“Music to me is a gift,” Gene Gilbert said. “It’s a gift from God, a gift God gave to my dad.”

Gilbert picked up guitar at 14, learning once a week from his dad for a few months until he could learn on his own. Now he uses the same methods by which he learned to teach others.

Lessons at the library begin on Saturday, March 23 and will run every following Saturday for nine weeks from 10 to 11:30 a.m.

The class was full on Wednesday, Feb. 28, one day after the informational went out, with a waiting list already filling up. The same nine students will participate each week, learning guitar basics like playing chords, transitioning between them and how to play notes clearly. Gilbert’s ultimate goal is to have each student able to play a simple song in front of the class in the final session, and to instill a sense of determination in them to keep learning.

“You get out exactly what you put in,” he said.

The library has put out a request for guitar donations, for which Gilbert has volunteered more of his time to refurbish and prepare the instruments for playing.

“We feel so fortunate to have Gene as a resource for our little community,” Library Director Sue Anne Walton said.

She added that the search for donated guitars is ongoing, as the library hopes and plans to offer more classes in the future.

“If it goes well and our classes are full, I would want to continue it,” Walton said.

The library is also looking for grants, specifically from the Adirondack Lakes Center for the Arts Statewide Community Regrants program, which would fund supplies like strings, guitar parts and lesson booklets.

The lessons are open to all age groups. At the Keeseville Free Library, Gilbert is currently teaching a class of eight, with ages ranging from around 10 years old to 80.

If players develop a real interest for and proficiency with the guitar, they have an obligation to share their gift and move the skill forward into the hands of others, Gilbert said.

He has played guitar for 60 years, starting with bands in 1964. The first band he joined was a group of high school seniors who heard him play and invited him in for a talent show. When the seniors graduated, he joined a band in Jay, with whom he played until the early 1980s.

He stopped playing for some time, until he was picked up by a band in Plattsburgh. He went on to play in several bands afterward, hanging it up in 2002. He didn’t have a single instrument in the house for a long time.

That is until he woke up one day with a bug to play again. He reached out to his sister for one of his dad’s old guitars and relearned the guitar in a different medium: solo performing. To Gilbert, the idea was terrifying, even after years of performing in bands. The difference, he explained, is that in a band, mistakes often go unnoticed. Performing solo, however, means that everyone notices.

“If you miss, that’s there and you own it,” he said.

Gilbert doesn’t perform anymore. The only time he plays publicly now is for a program like the Free Library’s or community benefits.

Au Sable Forks, he said, is a place like no other. The town has suffered tremendously over the years, from floods, hurricanes and earthquakes. But in the face of adversity, the small community has always come together to raise money for those in need and rebuild together.

“I have never felt so included, so welcome,” Walton, who moved to AuSable Forks from Jay four years ago, said. “I can’t explain it. I’ll never live anywhere else.”