Paul Reed Smith

Paul Reed Smith is best known to the world as the founder of PRS Guitars, but he has also spent decades as a working musician, fronting his own band as guitarist and creative catalyst. Born in Bethesda, Maryland, in 1956, Smith developed a passion for guitar making during his teenage years and built his first guitar while in college. While his primary fame came from lutherie, his childhood in Rockville and Bowie, Maryland was shaped by his mother's acoustic guitar playing and folk singing and his father's love of Beethoven , planting the seeds for a lifelong dual identity as both craftsman and performer. Out of this background grew the Paul Reed Smith Band, a Maryland-rooted outfit blending funk, rock, R&B, and fusion influences drawn from the Chesapeake region's musical melting pot.

The band's sound coalesced around a rotating cast of accomplished players, with Smith on guitar alongside a rhythm section and vocalists who brought soul and groove to the material. The PRS Band was composed of the Grainger brothers, Greg and Gary, in the rhythm section, Michael Ault and Bill Nelson on guitars, vocalist Mia Samone and Paul Reed Smith on guitar, weaving together funk, rock, R&B, and fusion that Paul dubbed "Chesapeake Gumbo." The group released albums including a 2010 self-titled record and 2017's "Time to Testify," along with a 2011 release, building a discography that found niche but devoted audiences. Notably, the band's album found release in China as well as the US, getting considerable airplay on China Radio International's Beijing Music Radio program, embraced by legendary DJ Zhang Youdai and his fans. Over the years, the band's lineup expanded and its ambitions grew, eventually evolving into an eight-piece configuration known as Eightlock, built around three drummers and three guitarists. Alongside performing and recording with his own band, Paul Reed Smith has played with artists such as Santana, Alter Bridge and the Doobie Brothers , reflecting the deep connections he built through decades in the guitar world. He was honored by Vintage Guitar Magazine as a Hall of Fame inductee in 2011 , a recognition that spoke as much to his musicianship and industry stature as to his instrument-building legacy. The band earned a reputation for high-caliber musicianship, drawing in respected sidemen and collaborators from the broader DC, Baltimore, and touring session-player scenes.

Smith's band continues to evolve today under the Eightlock banner, releasing its debut album "Lions Roaring in Quicksand" on Steele Records , distributed to modern audiences even as Smith remains best known globally for the guitars that bear his name. The project stands as a living link between the golden era of Chesapeake-region groove bands and today's touring fusion acts, carried forward by musicians who have played with artists ranging from gospel and funk legends to major label stars. For fans who caught the Paul Reed Smith Band in the mid-2000s, it represented a rare chance to see a legendary instrument builder step out from behind the workbench and take the stage himself.

It is that mid-2000s era of the band that lives on in the Wayne Dennon archive. Wayne photographed the Paul Reed Smith Band across three shows between 2006 and 2007, capturing the group in two different cities across two states during a period when their groove-driven, guitar-forward sound was still finding its live footing. The 154 photographs preserved from those nights have gone on to become a quietly beloved corner of the collection, viewed more than 111,000 times by visitors drawn to this unusual pairing of guitar craftsmanship and stage presence. As with so much of Wayne's work, these images stand as a lasting record of a artist whose creative reach extended far beyond the instruments he built.