Cindy Hulej, left, and Rick Kelly in Carmine Street Guitars (Abramorama)

What a lovely, low-key delight Carmine Street Guitars is, a celebration of the store on, of course, Carmine Street in New York City and its mellow, quixotic owner and resident guitar maker Rick Kelly. The film consists of a week in the store wherein Kelly and his apprentice, Cindy Hulej, greet a phalanx of musicians and discuss guitars, New York history, and music, among other things as the musicians strum on Rick’s guitars.

All of Rick’s guitars are handmade from wood taken from New York buildings, either because the building has been demolished or the wood is too old. So essentially musicians are playing guitars made of 100- and 200-year-old wood. And there are lovely moments when first-class guitarists such as Charlie Sexton and Marc Ribot laugh with delight while playing one of Kelly’s guitars.

Kelly himself is a soft-spoken Luddite. There is not a computer in the place. His mother, who is in her early 90s, does the books with a roll tape adding machine. Kelly talks with Lenny Kaye (of the Patti Smith Group) about coming to Manhattan to see Jimi Hendrix when he was 16 and opening a shop a few years later. He has a wry outlook, but he comes to life explaining to, say, Kirk Douglas of the Roots what makes his guitars so resonant.

One lovely choice made by director Ron Mann (Comic Book Confidential) is to have the musicians come in, talk about music and craft, and then just sit and play. For guitar nerds, it’s a feast, as the likes of Nels Cline, Bill Frisell, and Jamie Hince come in to chat and play. We even get a full song from Eleanor Friedberger (formerly of Fiery Furnaces). There’s a lovely conversation where Lou Reed’s guitar tech Stewart Hurwood explains how Reed achieved his vaunted “drone” sound.

Mostly this film is about craft and the patience of practicing craft. The store is lit and shot by cinematographers Becky Parsons and John Tran to show off all the burnished wood and the dust motes hanging in the air and catching the sunlight. Kelly and Hulej (a formidable guitar maker in her own right), have a relaxed, mellow vibe about them. In fact, the whole film has the vibe of a relaxed sunny, summer afternoon. The lack of computers adds to the sense of stepping into a previous, less hectic time. In a way, Carmine Street Guitars is an exercise in nostalgia, the last vestiges of a time when things were slower and work was more measured and precise and people had, again, a craft as opposed to a job.

It’s a wonderful little film.