Above: Jim Cara (l) with KISS co-founder and frontman Paul Stanley.
By Kevin Noonan
Photos courtesy Jim Cara
If there was a turning point in Jim Cara’s professional life, it came when he met Leo Fender, one of his heroes. Fender, who died in 1991 at the age of 81, was a pioneer in guitar design and innovation, and he belongs on the Mount Rushmore of guitar creators along with Les Paul, Orville Gibson and Paul Reed Smith.
Cara was a musician who also loved to tinker with electronics, which included making his own guitars. Cara ran into Fender one day and eagerly handed him a tape of some demos Cara made of a band he was promoting. And that’s when Fender gave him a piece of life-changing advice.
First, Fender bluntly told him to throw the tape away. Then he compared the guitar to a shovel that old-time prospectors used to dig for gold. Many dreamed of striking it rich, but few did. So, Fender told Cara to stick with making guitars, rather than playing them.
According to Cara, Fender’s exact words were “Make shovels for the other guys that want to dig for gold.”
Cara in front of his father’s music store in 1968.
That light-bulb moment changed Cara’s perspective, and that’s when his career as a shovel/guitar maker really began.
“That was the best advice I ever got,” Cara says. “After that, there was no turning back.”
Fast-forward a few decades and that advice looks even better today. Cara designs and builds guitars for some of the biggest stars in rock-and-roll music and has a special bond with members of the band KISS.
Cara has built custom guitars for Ace Frehley and bass guitars for Gene Simmons and was side stage when Simmons appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon the night before KISS’ 2014 induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
And he does it all from his shop, Cara’s Hot Rod Guitars, which for many years was part of the NEXTFAB building on North Tatnall Street in Wilmington until that location closed in 2023. Now Cara operates out of the NEXTFAB building on N. American Street in Philadelphia.
“I’ve been doing this for 45 years now,” says Cara, who estimates he’s made more than 1,000 custom guitars in his career. “It hasn’t always been an easy ride, but it’s always been a fun ride. I’m doing exactly what I was born to do — I was born to create stuff.”
It’s certainly not a surprise that Cara — a 63-year-old who grew up in the Little Italy section of Wilmington and went to Delcastle High — made music his career or, more to the point, made music his life. His father, Jimmy Cara, was a well-known local musician who played the trumpet with big band legends like Tommy Dorsey and Sammy Kaye and rhythm-and-blues legends like the O’Jays, the Commodores and the Spinners.
Jimmy Cara, who died in 2023 at the age of 86, also worked in a local music store in the 1970s and his son started hanging out there, and that’s when his real love of music, and the instruments that make music, started.
And Jim Cara Jr. went the extra mile to make his career possible. He didn’t want to make ordinary guitars — he wanted his to have flair and a distinct personality. He took inspiration from hot rods and their vivid colors and designs, but there was nobody who taught guitar-building like that. So, Cara did the next best thing: He enrolled in the Automotive Institute of Technology, where he learned how to paint and embellish hot rods, which he then transferred to the guitar-making business. He even earned college credits in Automotive Refinishing.
Cara and Lita Ford with Ace Frehley’s “smoking guitar.”
That kind of extra effort doesn’t surprise Nick Bucci, Cara’s close friend and fellow guitar geek.
Cara credits Bucci with helping him establish himself in the business. Bucci — who also performs locally with singer Kelly Vale, including Wednesday night gigs at V&M Bistro in Brandywine Hundred — is a 1973 graduate of Mount Pleasant High who has his own guitar shop in Claymont.
“I’ve known Jim since he was a teenager, and he hasn’t changed at all over the years,” Bucci says. “He’s still a go-getter. He never stops. And I think the real key to his success is the fact that he’s fearless. He’s never afraid to try new things, no matter how crazy they may seem on the surface. And he usually finds a way to make it work.”
Bucci says he and Cara are constantly bouncing ideas off each other, even though they don’t always agree with each other.
“I see things he may not see and he sees things that I may not see,” Bucci says. “We’re like two mad scientists who are always experimenting, but he’s definitely more daring when it comes to designing custom guitars. He’s really in a class by himself when it comes to that, and that’s why he’s in such demand by so many big stars.”
That demand began innocently enough, as Cara had another career-defining moment that led to a career-making client: Ace Frehley, the original lead guitarist of the band KISS.
Guitar World magazine ranked Frehley as the 14th greatest metal guitarist of all time and KISS is one of the most popular rock groups of all time. The various members of KISS have sold more than 100 million albums and earned 30 gold albums and 14 platinum albums. Plus, they’ve made a lot of money.
So, getting a chance to work with a superstar like Frehley was obviously a huge boost for Cara’s career, and a completely unexpected one. What convinced the former KISS star to hire Cara was the way he was able to recreate one of Frehley’s trademarks — a smoking guitar.
“I knew this guy who also happened to be friends with Ace Frehley,” Cara says. “He told me that Ace needed some more smoking guitars. Well, I’ve been playing smoking guitars since I was a teenager. So, this guy calls me and said Ace Frehley wants to play one of your smoking guitars, and I’m like, right, Ace Frehley wants me to make guitars for him.
The cover of Guitar Player magazine,
featuring acclaimed guitarist John 5
holding a Jim Cara creation.
“So, I basically blew this guy off for a while, but then he convinced me that was telling the truth. So I made a couple of replicas, sent them to him and figured that was the end of it.”
But it wasn’t; in fact, it was just the beginning. Cara got another call and was told Frehley wanted him to build an exact replica of his signature guitar, which had been lost. Better yet, he was told to go to Gibson headquarters in Nashville, Tenn., and present the guitar to Frehley personally.
Frehley was impressed with the job Cara did, and even more impressed with the pains he took to build the guitar. Cara got hold of the original blueprints and then took it a step further — he got in touch with the guy who built Frehley’s original guitar.
“I think Ace was surprised that I went to all that trouble,” Cara says. “And I’ve been working with him ever since.”
His dealings with Frehley opened the door to other
rock stars, and eventually Cara would build guitars and/or bass guitars for Frehley’s KISS bandmate, Gene Simmons, as well as Steve Miller, Lita Ford, Ron Wood of the Rolling Stones, Brad Gillis of Night Ranger and Robbie Krieger of The Doors.
He also customized a guitar for John 5, who has played with heavy hitters like David Lee Roth, Marilyn Manson, Rob Zombie and, most recently, Motley Crüe. John 5 appeared on the July 2024 cover of Guitar Player magazine holding one of Cara’s creations.
And what has been a very lucrative part of those relationships is Cara’s ability to make perfect copies of famous (or infamous) guitars by stars like Frehley and Simmons. It starts when somebody commissions Cara to make a replica of, say, Simmons’ bass. Not only will the customer get the guitar, he’ll get a chance to meet the performer who made the instrument iconic. And here’s the real topper — Simmons will actually play their instrument on stage, then present it to them.
Cara has made about 60 custom pieces for Simmons and said bass guitars that the former KISS frontman played in concert have sold on collector’s markets for $20,000 to $75,000.
Not bad for a shovel.
— You can view Cara’s work at the 1313 Monster Art and Film Show on Saturday, Oct. 12 at The Screening Room (1313 N. Market St., Wilm.). Doors open at 6pm. For details on the event, visit TheScreeningRoom.org.
