Local guitar builders using wood salvaged from burned out Trout's getting national attention

Aug. 19—It's not surprising that a national specialty publication like Vintage Guitar magazine would be attracted by a legendary guitar town like Bakersfield, and a local story about Bakersfield's own Theresa Spanke and her partner in love and guitars, Tony Brown.

The local founders and operators of T & T Customs, guitar makers who specialize in using salvaged wood from historic locations to build custom-made instruments, were thrilled to see their story in the September issue of the magazine dedicated to all things guitar.

Of course, getting the story of your labor of love into a national magazine might brighten just about anyone's day.

"It's exciting," said Brown, who was born in Sherman, Texas, the birthplace of Buck Owens, and spent a career as a firefighter in nearby Plano, Texas.

"I'm not from Bakersfield," Brown said. "I got here as fast as I could."

He and Spanke believe that buildings like Trout's, which served up a vast array of music and experiences for decades at its location on North Chester Avenue in Oildale — before it closed in 2018 — carry the music and the stories of those golden days of country music.

"I have such a respect for Trout's and the people who went there and the artists who performed there," Spanke said.

She should know. Spanke was one of those artists, a singer who, as much as anyone, filled those walls with music over a span of two decades.

"Red Simpson, Jelly Sanders, Oscar Whittington, Bonnie Owens, Roy Nichols, Bill Woods, Mark Yeary, Don Markham, Billy Mize ... these are all people that I have performed with on that stage," she remembered.

And when the rare chance came to form guitars from the remnants of that Oildale honky-tonk cathedral, Spanke's reaction was rock-solid certainty.

"It had to be done," she said. "It had to be done."

The wood from those walls is being repurposed, transformed, born again into a new life, she said.

Brown, the luthier, does the woodwork, the cutting, routing, sanding and much more. Spanke designed the Trout's fish logo, made from abalone shell, to fit the guitar necks, along with other graphics on the guitars.

"You have to know the wood," Brown said of building guitars from scratch. "Every piece of wood has a voice. You can fine-tune that voice if you know how."

The magazine quoted Brown as he told the story of how he was able to obtain the wood from Trout's burnt-out shell following the fire that destroyed the building in April of last year.

"We were lucky," Brown told Vintage Guitar. "We almost waited too long. Several weeks after the fire we spoke with our friend, David Simpson, who is the son of Red Simpson, and his wife, Dawna, about building a guitar if there was any usable wood."

Simpson came though big time, securing enough of the redwood planks to build, not just one guitar, but 14 guitars.

"The following day, the remaining debris was removed, leaving only the concrete slab," Brown told Vintage Guitar.

"I get goosebumps talking about this," Spanke said of the once-in-a-lifetime project. "Because what I can't articulate is the joy and the love and the feeling inside my heart and soul.