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.)
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March 20th, 2008
We know at least a few of you from Chicago read this board, so here’s a head’s up for you: Photographer Eric Futran, the guy behind the lens of our Specimen Guitars photo essay (Fall 2006 issue), our Old Town photo essay (Summer 2007) and our new photo essay on Paracho, Mexico (Spring 2008 issue), will have an art opening tomorrow night at the Old Town School of Folk’s Harris Gallery. The opening reception takes place between 7 and 9pm and copies of the new issue should be available for purchase and autographs. Go say hello to Eric and see (or buy) these gorgeous shots up close!
March 6th, 2008
We are pleased to announce that the ninth issue of The Fretboard Journal (a.k.a. our Spring 2008 issue) is out. Subscribers have begun to receive their copies and stores should have them by now. As always, you’ll see plenty of music heroes and world class guitar porn in its 128 pages. Acclaimed Clapton’s Guitar author Allen St. John interviews singer-songwriter Richard Thompson for this issue’s cover story. Also inside: Alanna Nash interviews Vince Gill; Dave Hunter talks to Mark Baier of Victoria Amps; an in-depth feature on Fred Walecki and Los Angeles’ Westwood Music; a photo essay on the “guitar town” of Paracho, Mexico; luthier Kim Walker’s Solo Novo archtop; and much more. It’s not too late to subscribe and start with this issue (and land a nice discount over the newsstand price). Just head on over to our Subscription page.
March 1st, 2008
In addition to being a darn fine graphic designer, musician Jaimie Muehlhausen is the mastermind behind such labors of love as the Sho-Bud Acoustic Guitars site and the Unofficial Home of Locobox Effects Pedals. His latest site, The Ones That Got Away, proves that he hasn’t run out of music ideas just yet. On The Ones That Got Away, Muehlhausen reminisces about all those guitars from his past that, for one reason or another, are no longer in his possession. It’s something that pretty much every collector can relate to and it makes for fun reading. The best part of all is that Muehlhausen’s lost guitars aren’t predictable old Les Pauls and Strats … this is a guy who gets nostalgic about Epiphone Crestwoods, an Old Kraftsman Bass and, of course, Sho-Bud acoustics. I hope Muehlhausen has held onto at least a few of his favorite guitars but I also hope that the posts to this great website keep coming. Check it out! -JV
February 27th, 2008
We are saddened to learn that Willie P. Bennett passed away on February 15. To most of us in the States, Bennett was known as the hilarious slide-mandolin, harmonica-toting sidekick to singer-songwriter Fred Eaglesmith. But up in the Great White North, Bennett had his own lengthy career as a singer-songwriter. He even won a Juno award in 1999 for his album Heartstrings. The gear page on his site still lists his unique setup in Eaglesmith’s band: a 1991 Flatiron mandolin, a bevy of distortion pedals, a 5/8″ spark plug socket for his slide and a Fender Princeton Reverb.
February 18th, 2008
We were already on Myspace, but now we’ve created a Facebook
page for the Fretboard Journal. (Even we have to keep up with the times, right?) Come say hello, chat with us for a bit, pass it along to friends, etc. -JV
February 13th, 2008
What do you give someone for their 40th anniversary? Apparently, it’s snakewood! We don’t usually post in the blog about news or events taking place at guitar stores, but this isn’t your typical in-store performance, so here goes: The Music Emporium, the Lexington, Massachusetts music institution is celebrating their 40th anniversary. To celebrate, they’ve commissioned a limited run of Collings Guitars featuring a pretty amazing set of woods and appointments. Each guitar boasts: an Adirondack spruce top and bracing; a varnish finish; a snakewood fingerboard, bridge and binding (a first for any Collings) and some amazing inlays from artist Doug Unger on the headstock. You can of course choose between a D, OM, CJ, 000 or 01 body size (they’ve made a few of each). Price on these beauties is $10,475 and up and we hear the limited run is selling out extremely fast. Call Stu or the rest of the gang over at Music Emporium if you want to get in line. -JV
February 4th, 2008
Cheesy Guitars is a wonderful website devoted to electric guitars made behind the Iron Curtain in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. I have only seen a few of these instruments over the years, but I have to say the range of styles is breathtaking. There are pages devoted to instruments from Russia, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland and other Eastern Bloc countries. There is also a page devoted to guitars that can’t be indentified. If you have one of these wonders and know something about it, head on over and help them out.-MJS (via Guitarz)
January 17th, 2008
Here’s an article about a ring of smugglers busted for bringing tortoise shell picks and violin bow parts into the US from China. Even though the shell used for these items comes from a hawksbill sea turtle, they’re known as tortoise shell. I wonder why that is? -MJS
January 17th, 2008
Last month, Chicago’s Old Town School of Folk Music put on a 50th Anniversary concert that included performers like Jeff Tweedy, Béla Fleck, Abigail Washburn and David Bromberg. I’m sorry I couldn’t make the show because I would have loved to have seen the performance in the photo by Roger McGuinn, who attended the school in the late 1950s, and Frank Hamilton, who was his teacher back then. McGuinn is featured in our latest issue and talks a bit about taking lessons at the school. Also, in issue 6, we ran a photo essay about the school by Eric Futran, who, along being an excellent photographer, takes harmonica lessons there.-MJS (Photo by Steven Gross)
January 10th, 2008
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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.
