In December, I went to Linden to wander through its cluster of small, characterful shops. That’s the charm of the place—you can drift from an art store to a bookshop, from a music store to an Argentinian bakery for coffee, all within a few leafy blocks. The suburb has a kind of quiet confidence about it: mature trees arching over the roads, older homes modernised but still retaining their appeal. It’s the sort of place that invites you to slow down a little.
Chris Williamson—still shredding with Dusty Roads, carrying the fire from his Benny B’Funk days.
It was in this setting that we stepped into Ronnie’s ALLBANG & STRUMIT, a music shop that has long been something of a landmark for Johannesburg musicians. Ronnie himself has been in the business for years—previously based near Darrenwood—and his move to Linden feels like a natural evolution, bringing his collection closer to the kind of foot traffic that appreciates it. The shop is independent, family-run, and filled with that particular mix of order and chaos that only proper music stores seem to achieve: guitars on the walls, amps tucked into corners, the faint sense that anything with strings or skins might be found if you look hard enough.
A shop of stories, in other words—and Ronnie is part of that story. As we chatted, he spoke about the instruments he sells, mostly catering to guitarists and drummers, from beginners finding their first footing to more seasoned players looking for something with history. Then he pointed it out: hanging on the wall, slightly worn and in need of some repair, a steel guitar that immediately drew the eye.
What makes this instrument remarkable is not just its appearance, but its age. Ronnie reckoned it dates to just after 1927, around the time the National String Instrument Corporation began producing its now-famous resonator guitars. To stand in front of it is to look back nearly a century, to a moment when the guitar itself was still fighting to be heard.
A louder idea
Before amplification, guitarists had a practical problem: they were too quiet. In the dance bands of the 1920s, brass and percussion dominated, and even the most energetic strumming could disappear into the mix. The National company—founded by John Dopyera and George Beauchamp—set out to solve that problem not with electricity, but with engineering. Their answer was the resonator guitar, an instrument that replaced the traditional wooden soundboard with spun metal cones designed to project sound with far greater volume.
The guitar at Ronnie’s likely belongs to that first wave of experimentation and invention, roughly between 1926 and 1931. These early models came in several forms. The most intricate were the tricone guitars, with three resonator cones producing a layered, almost orchestral tone—favoured by early masters like Sol Hoopii. Later came the Triolian models, initially wooden-bodied before evolving into steel, and then the Duolian, a more affordable single-cone instrument with a rawer, more direct sound that would go on to shape blues music.
All of them shared a certain visual and sonic identity: metal bodies, industrial elegance, and a voice that cut through the noise. If Ronnie’s estimate is right, the guitar on his wall is part of that lineage—a survivor from a brief but extraordinary period when craftsmanship and necessity collided.
On the cusp of electricity
By 1931, that same drive for volume led George Beauchamp to take the next step, developing the first electric pickup and attaching it to a lap steel guitar—the now legendary “frying pan.” It marked the beginning of a new era, one in which amplification would redefine not just the guitar, but popular music itself.
The instrument in Linden, however, belongs to the moment just before that shift. Its sound would have depended entirely on its construction and the touch of the player—metal, air, and technique combining to create something both fragile and powerful. It is, in a sense, a piece of pre-electric history still waiting to be heard again.
The players who shaped the sound
Of course, an instrument like this only truly comes alive in the hands of a musician. The early language of the steel guitar was shaped by pioneers such as Sol Ho?opi?i, whose fluid, vocal style defined the instrument’s possibilities, and later refined by players like Jerry Byrd, often called the master of the non-pedal steel guitar. As the instrument evolved, innovators such as Buddy Emmons expanded its range and complexity, while modern players like Robert Randolph brought it into new genres with energy and flair.
Closer to home, there is a quieter but equally compelling South African lineage. Coy Pereira helped popularise the lap steel sound during the mid-20th century, while Neil Flanz carried it onto international stages, working in Nashville and beyond. Contemporary musicians such as Tony Cox, Guy Buttery, and Richard Onraet continue to explore its textures—sometimes directly, sometimes by echoing its techniques in more modern forms. It’s a small, passionate community, and one suspects Ronnie knows many of its threads.
A counter-culture soundtrack
That sense of musical lineage isn’t confined to instruments—it lives in scenes, in bands, in moments. Johannesburg in the late 80s and early 90s had its own energy, and few bands captured it quite like Benny B’Funk and the Sons of Gadaffi’s Barmitzvah Band. Chaotic, irreverent, and musically sharp, they fused funk, punk, and ska into something that felt entirely their own.
They were fixtures of the alternative circuit, closely associated with the Free People’s Concerts at Wits and the bohemian pulse of Yeoville. Their name alone—tongue firmly in cheek—captured the mood of a country in flux, while tracks like Phoning Benny and One More Shot carried that restless, hybrid sound.
The lineup reads like a roll call of serious talent. Chris Williamson—the same Chris I watched playing recently at the Bush Pub in Lekkerwater Road, Sunnydale, Cape Town—was a versatile guitarist even then, moving easily between sharp ska rhythms and fluid funk lines. Alongside him were players like Dax Butler, bringing fire on alto sax, with brass muscle from Llewelyn Alberts and John Trafford. The rhythm section—Simon Faulkner on drums and Paul Rapley on bass—held it all together with a groove that allowed everything else to push outward.
It was a time when South African music was becoming more integrated, more experimental, more willing to absorb global influences and reshape them with a distinctly local edge.
Worn wood, living sound
That history came rushing back watching Chris play recently. They were performing at the bush pub in Sunnydale, and his guitar told its own story—worn along the edges, battered in places, unmistakably lived-in. Yet the sound he coaxed from it was extraordinary.
It’s a familiar paradox: the more an instrument is played, the more it seems to gather something—character, perhaps, or memory. The same could one day be true again of the steel guitar in Ronnie’s shop.
Waiting on the wall
And so it hangs there in Linden: a near-century-old instrument, built at the dawn of modern music, shaped by a need to be heard. It may need repair, certainly, but more than that it needs purpose. Instruments like this are not meant to remain static; they are made to resonate, to respond, to live in the hands of someone willing to understand them.
For now, it waits—quietly, patiently—for the right axeman or axewoman.
