Living legend Willie Bryant has been a part of the Monterey County music scene since the ’50s.

You won’t find a car in the garage of Willie Bryant’s South Salinas home. Half of the space is packed to the ceiling with antique furniture he plans to refurbish himself. The other half is a makeshift workshop dedicated to Bryant’s two main passions: repairing speakers and playing guitar.

The shelves are lined with a jumble of speaker parts, including copper coils, wires and speaker cones. Four guitar cases – one of which holds his 1966 Telecaster, colored mustard and black like Springsteen’s Fender Esquire – rest against the wall next to a framed speaker repairman certification from JBL Speakers service center. Bryant spent a good 15 years repairing speakers for clients from the Catalyst in Santa Cruz to the Salinas Sports Complex.

He stopped doing it professionally about 10 years ago, when the prices on hard-to-get parts skyrocketed, deeming it no longer worthwhile to repair old ones and still make a profit. He still salvages speakers as a hobby and occasionally fixes those of his friends.

But a lot of the parts he used to work with are now obsolete, like electromagnetic “voice coils.”

“You can’t buy a lot of this stuff anymore,” he says as he scans his inventory.

Talking shop about speakers always leads Bryant back to something he loves even more: playing country music. He points out one of his most prized possessions, second only to the Telecaster: his 2013 Living Legend Award for being a part of the “History of Country Music in Monterey County.”

The honor is well-deserved. Since he was a teen in the mid-’50s, Bryant has played in nearly a dozen bands including the SOBs (Sons of Bakersfield), Strictly Country and The Country Gentlemen.

He was about 14 years old when it all began. A couple older guys asked him to play lead guitar in their recently-formed rock band, Lonnie Colson and The Pacers. Bryant barely knew his way around the fretboard but faked it well, playing guitar at record hops (DJ-hosted events with record-spinning between live band performances) throughout Salinas, Monterey and Watsonville.

Soon after his time as a Pacer, Bryant left Salinas High and joined the Marine Corps. The military yielded more opportunities to practice finger-picking.

“I started doing country,” Bryant says. “While on duty, I’d have orders from the colonel to play parties: ‘You got that little guitar player over there? Send him over right now.’”

After four years of service, Bryant found work performing nearly every night with The Country Gentlemen. From sporadic gigs at Trampy’s Club in San Jose to cushy, nightly shows at the Corral Club in Seaside, the outfit delivered Hank Williams Sr. and Buck Owens covers and pre-honky tonk originals, direct descendants of the Bakersfield sound genre.

“It was like having a regular job. And it was like that for 12 years,” Bryant says. “Back in the ’60s and ’70s, there were plenty clubs around here to play in six or seven nights a week.”

But by the late ’70s, many local clubs began to shut their doors and consistent work fizzled out. Like Robert Duvall in Tender Mercies, Bryant abandoned music for “regular work” driving a truck. He had three boys and a girl – ages four to 17 years old – and his wife, Joyce, to support.

Now, deep crevices line Bryant’s face like a tree trunk’s age rings: Each represents another year filled with experiences. At 71 and retired for about 10 years now, Bryant is thrilled to be back in the game performing with his longtime buddy, Larry Hosford, also from Salinas and experiencing his own musical resurgence. Hosford can’t imagine anyone else playing lead guitar in his backing band.

“[Bryant’s] my favorite honky-tonk California guitar player, and his [playing] sounds a lot like Merle Haggard,” Hosford says. “Willie’s also the nicest guy you’ll ever meet.”

Hosford is just a few months younger than Bryant. The two lived across the street from each other as kids, but they only started playing music together a few years ago.

Recently, Bryant and Hosford performed at the Golden State Theatre, Don Quixote’s in the Santa Cruz Mountains and one of the pair’s favorite all-time shows, the super-hipster Nacarubi Festival in the backwoods of Big Sur.

“That was like a mini-Woodstock,” Bryant says. “They treated us real good. We felt like superstars. All those kids was young, and they enjoyed us.”

Bryant says he’s ready to play anywhere and at any time. It’s not about the money or the exposure or even the excitement of being up on stage, he says: “It’s all about camaraderie.”

Hear WILLIE BRYANT on the Larry Hosford Band’s Momentarily Yours here: 4thstreetrecords.bandcamp.com/album/momentarily-yours-neo-retro-country. They play at 6pm June 13 at Georgie’s Restaurant, 24377 Grant St., Chualar. 679-2920.