Located in the Heart of Downtown Clarksdale
Ryan Robertson found a way to turn a lifetime love of music into a thriving business, first in Texas, and later moving Delta Avenue Guitars to Clarksdale one year ago. “We are a recent transplant to the Delta from Austin, Texas,” he says. “I originally started doing essentially just repair work and fixing things for my musician friends and then I started building guitars. When we moved from Laurel Avenue in Luling, Texas, to Delta Avenue in Clarksdale, we just rebranded, and we are now underway building handmade guitars here in the Delta.”
Robertson’s interest in music started at a very young age. He started playing around the age of eight or nine. He combined his love for music with an interest in tinkering, and his business was born.
“I’m a musician and it just came from having guitars that needed fixing, so like any five-year-old you just take stuff apart and put it back together,” he says. “I started with some piano lessons and then guitar and next thing you know you’re banging around in a garage with some dudes and being loud.”
Robertson and his wife, Bear Ryan, are both musicians.
“It’s hard to describe our music. I would say it is definitely Delta-based country swamp,” he says. “It’s really its own animal. We’re just a little bit different than the rest of the blues acts here in Clarksdale, between myself and my wife we’ve got dozens and dozens of guitars, and as touring musicians things do break so I just learned to fix them. I was doing it for myself and for my friends and other musicians and it evolved into making my own guitars. A lot of that started because my wife plays cigar box guitars and it’s kind of a niche instrument, plus she’s left-handed, so I just started building those and what we found is that they had to really be built to be stage-stable and hold up to touring and gigging regularly. They couldn’t be like hobbyist versions, they had to be really stable to be able to stand up to big use.
“We just start overbuilding them, and then I realized it is the same amount of effort essentially in building a full-size electric guitar, and from there I started carving out more space and adding machinery and tools, and the next thing you know we’re building guitars,” says Robertson. “It’s the hands on, it’s the craftsmanship, the getting to work with wood, and having it turn into something. It’s a creative process just to do it, but then once it’s done, you’ve built an instrument that has some potential for whoever ends up with it. It’s pretty rewarding in that aspect.”
The couple was introduced to the Clarksdale area through its music.
“Clarksdale is literally the Crossroads of the Blues. Muddy Waters is from here, Sam Cooke, R.L. Burnside and people like Robert Johnson,” he says. “That was one of the big attractions, being in the cradle of American music and getting to build instruments here, we play under [my wife’s] name—Bear Ryan. We’re recording an album in Water Valley at Dial Back Sound, which is a really well-known music studio here in Mississippi. We’ve been touring through here and playing festivals over the years and I just came to know quite a few people here, and make friends.
“Then literally, the barbershop that had been here for just about sixty years came up for sale, and we came to look at it,” says Robertson. “It was just almost too perfect, like Mayberry. It’s a special place, so we ended up making a deal on the barbershop. Like, three days before finding out the barbershop was for sale, there wasn’t really a thought of actually moving here other than our just love coming two or three times a year to hang out with our friends and play music. We love it here. I mean, it’s wildly imperfect, but the people are super-kind. It’s just easier living here. There’s no traffic. You know there are certain things you have to do without—we don’t have a Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods or anything like that but on the bright side of it, there’s no traffic and things are affordable and our neighbors are wonderful and the town has really just rallied around us. It’s been absolutely amazing.”
The store is located at 321 Delta Ave. above Bluestown Music in Clarksdale, but does not have regular hours.
“I kind of work as I’m inspired or job-by-job. We do some repair work still, but we kind of leave that to Bluestown. The fellow who has Bluestown Music downstairs is kind of the local luthier and so we’re not trying to take away too much of his business, but we work together. Ronnie’s a legend. Ronnie Drew is an absolute legend in the Delta,” says Robertson. “We were able to keep his store alive and also move upstairs to do what we need to do more or less and then we have a great working relationship with him so we can showcase guitars and kind of use him as our retail space downstairs.”
The store has a following on social media at Delta Avenue Guitars on Facebook and Instagram.
“I’m really grateful for people like Bubba O’Keefe, who is the local Director of Board of Tourism and was instrumental in bringing us here, getting us set up, just basically taking this under his wing and introducing us to all the other business owners, shop owners and bankers. He went out of his way to help get us established whether it was the barbershop or the guitar shop. It’s just been a blessing having people like Bubba and a handful of others here in town that have just really stepped up to be part of the community and welcoming and promoting us. It’s really been great,” says Robertson.