From a garage east of Fairhope: the hand-built guitars touring the country with the Red Clay Strays
A pandemic, a Gibson Les Paul on the wall, and an engineering degree: that is the origin story of Fayland Guitars, the boutique electric guitar workshop operating out of a family garage in a newer subdivision just east of Fairhope. Three years after Chris Fayland built his first instrument, he has constructed nearly 70 guitars by hand — and some of them have traveled the country strapped to the backs of one of Mobile’s fastest-rising bands.
Like many people in 2020, Fayland was looking for a way to fill downtime. A birthday gift from his wife, Amy — the Les Paul — seemed like the answer, and he learned a few chords and scales. But the construction fascinated him more than the playing. “It was hanging on the wall, and I just kept staring at it,” he recalls. “I finally decided, ‘I can build that.’ I have an engineering background, so I decided to build a guitar from scratch, and it went from there.”
He had woodworking experience and degrees in both electrical and computer engineering. Three years and some seventy instruments later, the workshop has not slowed down.
Three hundred steps, no shortcuts
Nearly every Fayland order is custom: customers choose the woods, the color, the frets, the pickups. Fayland counts roughly 300 separate steps in building a single electric guitar, and he refuses to rush any of them. “Not to talk trash about the bigger brands,” he says, “but at the end of the day, a company that’s bigger these days is cutting some kind of corner. It’s a quality-control thing, and right now they’re after quantity, not quality.”
Players who pick up a Fayland tend to notice the instruments sound unusually alive even unplugged. Part of the secret is the finish. Instead of the plastic-heavy paints common today, Fayland applies a very thin coat of nitrocellulose lacquer — the finish used in the earliest days of electric guitar construction in the 1950s and ’60s. “It doesn’t trap the sound in, so you can actually feel the notes in your hand,” he says.
The Red Clay Strays call
The shop’s breakthrough came by Instagram, out of the blue, from Zach Rishel, lead guitarist of the Red Clay Strays, the Mobile-based band then still a local act. Rishel wanted a Fayland guitar. Chris and Amy brought the first guitar Chris had built — modeled after a Fender Telecaster — to a show at OWA in Foley so Rishel could try it. The band’s other guitarist, Drew Nix, gave it a spin as well. Both were sold.
Chris built each of them a guitar to their own specifications and presented the instruments at a Live at Five show in Fairhope in 2022. “And they played them on their album and have traveled the country with them,” he says. Not long after, the Strays were set to open for the Rolling Stones in Boston and head out on their first European tour — with Fayland guitars on stage, and orders following from professionals and amateurs around the country, including a handful of Nashville players.
“It’s a blessing, for sure,” Chris says of the association. “It’s awesome to see them having so much success, and I’m not surprised by it by any means. I’m very thankful that they love our guitars as much as they do.”
From Hurricane Sally’s oaks to a one-of-a-kind six-string
One of the shop’s most distinctive instruments has a Mobile story. When Hurricane Sally came ashore four Septembers ago, it felled old oak trees in downtown Mobile’s Bienville Square, and the Mobile Arts Council saw that some of the wood reached artists and craftsmen. Fayland acquired a large piece, vaguely intending to build a coffee table. His wife had a better idea. The result is a one-of-a-kind electric guitar, both rustic and ornate, and heavier than a notoriously hefty Les Paul.
“It was quite a challenge because this is the hardest wood I’ve ever worked with,” he says. “It’s so old, heavy and dense that it was almost like drilling through metal. There were nails embedded in the wood from where they’d posted signs on the tree over the years.”
More than guitars
The business has branched well beyond six-strings: Fayland now winds his own pickups, builds amplifiers, and has bought high-end equipment to make templates for acoustic guitar construction. Repairs keep the bench busy too, ranging from minor tweaks to major overhauls — including the recent refurbishing of a 200-year-old violin.
Division of labor matters in a one-couple operation. Chris handles the precision, often solitary workshop work; Amy runs the business and promotional side and most customer communication. “I’ve built all the guitars,” he says, “but she’s sold them all.”
A native of New Orleans’ Algiers neighborhood, Fayland relocated to the Eastern Shore from Fort Collins, Colorado, drawn in part by childhood visits to his grandparents, Ray and Edens Shirley, at their bay house on County Road 1. He and Amy welcomed their first child, 10-month-old Lucille, after settling in. “I just love the area and love the people,” he says. “It’s a wonderful place to live and to do business.”