Making Music: Mandolin Players Nationwide Depend On Church Hill Man (October 2011)
CHURCH HILL — The smell of fresh sawdust filled Audey Ratliff’s workshop in Church Hill as he sat among a collection of planing and fretting tools, clamps and other implements of his trade. Ratliff is a luthier, perhaps better known as a mandolin maker. Self-taught, he worked thoughtfully on his latest project, a mandolin designed for a musician in Switzerland, as he discussed how he became one of Tennessee’s foremost full-time luthiers. “My dad Tom’s hobby was playing the dobro,” he said. “So, I grew up around music and learned to play the guitar when I was about 15 years old.” With bluegrass in his blood, Audey said he also took an interest in mandolin playing, but as a left-handed musician he had a difficult start. “If you’ve ever looked at a mandolin, it’s definitely a right-handed instrument,” he said, breaking from work to pull a pouch of cigarette tobac...