Stray Chords of Salisbury; How Jolyon Dixon was Reunited with Childhood Guitar

Turned around in just a day, a team of guitar “heir hunters” from Macclesfield called The Stray Chord have reunited Salisbury’s musician Jolyon Dixon with his childhood guitar, with a truly fascinating story…..

Jordan, Sarah, and Damian are a family team behind Stray Chord, who’ve spent years rescuing lost guitars from auctions, marketplace listings, trades and house clearances, in order to restore and rehome them. This has developed into a project reuniting the guitars with their original owners, and discovering the histories behind them.

They hope to create a music hub built around this unique idea, creating a space for people to connect through music and creativity. “Once we’ve raised enough, we would love to open a community-minded space with rehearsal rooms, a workshop, and a coffee and comics area,” Sarah explained. Sarah does aesthetic restoration, her husband Jordan handles technical restoration, and their son Damian runs their social media and is the “Mini Moshers” ambassador.

“We only started up six weeks ago, so it’s early days! In that time though, we’ve rehomed over twenty restored stray guitars, and we’re on our second Mini Moshers Promise giveaway, which is where we restore and set up a guitar and equipment bundle that we give to a child that may not otherwise be able to start their musical journey.”

On Thursday the team posted a picture on their Facebook page, of a rescued 1979 Hondo II HDLP-2WI custom-style guitar, dressed in a wine red finish, hereafter called Merlot! “While dismantling Merlot for his rehabilitation,” they revealed, “we discovered a little address label. Then another. Then another. Then a fourth. A label in every cavity!”

With a redundant Salisbury telephone number, their hunt began with just a name, and they requested for information, purely for the love of discovering the story behind the instrument. The following day they received a message from Jolyon, who recognised the guitar. His parents bought him the guitar second-hand in Salisbury in 1985, when he was 11. It was his second guitar, but loved and cherished it, and used it with his first band with school friends. He passed the guitar onto his bandmate, Jamie.

“It has been a really fun few weeks so far,” Sarah said, “and very rewarding. We’re looking forward to seeing what we can do in the next six months, but being able to find Jolyon, and the history of an almost 50 year old guitar has genuinely been a real highlight.”

Jolyon is the most modest local music legend I’ve met. You might have seen him backing singer Rachel Sinnetta, as part of the Illingworth duo with John Smith, at the control tower of CrownFest and other Stone Circle festivals, and he produces for the likes of George Wilding. He sent them a photograph of himself, his bandmates, and the same guitar sitting dismantled on the Stray Chord’s workbench. “At this point,” they expressed, “we were already emotional because we’re hugely sentimental people. It’s a large part of why The Stray Chord exists in the first place.”

Jolyon relayed his story to the team, from this school band to his professional career, in which he played in numerous bands and recordings, including The Who’s Endless Wire album. He told us he was quite emotional about the discovery, and explained how Jamie put the address labels in when he passed it to him. “Jamie has had a great music career,” he told us, “partly out in Australia, and is a brilliant guitarist.”

The other guitarist in the photo is John Wakefield, of whom Jolyon is still in touch with, and still owns his guitar! “John and I stayed band mates all the way through secondary school,” Jolyon told us, “and on through playing with Toyah Willcox, and then as backing for girl duo Scarlet in 1995, so we did get to do Top of the Pops together a few times, which was great!”

The story caused the Stray Chord to consider their Mini Moshers project, “because this photograph could almost have been taken to explain why we started it. Someone put a second-hand guitar into the hands of an 11-year-old. That kid formed a band. He kept playing, and more than four decades later, he’s still making music professionally and touring the world. We’re not suggesting that every Mini Mosher we give a guitar to is going to end up playing with The Who, that’s not the point! But, maybe they’ll become a professional musician, maybe they’ll form a clumsy teenage garage band with their best friends.”

Jolyon was “flabbergasted” to see his old guitar, and told the Stray Chord he often thought of the guitar and where it might have gone. Though he plans a trip up to Macclesfield to visit it, and the Stray Chord gang, he feels, “it’d be best for someone new to take the guitar into its next chapter; I’ve got too many now!!”

“I’m really happy to see that the guitar is still alive and well,” Jolyon stated, “and I hope the next owner enjoys it as much as 11 year old me did!”

As for the Stray Chord’s Mini Moshers, the promise is “if there’s a young person in your life who dreams about playing guitar, please go and nominate them. We rescue guitars because we’re sentimental. We restore them because we think their stories are worth continuing. We rehome them because somewhere out there is another pair of hands ready to write their next chapter.”

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