Just a cool guitar and me waxing poetic or something
I’m trying something different this time. Instead of just spewing facts, I’m gonna get a little personal this week. Sorry if you came looking for knowledge.
I’ve been working on guitars for like… forever. I don’t know why, but today as I was working on this ’90s Gibson Chet Atkins reissue, I was just thinking that it’s actually kind of funny that luthiery is such a big part of my life now, since I really just stumbled into it. All I ever really wanted was to be the best guitar player ever, ha!
I remember when I was 16, I started taking lessons at AllStar music in Gilbert Arizona. I was waiting for my instructor to finish up with another student, and the dude behind the counter was restringing a guitar for someone. After he got it all tuned up, he played it for a while to make sure everything was alright. He was just sitting there going through some scales and a few songs that he knew, his big mop of curly hair hanging over everything. There was nothing at all remarkable about that moment, but I was certain that he’d figured out some secret trick to life that I was just beginning to understand. I knew that working there would be the coolest job ever, that I would figure out whatever it was that I had just gleaned, so when I heard that someone quit a couple weeks later, I jumped on it and applied.
Of course I was wrong. The job sucked, like every other retail job you get at 16. But it did afford me time to play guitar. A lot of time actually. Most days it was so painfully slow that I’d just practice all day long and shoot the shit with the teachers between students, getting bits of free instruction along the way. One of them was an incredible classically trained metal shredder that used to regularly beat the crap out of me at chess, but in exchange he’d show me theory stuff about modes and scales. Pretty fair trade I’d say.
Eventually the store went out of business. Big surprise. But by that time I was a full time student at university pursuing a degree in jazz studies. And that was my plan, except I didn’t get very far. I fell in love super young and had my awesome son, Ari. So plans changed. I quit bands, dropped out of school, got a semi-adult job that paid ok but didn’t really have an upward trajectory, got married, and started to settle in. But I kept playing guitar. Always played guitar.
After a while, it became apparent that I wasn’t going to be happy working where I was. I needed a fulfilling career doing something I cared about, and since the only thing outside of my family that mattered to me was playing guitar–and since the career opportunities for professional guitarists in Phoenix were pretty scarce–I enrolled at the Roberto-Venn School of Luthiery in Phoenix. I already knew how to do most guitar repairs by then, but building a guitar from scratch was something else entirely. I was entranced. And that’s when I decided that I could make a living doing this stuff.
And so I’ve been doing it ever since. Just about 15 years now.
I don’t know why I’m getting all nostalgic working on this guitar today. So much has changed since I started this journey. My son just turned 9, I got divorced, I played in some fun bands, and some terrible ones, hosted some shows, traveled to some cool places, met some amazing people. Maybe it’s just in the air. Or maybe this was the 5000th jack that I’ve replaced, I don’t know. But with everything that’s changed over the years, this has been my one consistent home, the place that no one can ever take me away from, the place I can always go when things get rough, and I guess it always will be. Thanks guys!
I lost my dang water bottle again, so I’m drinking out of an old jar of tomato sauce. Oh well. At least there aren’t any plasticizers leeching into my beverages.
