The Maple Man of Backbone Ridge

Mike Hill knows his maple, just ask the folks who make Gibson Guitars

Mike Hill is a wiry mountain man, 5-foot-5 and 135 pounds soaking wet, with a Virginia drawl as pronounced as the landscape he calls home. To make a living among these peaks and hollows during his 49 years, Hill has been a coal miner, a carpenter, and a handyman.

His current profession, going on 12 years, has been hunter of the elusive curly maple tree for wood Gibson Guitar Corp. uses for its premium guitars played by country stars such as Vince Gill, Charlie Daniels, and Kix Brooks of Brooks & Dunn.

Hill is one of the company’s top suppliers, having searched out “curly” in more than half a dozen states. To say he came to this profession in a curious way would be an understatement. Even he, the maple man of Backbone Ridge, has to convince himself the events of 1991 unfolded the way they did.

“Let’s just say times were hard,’’ Hill begins. He was unemployed. Geri, his wife, was recuperating from back surgery, which later forced her from a nursing career. There were bills to pay, food to put on the table.

Despite these necessary distractions, Hill pondered curly maple: the beauty of its rippled grain, the vibrancy of its colors, the way the wood surface flickered when it was moved in the light.

“I don’t know why, I was just thinking about curly, thinking how good it would look on the top of a guitar,’’ he says.

Hill comes from a long line of musical mountaineers, who also made a living with their hands, farming and mining, he explains. But some did make a go of it as professional musicians. A group of his mother’s uncles formed the Barton Brothers, who wrote several hits, including Old Richmond Prison, which later was recorded by Ralph Stanley.

Hill’s personal musical training began with a Sears Silvertone flattop guitar given to him by his mother. Except for a short time when the family moved to Louisville, Ky., Hill has never taken formal music lessons.

“It’s been all trial and error for me. I’d plunk and pick until I found the sound I was looking for,’’ he says. Today, he plays “just about anything with strings.”

A dozen years ago, unemployed with limited opportunities, he had taken up crafting instruments—fiddles and guitars—in his workshop to pass the time.

Now here’s the part where some people with lesser faith might view his story with raised eyebrows, Hill says.

“I was upstairs and it came to me like, like a calling from the Master: You need to call Gibson Guitar.”

So that’s what he did. Hill grabbed an old Nashville, Tenn., phone book, brought with them after an unsuccessful four-month try at fame in Music City, and turned to the “Gs.”

“I remember just like it was yesterday. I say, ‘I’d like to speak to the purchasing manager in the wood shop.’ Now where that came from in my brain I don’t know because I had no idea what I was going to say when someone answered,’’ Hill recalls.

His call was transferred. A woman answered. “I asked her if they were interested in buying any hard rock curly.”

The woman put the phone down and asked her boss the same question. In a moment, Hill was talking curly with an excited wood buyer, who was very interested in what the Virginian had to offer. The Gibson man wanted a sample, 8 inches-by-22 inches, planed smooth.

“That’s when I got kind of nervous, because, truth be told, I didn’t have a piece to send him,’’ he remembers with a laugh.

But Hill had an idea where to look.

“Me and my wife went way back on this mountain and saw a man who had some hard rock curly maple up in his barn where it had been for years. I bought it from him for $25,’’ the wood hunter says.

He sent the slab to Nashville and waited a few days. He got his answer soon enough. The curly was excellent; could he fill an order for 11 more?

He replied “yes,’’ but had no idea where he’d find trees to fill the order.

“I went back on this mountain for 35 miles to get one piece. How was I going to get 11 more?” he remembers asking himself.

The answer was found by driving his four-wheel-drive Blazer through the mountains of Dickenson County, talking to logging friends he knew and becoming acquainted with others. A few days into his search, a logger directed him to a pair of cut maple trees.

“Now not every maple has the curly grain,’’ Hill says. In fact, some scientists estimate this prized grain, which is actually a deformity, occurs in only about one-half of 1 percent of all maple trees. Each curly maple board is unique, with no two exactly alike.

When Hill removed a section of bark on these trees, however, it was one of those eureka moments. “The curly grain just jumped out at me. I was excited,’’ he recalls.

Hill was also broke.

But he had a deal to offer the logger: his four-wheel-drive truck for the two logs. A handshake sealed the transaction. Hill could supply his first order.

“Man, those logs were beautiful.”

Of course, that led to another Gibson order, and another, and another.

“I’ve been hunting curly ever since,’’ he says.

Geri initially questioned his new profession, especially when he bought a sawmill and planer that put them in debt, but she’s come around since then.

“I couldn’t have done it without her, that’s for sure, especially during those days when we were working with a $400-a-month payment and a prayer,’’ he says.

The pair has traveled Virginia and surrounding states on a curly quest, talking to landowners and loggers, stopping at wood yards to examine logs, putting out the word they pay good money for curly maple.

“People think I lead a charmed life, staying in the woods looking for curly maple, but it hasn’t made me a rich man, just a comfortable living for my family,’’ he says. In addition to he and Geri, his daughter and son-in-law, Christy and Steve Mullins, also work in the business.

But, he admits, the business does have its perks. He’s met many of the stars who use guitars made from the wood he supplies.

“What I really get out of the business is an opportunity to enjoy the beauty of the wood, to work with it and feel it, and know that it’s going to be used on an instrument that will make good music,’’ he says.

Recently, he learned that Vince Gill used a Gibson guitar made from Hill’s curly maple while performing on the Country Music Association awards telecast.

“I remember that piece of wood, kept it under my bed for six months because it just had a special feel to it,’’ Hill says.

“When I heard it was on the CMA show I was tickled to death. It made my day.”

Stephen Leon Alligood lives and writes in Tennessee.

Upload Your Own Stories, Photos and Videos

Every week, American Profile magazine brings you stories that celebrate the people and places that make America great. Now we want to hear your stories and see your photos, videos and even audio.

 Start Uploading Now!

 

Discuss this Article