From one Cigar Box Guitar Festival in the spring of 2004, to a full-blown passion for creating these amazing instruments. This is, Papa’s Boxes. I could bore you with small details for this “About Us” section, but I won’t…so here is the condensed version: Missing my index finger of my left hand from a wood working accident in 1991. Taught myself how to play chords on a three stringed instrument, because anything more seemed impossible. In 2004, my wife & I, and our then 8-month-old twin boys, braved the rainy cold weather and attended the first ever Cigar Box Guitar Festival in Northern Kentucky. I was amazed at the look and sound of a guitar handcrafted with a cigar box. Said, “I can build those things”. So, being a woodworker by trade, and occasionally enjoying a cigar or two, I started to build and I haven’t stopped. My obsession was born. A ton of trial and error has occurred, and although some of my first instruments really don’t have a classification such as banjo, mandolin, etc. I have slowly begun to master a specific instrument. Starting with the Soprano Ukulele. In 2006, a Papa’s Boxes Ukulele was inducted into the National Cigar Box Guitar Museum, and in 2007, I attended the NYC Ukulele Festival for the first time, as a vendor, with only a design for a soprano ukulele, and a “build it yourself” soprano ukulele kit. Today, I not only have soprano ukuleles, I have concerts, tenors, and baritone ukuleles, as well as a prototype for a 5-stringed cigar box banjo set to be released in Spring 2008, and a 4-string banjo prototype in the works. Although, I mainly focus the instrument around a cigar box, I have built a custom bass guitar using a wooden wine case box, for an Internet pod cast called “The SoupyGato Show”. Papa’s Boxes also has the honor of having four concert ukuleles appear in the off Broadway musical in NYC called, “Sex, Drugs and Ukuleles”. Papa’s Boxes is a small family business, with my wife Amy on the business end, and myself, designing and building. We are amazed at how much growth and exposure Papa’s Boxes has received, thus far, with very little advertising, and we are anticipating even more in the future. We have busy twin boys, and life to live, but we dream of getting back to a simpler life, where people have slowed down and are ultimately driven by their passions and dreams. The History of cigar box guitars represents that time. Hopefully, we will make a little bit of that dream come true for anyone who owns a Papa’s Boxes cigar box instrument or kit. Happy Building, Bill Moore “Cigar Box Papa”