Born and raised in northern Berkshire County, Nicholas “Nick" Lenski is the man behind Brier Road Guitars, where he’s been making acoustic steel string guitars, mandolins and ukuleles by hand for the past four years. In his North Adams studio, where he shares space with fellow luthier and repairer Stephen Sauvé, he now offers guitar-making workshops through Berkshire Stringed Instruments School of Lutherie. Start with a pile of wood, and, with the help of Nick’s side-by-side instruction, leave with your very own axe to grind. I’ve always enjoyed creating things, whether it was writing, painting, or doing little projects with my sister growing up. My whole family is pretty musical, but I didn’t start playing instruments until I was in my late 20s. When I got married and started having children, I began looking for something more stable. I tried going back to college, but I was bored there. My wife saw an ad for a guitar-making class held in Williamsburg, Mass. and said “why don’t you do that?" So, I took the class, made a guitar — not the best thing I ever made, but I learned the basics — and I got hooked on it. My work became better and better and I started Brier Road four years ago.
I opened the School of Lutherie this year, and new classes begin about every two weeks. It’s limited to three people per class, so everyone can receive individual attention. In between class weeks, I make custom orders, and that way I’ve been able to make a career out of it. When it came time to name the company, I found that “Lenski" didn't quite roll off the tongue. So, coming from a close family that often has Sunday dinners together, I thought I’d let them vote on the name. It turns out that the area in Savoy where I grew up used to be the center of town, full of churches, schools and a major hotel/brothel. In the 1800s and early 1900s it was one of the main thoroughfares going from Albany to Boston and it was called the Brier Stage Road. After we dropped the “Stage" because it was too long, it was a unanimous decision.
I get most of my students through word of mouth, but I also go to farmers’ markets, and a lot of people signed up for a workshop when they saw us at our booth at FreshGrass this year. At the beginning of class, the students are handed a pile of wood and they have to hand-carve everything — we don’t use a kit or any power tools. On the last day of class they’re playing their instrument and get to take it home in a nice case. Some people are nervous at the beginning because they’re under the impression that they need to already have woodworking skills, but they’re there because they don’t know these things. Each day features a different set of little projects and there are multiple ways of performing each task. There hasn’t been anyone yet who has failed to accomplish it.
