The 1970s were cool; with lots of bluegrass festivals and lots of clubs hiring bluegrass bands. I was hooked on the music and wanted to play full time. When I was 23, a band out of Montgomery, Ala., "The Lower Forty Grass," hired me to play guitar; this was my first full-time gig. A few months later, I met some boys down in Pensacola, Fla., the "White Sands Panhandle Band," who asked me to join their band, so I moved to the Florida panhandle. I was in heaven - 23, living near the beach, and playing bluegrass for a living.

After about three years of fun in the sun I moved back to Alabama to work for the family business and continued playing bluegrass on the weekends. It was around that time I started doing guitar repair for a local music store and built my first mandolin, a Stew Mac A model, which I played on a local television show, "The Country Boy Eddie Show," for the next five years. It was during that time that I built my first F5 from a Stew Mac kit.

In the mid '80s, when Ricky Skaggs and Vince Gill crossed over to country music, I started playing country music with a Telecaster I made. This was my main instrument for the next seven years with a top-notch new country band from Birmingham, the "New River Band." It was during that time I played a season at Dollywood. In the early 90's I performed as a single act.