BLOOMINGDALE, Ga. — For more than 60 years, Randy Wood has worked with some of the most recognizable names in music, building and repairing instruments for artists including Elvis Presley, Eric Clapton, Keith Richards and Johnny Cash.
Today, the longtime craftsman still spends most of his days inside the music shop he built in Bloomingdale, where guitars, mandolins, banjos and other instruments fill the walls and a working woodshop operates behind the retail space.
Wood started working on musical instruments in 1965 in Milledgeville, Georgia. His career eventually took him to Muscle Shoals, Alabama, and Nashville, Tennessee, where he opened GTR Incorporated with two partners. That business later became Gruhn Guitars, now a nationally recognized vintage instrument store.
After years in Nashville, Wood returned to Georgia. He and his wife wanted to leave the growing, hectic pace of the city and move closer to his hometown of Brunswick…