Fretboard Journal Blog

2008 Newport Guitar Festival in Miami Beach, Part 2

Administrator — Thu, 08 May 2008 16:04:28 +0000

Julius Borges, who started the Newport Guitar Festival and produced two of them before passing it along to Henry Lowenstein, was there with two guitars. One was a fancy style 45 and the other was this, a rather austere mahogany OM. The mahogany OM had the wonderful dry, crackling tone that I only expect to find in vintage guitars and I couldn’t stop playing it. Julius said that he got the mahogany from a lumber mill that was preparing to cut it up for doors. If that wasn’t bad enough, because the wood had some figure in it, the doors were slated to be paint grade. Yikes!

One of the country’s biggest guitar dealers goes to court…

Administrator — Fri, 02 May 2008 22:52:42 +0000

but can’t get inside. -JV

2008 Newport Guitar Festival in Miami Beach

Administrator — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 17:42:17 +0000

From April 11 to April 13, Jason and I attended the new Newport Guitar Festival in Miami Beach. We got meet plenty of readers and play a bunch of great guitars. My one complaint was that I was tied to our table much of the time so I didn’t get to check out as many of the guitars as I wanted to, but I did get to play enough to keep satisfied for the weekend. My full report is below the jump. Click on the photos to enlarge them.

The Fretboard Journal’s table was right across the aisle from Erich Solomon, so I spent a lot of time looking at his simple but elegant archtops. This experimental model had the rather grand name of Dr. Hezekiah Schmeckle’s Improved Six String Strum Box, which I also suspect is experimental. The guitar had a soundhole under the bridge and an oval top brace. Erich said he thought the top was a little thick, but I thought it sounded very nice. When he wasn’t looking I’d sneak it over to our table and play it.

I didn’t get a chance to plug in this guitar from Jonathan Plant, which would have won the festival’s Wildest Wood Contest, if there was one. I did play it unplugged, though, and it felt very nice. The model on the right is called the Buckeye Jazz and it was on the cover of the festival’s program.

The festival was fairly well-attended and there were quite a luthiers from all over the world exhibiting there. I think the award for Distance Traveled has to go to Joseph Bohmann, who apparently came back from the dead to show his wares. Actually, Henry Lowenstein, the festival’s director, owns Bohmann’s tools and a few of his guitars and was gracious enough to display them. It was fascinating to see how simple the tools were and the skill with which he used them. No CNC for that guy.

Speaking of Henry, that’s him on the left getting the hard sell from Bill Collings, who was there exhibiting a few of his archtop guitars. Actually, I think one of the guitars on Bill’s table belonged to Henry so maybe the sell wasn’t so hard after all.

And speaking of Bill Collings, we went out to dinner with him in South Beach where we were serenaded by a street musician who could have been Bill’s twin brother. So, who’s the evil one?

It wasn’t all guitars in Miami. John Monteleone showed up with a lovely Radio City mandolin along with a handful of guitars. Every time I had time to stop by the table someone was playing the guitars so I never had a chance play one myself. Oh well…

Cris Mirabella had a nice selection of his archtops on display. This model is called the Trap Door and had movable panels that you could use to cover the sound ports and one of the soundholes. I was surprised as how much you could change the sound of the guitar by opening and closing the various doors. With all of the doors closed the guitar had the sustain of a flattop while opening them brought out more of the archtops pop and punch. The only problem with the Trap Door is that I spent more time fiddling around with the doors instead of playing it.

The Cartoon Beatles Discuss Tax Policy

Administrator — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 17:34:44 +0000

In honor of Tax Day, at least that’s what we’re celebrating here in the US today, here’s a clip from the old Beatles cartoon where they discuss tax policy with Robin Hood. Well, they don’t discuss tax policy as much as run around in a poorly animated fashion while “Taxman” plays on the soundtrack. Oh, and does anyone else think the line about declaring the pennies on your eyes when you die is perhaps a bit morbid for a children’s cartoon?-MJS
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hYpAYWqiwo

Strictly for the Collings Guitars completists …

Administrator — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 16:39:06 +0000

