Chris Fayland had spent years picking up skills the old fashioned way — soldering, woodworking, tinkering. Then Covid happened. One day he was looking at a guitar his wife bought him and thought: I can build that.
He built a thinline T-Style in swamp ash and curly maple entirely by hand in his Fairhope, Alabama house. When it was done, something clicked. There might be something more here.
By April 2021, Chris and his wife launched an Instagram account for Fayland Guitars. They already had several guitars built. One day Amy let Chris know a DM arrived from Zach Rishel of The Red Clay Strays, a Mobile-based band mostly unknown outside the region. He’d found them and wanted to talk.
A few weeks later Chris brought one of his guitars to OWA in Foley to catch their show. Zach played it during the set. Then Drew Nix, the band’s other guitarist, picked it up and played it too. Nobody asked him to. He just did.
After the show, they decided to sponsor Zach. But after Drew picked up the guitar unprompted and played it that night, Amy saw the opportunity to sponsor both at the same time. They went for it.
What nobody knew until now: building two custom guitars from scratch with premium pickups and tooling required a loan. It took a year to pay back. Two people in Fairhope were betting everything on a band most people had never heard of. That’s belief.
Zach’s red T-Style had three pickups with custom controls he designed himself to activate the middle one. On the pickguard, Chris hand-inlayed a firebird — Zach’s symbol, placed there before anyone outside Alabama knew his name. Drew’s korina tobacco-burst T-Style still gets played at every Red Clay Strays show and is one of our most popular custom order guitars now. Both were built entirely in-house: necks, bodies, paint. Only the hardware and raw wood came from elsewhere. That became the Fayland standard.
Chris and Amy became more than just guitar makers to the band. After stretches on the road, the entire band would bring their instruments in for maintenance and setup. They’d also work on gear for band members’ families. They helped with the band’s website. They showed up at shows when there was few else backstage. Two people in Fairhope who believed The Red Clay Strays were going somewhere.
Then the world paid attention.
The Red Clay Strays went from a regional act to Jimmy Kimmel Live, the CMAs, Coachella, and Tiny Desk and much more. On every stage — Zach’s red T-Style at Kimmel, the blue S-Style later at Coachella and the CMAs — it was a Fayland guitar. Built by hand in a two-person family run shop in Fairhope.
By 2023, Chris decided off-the-shelf pickups weren’t good enough. He built his own proprietary winding machine from scratch. Fayland handwound pickups became part of every build going forward.
That year, Zach came back. He wanted another Fayland. An S-Style this time. He sent Chris a color swatch and asked him to match it. Chris mixed the nitro by hand — a custom blue that exists nowhere else. Zach requested a T-Style bridge pickup in the S-Style body, blending both platforms for his tone. It was the first of the Strays’ three guitars to feature Fayland’s handwound pickups. This wasn’t a transaction. It was a partnership that had earned itself.
The blue S-Style is Zach’s main guitar now. You see it at the CMAs, at Coachella, everywhere. The red T-Style with the firebird inlay remains his backup. Some guitars are too important to retire.
Last year a customer reached out wanting an exact clone of that original red T-Style. The three-pickup configuration. The custom controls. The hand-inlayed firebird. This replica will ship soon and made this story come full circle which inspired us to tell it.
Today Fayland Guitars is still just Chris and Amy in Fairhope. Everything gets built in-house from necks and bodies to paint and pickups. The only things they don’t make are the metal hardware and raw lumber. Every guitar receives the same care whether it’s heading to someone’s living room or out on a national tour. They’ve shipped guitars all across the United States and the waitlist for custom builds currently runs through the end of 2026.
Two people. One shop. Fairhope, Alabama. Your guitar is waiting.