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 tobacco from his shirt pocket.
    Rather than have his left-handed son learn to pick right-handed, Tom asked renowned Virginia musician and luthier Wayne Henderson to make Audey a mandolin he could play with ease.
    “He made me one that was left-handed,” Audey recalled. “When I saw the process, I took an interest in making mandolins myself,” he said as he sprinkled tobacco on a rolling paper.  Not long after he learned to play his custom mandolin, Audey bought a how-to book and began making instruments from the comfort of a spare bedroom.
    “I decided to try it, sold one, built another one, then pretty soon started to think, ‘Maybe I can just do it for a living,’” Audey said. 
    Thirty years later, he spends his weekdays in a converted gas station making mandolins for musicians all over the country.  Music is a big part of Ratliff’s life.  Even when he isn’t making instruments, he’s somewhere playing one or teaching others how.
    Having toured with music legend Ralph Stanley and performed at locations throughout the U.S. and in England, Audey is currently a member of the band Tennessee Skyline.  He has also been a full-time music teacher and still teaches two days a week.  From the comfort of his shop he instructs people with a passion for music on how to play the mandolin, guitar and banjo.
    “I’d say I’ve had 700 students in my lifetime,” he said. “And one of the most rewarding parts of teaching somebody how to play is when you watch them practice for so long and then, the light bulb clicks.  They can feel the music.  If you teach them what sounds right, they learn to like the way it sounds.  That’s where your musicians come from: those who can’t quit hitting the instrument because they like the way it sounds.”
    That simple satisfaction and love for playing the instrument has taken Audey’s creations to concert halls around the world, and you won’t hear him complaining about any of the work.
    “It has its ups and downs, but I don’t dread coming to work everyday,” he said taking a patient draw from the freshly rolled cigarette.  “The most satisfying part is when you put the strings on and hear the instrument play for the first time.  Then, somebody who bought it might call and tell you how much they enjoy it.  Especially after they’ve had it a couple years.  “You know,” he said with a pause, “... that’s rewarding.”

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