Doug Irwin

Doug Irwin

Doug Irwin is a luthier who designed and built five historically iconic custom guitars for Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead. The five guitars include Eagle, Wolf, Wolf Jr., Tiger and Rosebud. Although Doug has designed and built many other guitars, these five and the music created with them have has left an immeasurable, long lasting impression on the fans of the Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia. On this site we hope to share as much historical data and imagery of Doug’s work and the influence that it has had on music history as we can. If you have photographs and stories that you would like to share with us we invite you to contact us and share them!

Some of the other rare, custom hand made guitars include the Dollar Sign Guitar custom built in 1974 by Doug Irwin for Bob O’Conner, lead guitarist for the 27 Dollar Snap on Face, a 1970s West coast Rock band. A bass guitar made for Phil Lesh of the Grateful Dead in the 1970s and many others that we will be featuring on this site as soon as we can get some decent photographs. Much of the history and photos of these historic one of a kind guitars was lost if a fire a The Art Farm.