Alan Gross is best-known for his long association with Mississippi bluesman Terry “Harmonica” Bean. For a decade starting in 2002, he regularly gigged with Terry “Harmonica” Bean. Working with ‘Harmonica’ Bean resulted in gigs with Frank Vick (drummer for Willie Foster, Little Milton, Albert King, and Howlin’ Wolf), Lightnin’ Malcolm, Eric Deaton, Kenny Kimbrough, Calvin Jackson (father of Cedric Burnside) and R. L. Boyce (a mainstay of Otha Turner’s Rising Star Fife and Drum Band). His guitar influences include Muddy Waters, Duke Robillard, Jimmie Vaughan, and Warren Haynes.
Alan recently became interested in incorporating the cigar box guitar into his music and began building CBGs (www.grosscasters.com). Some of the woods (oak, cherry, walnut) used for necks and bridges on his CBGs comes from Carroll County Mississippi.
The logs were rough cut into boards at a local sawmill in Montgomery County, Mississippi and air dried for over 10-years in Oxford, MS. He also uses hard maple, cherry, and walnut obtained from a small mill in Minnesota. Each CBG neck and bridge is hand crafted.