At the Newport Guitar Festival in Miami Beach last weekend, Bill Collings regaled us with tales from his latest hobby–Spec Miata racing. Here’s the video proof. At around :09, your favorite guitar builder is seen passing the car with the built-in camera. At around :22, Collings makes a mistake and drives off into the dirt. Like we said, this one is only for completists … even Bill admits this isn’t the greatest spectator sport to watch. -JV

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQELtNWWJ8U

The First Ever Gathering of the Santa Cruz Guitar Company Tribe

Administrator — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 06:02:02 +0000

I wrote about Tom Walzem’s great surf band, The Neptunes, back in issue 5. Apparently his musical life extends beyond twangy reverb-laden tones and includes an appreciation of mellower acoustic sounds because he’s putting together the first ever gathering of Santa Cruz Guitar Company instrument owners at Noon on April 26th, 2008. (Rumor has it that Bob Brozman, who plays an SCGC Bob Brozman Baritone,will attend.) It’s going to be in Santa Cruz at Bocci’s Cellar and if you are planning to attend you need to RSVP to Tom. You can find Tom’s contact info, along with directions to Bocci’s, here. And this YouTube clip of the Neptunes doesn’t have anything to with the Santa Cruz gathering, but it does answer the question, “What would it have sounded like if Django Reinhardt had retired to Southern California instead of Samois?”-MJS http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptHbHj0QzSc

Update for Issue 9: Richard Thompson

Administrator — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 18:20:06 +0000

Here’s a great clip from 1984 of Richard Thompson, our Spring Issue cover boy, talking about his ‘55/57 Strat. Or, as the interviewer called it, a Frender Stratocaster. The clip was forwarded to us by Allen St. John, who wrote the Thompson story for us. St. John is the author of Clapton’s Guitar : Watching Wayne Henderson Build the Perfect Instrument a wonderful book about hanging out in the workshop of a master luthier and watching how he puts a guitar together.-MJS
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ka5irLvdorE

It’s Good To Have a Backup Plan

Administrator — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 16:12:03 +0000

Warren Buffet shows that if the whole billionaire investor thing doesn’t work out, he can always get a gig as a rhythm uke player in a western swing band. It’s important to have a good backup plan.-MJS
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3t_SrHgblE

Sign of the Times

Administrator — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 23:56:28 +0000

I pass by this sign almost every day and today I happened to have a camera with me. The building it’s on is in Palo Alto and it used to be a gallery that sold Jerry Garcia’s artwork. The gallery went out of business a few months ago and, as you can see, the space is being turned into a day spa/nail salon. As many of you know, Garcia was missing the middle finger on his right hand, hence his unusual handprint logo. So, I was wondering if he had gone into a nail salon, would he have to pay full price for manicure?-MJS

How to Start a Magazine

Administrator — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 00:10:19 +0000

Just about every time I meet one of our readers, I’m asked how Jason and I came up with the idea to start The Fretboard Journal. The short answer is that we wanted to produce a magazine devoted to the musicians that performed the music we loved and the luthiers that built the instruments they used to make that music. Since we were both players of limited ability and had both worked on guitars with varying degrees of success, we knew how hard it was to play music well and how tricky it was to fix an instrument, let alone build one from scratch. We wanted to produce something to pay tribute to the players and builders we admired and we were determined to create a magazine that reflected the care and effort that musicians and luthiers put into their work.

The long answer involves the fact that Jason plays the musical saw, but it takes a while to get there so please be patient. (The images in this post are from the pre-launch days and show some of the design ideas we ultimately rejected. For reasons that are now obscure to me, we called the process of choosing the cover and logo designs worm-farming.)

About ten years ago I was just starting to write articles for Fiddler Magazine and Acoustic Guitar. I was working at Gryphon Stringed Instruments in Palo Alto at the time and I wanted to share some of the knowledge I had picked up after years of buying, selling, coveting and accumulating fretted instruments. Being a novice writer, I decided to follow the hoary advice about writing about what you know. Consequently, my first article for Acoustic Guitar was titled, “The Top Ten Songs that People Who Work in Guitar Stores Never Want to Hear Again.” After publishing it, the magazine received lots of letters from outraged readers complaining about how I had maligned their favorite songs. While I was a bit upset by the outcry, I ultimately decided that negative attention was better than no attention at all and I eventually left Gryphon to become a full-time freelance writer.

