sterling Town Common.

These unusual guitars began as early as 1863 — a Civil War photo of a man in Pennsylvania shows him holding such a cigar box guitar, Roudebush said.

The cigar-box guitar dates at least to the Civil War; an etching of two soldiers shows one being played at a campfire. Moller once spent $50 to get a box that was piano-shaped.

Cigar box guitar — a four-stringed instrument fashioned from an old cigar box or similar item that is often played with a slide — has a raw, aggressive sound. Fish, who grew up in Kansas City ...