A bit of biography

Click on photos to enlarge

I grew up in Mission, Texas, a little town in the Rio Grand Valley at the southern tip of the state. We were two miles from the Mexican border, and I was exposed to Latino culture from an early age. I developed a good Spanish accent, which has since been a mixed pleasure and embarrassment, as I don't speak Spanish very well. The popular Latin music of the day was dance music like tango, mambo, and cha-cha-cha, and the local Mexican people listened to the latest Norteña (northern Mexican) music which derives from French and German sources. The single most inspiring experience of my Texas schooling was playing clarinet in the Mission high school band when I was in the 7th and 8th grades. We were a small town, so much of the band was made up of junior high school kids. Since the most important cultural thing happening in our town in the fifties was football, the band got a lot of local support, because the half-time shows we put on were popular. I can attest that the seven academy award winning movie "The Last Picture Show" is absolutely accurate in its depiction of the time and place. After football season, we worked on concert music. We played opera overtures, and themes from symphonies, and other short classical pieces adapted for players at our level. Along came the overture to The Barber of Seville, and , though I didn't realize it at the time, the main passion of my life was set. Real Spanish music! In the classic Spanish mode (Phrygian, actually)! It passed the goose-bump test with flying colors. I was hooked. After 8th grade we moved 5 miles east to McAllen, where the band wasn't nearly as good, and I had gotten   interested in ham radio. So for the next six years I listened to a lot of music, mostly classical, and took a music appreciation course my first year at Stanford. Whenever something Spanish would come along, like De Falla's "Nights in the Gardens of Spain", there would be those goose bumps again. But I wasn't making music myself. Fast forward to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1960. I had given up on a career in electrical engineering, and was at loose ends. I had started going up to "The City", as we called SF, to a place in North Beach called "The Bread and Wine Mission". It was a storefront outreach project to the "beatniks" sponsored by the local Presbyterian church, and there were poetry readings and folk music.

Working on a German maple classic in my     shop in Claremont California 1964

In the foreground are the beginnings of an East Indian rosewood classic, still owned by Vince Meyer, a guitar maker in his own right.    Also, Claremont California 1964

Another photo of my Claremont shop in   1964 ~ same chisels, rasps, etc.

I had considerably more hair, and less chub, in those days.

One Sunday night there, I heard a nylon string guitar for the
first time, and I realized that was the musical thing I needed
to fill the hole in my life where music making used to be. It
wasn't much of a jump to making the connection between
that sound, and the roots of Spanish music, Flamenco.

So I got a cheap Mexican guitar, and began taking
Flamenco lessons from Freddy Mejia, and Dave Jones
(now David Serva) who both played professionally at the
Old Spaghetti Factory Cafe in North Beach. It was easy to
hear the difference between my guitar, and Freddy's 1931
Domingo Esteso, but a good guitar like that cost $400, (!)
which was well out of my price range.

I was admiring a friend's good guitar one day, and
lamenting the fact that I couldn't afford one, and he said
"Why don't you build your own?". John was an armchair
craftsman, and his wife, who worked in a bookstore, had
brought him a slim little volume called "How to Build Your
Own Spanish Guitar". He loaned me the book, and it
seemed like a fun project, and later, like a satisfying way to
make a living.

Stewart Brand, of  Whole Earth Catalog fame, says that
you need to have the courage to fail young, so I guess I
was courageous. By 1965 it was clear that I had to do
other kinds of wood working for money. So in the
intervening years I have done a little of everything-- tool
production, kitchen cabinets, high end furniture, teaching
woodworking... In 1993 I decided to go back to my first
love, building guitars.

Two years ago I started teaching lutherie on an individual
basis, in addition to making guitars, and it has been  really
enjoyable. It's much more relaxed than a class situation,
and I can devote all my attention to one person at a time.
This is my final career choice, along with little side projects
like booklets, videos, and tool development. It's funny how
things turn out.

Cheers,

____________________________________