Sometimes in life, you need two guitars at the same time.

Outlaw Country legend Junior Brown realized this after a decade-plus of playing and touring with various country, honky-tonk, and western swing bands. He is both a virtuoso flat picker and lap steel guitar player. In the mid-80s, he decided to have his cake and eat it too by commissioning a personalized instrument—a double-necked guitar that combined a traditional six-string electric guitar and a full-sized lap steel guitar—that he dubbed the “guit-steel.” It has been his signature ever since.

Brown, often resplendent in a white cowboy hat and a loud suit, rests the guit-steel on a stand to play and will switch back and forth between the six-string and the steel as needed. Most Junior Brown songs focus primarily on the six-string while using the lap steel as an accent or a counterpoint. He doesn’t incorporate both on every song, but the lap steel is available just in case. Brown’s style, which ranges from traditional country western to rockabilly to surf to blues, crosses many genres and sounds, and some of them require the limited but essential sound of a lap steel. Brown invented the guit-steel simply for the convenience of having both sounds available to him at any time.

While he has never been a household name or a chart-topper, Junior Brown has long been a highly respected guitarist by his peers and music critics. His wry delivery and tongue-in-cheek lyrics are too offbeat for mainstream pop country, nor are they the sort of fare that appeals to a pop audience. His singular guitar and his unique approach to his chosen genres mean that he sounds like no one else. He stands alone behind his hybrid guitar as a true original and one of the greatest guitar players you’ve never heard of.

PHOTO: By Ron Baker – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link