luthier
en | adventure

"Put it in reverse... more gas... nope, we need to dig more..."

My fingers continue clawing at the turf. The van is clearly stuck, but we absolutely need to be in London this afternoon. So we push and dig and jam branches under the tires, desperate for them gain purchase in the greasy South Flemish mud. I sit out the next round of revving and shoving to catch my breath. It's beautiful here; the morning mist hugs the stubbled hayfields that surround us, glowing silver in the sunrise. But I've hardly slept in days, my back aches from the thousands of highway miles, and now my sleeping clothes are caked with dirt. I didn't really have to be here...

Deadlines have always been my nemesis. I'd signed up to send an acoustic archtop guitar on the Boutique Guitar Showcase Tour of Europe, and true to form I've carried out another ambitious and radical new design. It took longer than expected to finish. Shipping to Europe is risky; if there's any delay in customs, the guitar won't get to the starting point in time, and the show will simply have to travel on without it. I'm going a little bit nuts from the stress and late nights at the workbench; eventually I come to the realization that I'm just going to have to buy a plane ticket and carry it there myself.

Somehow, the Jamie Gale Music crew open their hearts to this desperate luthier and invite me along for the ride. It won't be easy, they warn me. I'll be going through 7 countries in the next week or so, stopping and hosting a guitar show in 6 of them.

That's as many shows as l've done in my life up to that point. A bunk in the back of a euro-size Fiat RV will be my home for the duration.

Guitarists are a strange bunch. Alternately superstitious, deeply informed, conscientious or madly impulsive. Which is to say, they're just like any cross-section of humanity, except that these particular ones might be in the market for a new six-stringed muse. But will it be yours? And how are you to know if the player's experience corresponds with the intentions of the luthier?

Ideally, we would be able to hear the unvarnished truth from the player. But a luthier extracting a guitarist's feelings about a guitar follows Heisenberg's principle: to measure the experience is to change it.

An interaction with a new guitar can be an intensely emotional experience; love and hate bubble up undifferentiated, unidentified. The player tries to express their feelings, and perhaps cannot translate them effectively in words. Or perhaps social conditioning leads them to a polite "it's really nice, thanks"... before they put the guitar, the one in which you've invested weeks of work, years of training, and a lifetime of passion, back on the display stand. What just happened?

Oh, to be a fly on a wall while hundreds of guitar enthusiasts encounter your work for the first time. That was the great opportunity I had with the Boutique Guitar Showcase tour.

City after city, the doors to the show would open, and enthusiasts would file in, awestruck. Eyes first, they try to take in the whole. After a circle of the collection, they home in on the ones that intrigue them. They ask questions- "what is this wood?

Why are the frets like that?" But the ultimate question can only be answered with hands and ears, and perhaps an amplifier.

Up to this point I watch, and listen, and answer any questions I can. But once the guitarist has played the instrument, they have formed opinions. And these opinions are gold for the luthier who is willing to listen without ego to the player. I simply ask them "how did that feel?" The key is that these opinions are not used to change our artistic identity, or dictate business decisions; simply to know how well players are able to connect with our instruments, to calibrate and authenticate the sensory experiences we used ourselves in the process of their creation. Are they speaking the same musical language as us? Do they see the same colours, do they hear the same tones? Our continued careers requires that they do.

The City looms overhead in the scud-grey light of autumn in London. The

financial hub of the world, the fulcrum of capitalism itself wraps around and over the little guitar shop. Idly, I ponder the invitations given out for our event. "Carriages at 11"... that must be when they close out the evening, I think as I sip champagne. It's not french, but who cares. After all, I was there just this morning- there's still French dirt under my fingernails. Now a musician, brow furrowed, examines my guitar hanging on the wall. They pick it up, surprised by its lightness. Eyebrows raise, furrows deepen. They sit down, and strum an exploratory chord. A broad smile says more than words could. I didn't really have to be here- but I'm glad I am.