At a point many people would be retired, Doug Naselroad is a busy man.

The Clark County resident spends much of his week in Hindman in rural Knott County. He’s the director of the new Troublesome Creek Stringed Instrument Company, which employs those in recovery to make high end guitars and mandolins. He’s an instructor at the Appalachian School of Luthiery, teaching others to make instruments.

He hosts a pair of radio shows on WMMT, The Knott Downtown Radio Hour and the Culture of Recovery.

He still plays music with The Troublesome Boys.

He built his own workshop in rural Clark County from pine board salvaged from ammunition packing crates from the Bluegrass Army Depot.

And he still makes a few instruments for himself.

Everything, he said, centered around music and lessons he learned from Winchester resident and luthier Homer Ledford.

Winchester Sun: How long have you played music?

Doug Naselroad: I’ve been playing music and making guitars about the same length of time. I started in 1969 when I made my first guitar for a pretty girl who was teaching me how to play and sing.

It didn’t work out like I’d hoped, but I did end up making more guitars and meeting more pretty girls. I married one, too.

WS: Do you still have your first guitar?

DN: No, but I have a picture of it somewhere. It was a pretty silly guitar. It was pieced together out of little bits of wood.

Homer Ledford told me his first instrument was .. a fiddle made out of match sticks.

When you’re a kid, you can’t afford proper materials like you’d get from a supply house. You just have to pull wire off the barn door and things like that.

I’ve seen instruments made out of everything in the world, and my first one was no exception.

WS: Have you been building since then?

DN: It’s what I keep coming back to. Jeannie and I started the Naselroad Guitars in Mount Sterling in 1979. I did the building and custom work there.

Into the 1980s, we started the Our Harps company, where we made harps from quarter-sawn cherry boards from Freeman Corporation.

We made the carefully constructed harps that would hang on a door. Whenever a door would open and close, the harp would play. We made 10,000 of them.

We haven’t made them in a long time, but we used to do that for a living.

Then I went to Collings Guitars in Austin, Texas. It’s a very prestigious position there because Collings makes some of the best guitars in the world.

I worked with them for several years, and I think that’s where I learned a lot of what I teach now. They were the Rolls Royce of acoustic guitars at the time.

We make guitars for celebrities. These guitars were, and still are, highly sought after. We made thousands of those. All told, I’ve made quite a few guitars.

Now I’m privileged to be the director of a start-up called the Troublesome Creek Stringed Instrument Company, which employs people who are in recovery from opioid addition and in recovery from unemployment.

Right now we have six people and we’re working to beat the band to be ready for the National Association of Music Merchandisers winter show in Anaheim, California, in January.

WS: What is your favorite kind of instrument to make?

DN: The guitar, the basic guitar. I like to make the art guitars but I also like to make the more traditional guitar that’s like a Martin or a Collings. My favorite is whichever one works the best or the one that really rings and sings. That’s the one I love.

WS: How did the school in Hindman come to begin?

DN: I was asked to come down and start it. I was invited by the executive director of the Appalachian Artisan Center.

When HP closed on the Bypass, I was working as a technical analyst for Hewlett Packard and they moved the plant, before it became General Dynamics, to Michigan.

As that job was phasing out, I started to get these requests from this fellow saying, “Come down here quick. We need a luthier.”

Well, I’ve been making instruments for a long time. My main career could be described as being a luthier, but luthiers don’t typically get phone calls saying, “Come on down. We need a luthier.”

That was intriguing to begin with, but then I went down and found this town has built the wonderful unused infrastructure and these buildings had a couple of different nice workshops.

They planned on putting a school in there but it never came to fruition. Now, that’s my factory. That’s the Troublesome Creek Stringed Instrument Company, thanks to the generous support of the Appalachian Regional Commission.

WS: This is a full-fledged manufacturing company. What do you make?

DN: Guitars and mandolins. High end guitars and mandolins. We’re striving to make the best in the country of course, but I’m already confident they’re pretty much the best that will come out of a factory in Appalachia.

I think it’s the first instrument factory in Appalachia. We’re making reproductions of the old Gibsons from the 1920s, mandolins and we’re making a guitar that is very distinctly Troublesome Creek. It’s still in process.

WS: How many instruments have you made?

DN: We’re just jigging up now. We started the payroll the first of June. We have 10 or so in the process. We hope to complete 50 instruments in our first year of operation with six employees.

In our second year of operation, we plan on tripling all that.

It’s a jobs creation initiative. The idea is by year three, four and five, we’ve got 15 employees who are all working cool jobs in the first factory Knott County has ever had.

Something that small is a first. You don’t think it’s all that significant. You bring a half-dozen guys into a shop and say, ‘Let’s go to work manufacturing,’ but for them and their track history, it’s really amazing. Here, this is the first ever.

Coal was in the driver’s seat for the longest time and everyone was content to leave it at that. That’s changed, and this is a little something we were able to bring to the table.

WS: How did you meet Homer Ledford?

DN: As a young man. I was just a kid. The way I originally met Homer was at a craft show. It was off some place. This guy was out siting along a river with dulcimers. He had a station wagon with the back opened up. I was looking at these instruments, and he had a guitar and a dulcimer he’d made. He said, ‘Hi there. Who are you? I’m Homer Ledford from Winchester, Kentucky.’ I said, ‘Wow. I’m from Mount Sterling.’ Typical of Homer, he looked at me and said, ‘Wow, that far.’ After that, we were friends. He was unusual at the time. He was one of those people who was a master craftsman but he was very outgoing and helpful. He showed me how to do so many things and he gave me so much encouragement. He helped me become a member of the Kentucky Guild. In general , he was a very supportive friend through life. I did what I could for him as we got older. The main thing I think I gained from Homer was this attitude of always being encouraging to someone who’s trying to emulate you. In other words, don’t be threatened or competitive by someone who comes to you and says, ‘I want to build a guitar just like that.’ Help them. That was Homer. He’d make something for you if you wanted. If you said you wanted to make something yourself, he’d show you how he made it. He had the heart of a teacher and a servant. So, teaching that forward has shaped my career. It’s made, in a small way, trying to emulate Homer’s model and attitude. It’s really made it made it possible to have the Appalachian School of Luthiery and the programs that are associated with it. I trace it all back to Homer. I miss him terribly. He was such a fun guy.

WS: You have the school. And the factory.

DN: In between was the Knott Downtown Radio Hour, which is a monthly songwriters program. There’s the Culture of Recovery program, which is how we bring people into our studio from the local recovery center and the Knott County Drug Court. Then, the Troublesome Creek String Instrument Company. I do everything but sleep.

WS: Sleep is overrated.

DN: Apparently. I just wake up now at 5 in the morning and I have to go.

WS: Is it still fun?

DN: It’s getting more fun. It’s like having little kids who are learning to ride a bicycle and you’re running along beside them. The training wheels are on but they’re still scared. You have all this fun showing them the ropes. They give it back to you when they experience this pride in accomplishing a task. When they get it nailed down and they understand they’re doing their job and it’s kind of excellent… there’s something about that that never gets old. When they become employees and they’re doing great, it’s good on a lot of levels. For one thing, they’re going to make a go of it and the company is going to make a go of it because they’re so bought in. It’s magical. Just the whole idea of it. You take a chunk of wood at the start. AT the other end, it turns into music. It’s this whole process of transformation. There’s a lot of work in there, but the payoff never gets old. It’s magical.