At the same time, Jason was an editor at Pulse!, the in-store magazine produced by Tower Records. Like me, he was obsessed with music and instruments and along with writing about it, he played guitar, tenor guitar and musical saw at various venues around Sacramento. One of the contributors to Pulse! was Robert Armstrong, the cracked genius who created the underground comic character Mickey Rat and co-founded, with Robert Crumb and Al Dodge, the Cheap Suit Serenaders, one of the most entertaining acoustic string bands I’ve ever seen. Along with being a great cartoonist and illustrator Armstrong is an excellent musician who plays guitar, steel guitar, mandolin, ukulele and musical saw. Armstrong was doing illustrations for Jason at Pulse!, the subject of musical saw came up and before long Jason was taking lessons and learning all about vintage Mussehl & Westphal musical saws from Armstrong.

I knew Robert Armstrong through Gryphon. Armstrong was a long-time crony of the store and we struck up a friendship during his occasional visits. One day, Armstrong called me and said that Jason wanted him to review a book about Martin guitars. He didn’t feel that he knew enough about the subject and did I want to do it. I told him yes and a week or so later I had written my first article for Jason. Then he vanished.

A few months later Jason tuned up in Seattle as a music editor at a little dot-com called Amazon. Jason got back in touch saying he was looking for reviewers and over the next couple of years I wrote a couple of hundred CD reviews. During that time we discovered our taste in music was very similar and included things like The Conet Project, the collection of Numbers Station recordings that inspired Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, the recordings of the viol de gambist Jordi Savall, the guitar playing of Sister Rosetta Tharpe and ukulele music of all sorts. We also discovered that we shared an interest in good non-fiction writing, fine printing and well-produced books. Jason had studied the art of working a letterpress with Peter Koch while my mother had worked as a bookbinder and a dealer in antiquarian books. We also loved fretted instruments of all sorts.

During Jason’s tenure at Amazon, we would complain about our respective work lives. I would moan about the uncertainty of the freelancer’s lot and the solitude while he would kvetch about how he was being sucked into middle management and how there were too many other people in the office. In 2002 we decided to produce a chapbook devoted to the tiple, a 10-string cousin of the ukulele. The idea would be that I would research and write the article and Jason would print it on the letterpress that a friend was storing in his garage. I mentioned this project to a few friends and it turned out a few of them had stories about ukes they wanted us to print and before we knew it, the little eight-page project that we using to keep us from going insane in our working lives had grown into a 128-page magazine called the Ukulele Occasional. We had 2000 copies printed up and we figured we would give most of them away to our buddies, but to our surprise we wound up selling most of them. A few months later we put out a second issue, which also sold pretty well.

Then we started getting requests to do a magazine devoted to mandolin, guitar, banjo and steel guitar. We actually started putting together an issue of the Tenor Guitar Occasional before we realized that if we combined all the instruments into one issue, it would save us a lot of bother. After all, if we liked all of this stuff, then there must be folks out there that liked it all too. And so The Fretboard Journal was sort of born. Over the next few months Jason and I went on a magazine buying binge to see what was out there and what was selling. Jason discovered The Surfer’s Journal, a beautifully produced magazine devoted to, well, surfing. The SJ had long articles, loads of great photos and not very many ads. (Sound familiar?)

Jason and I spent more than a year researching the magazine business, doing cover mock-ups, brainstorming story ideas and talking, talking and talking some more about our plans for our magazine. One day my wife gave me an ultimatum, either Jason and I launch The Fretboard Journal or I shut up and stop talking about it. So we found Patrick Barber and Holly McGuire to help us design it and Marc Greilsamer to help us edit it and we jumped in with both feet.

Our goal was to produce a reader supported magazine, one that didn’t depend on advertisers to survive. We felt that would help us maintain our editorial independence and allow us to cover subjects that the other music magazines wouldn’t. We also thought this model would keep us more in touch with our readers, which, judging from the many long and thoughtful letters we receive, seems to have made the right decision.-MJS