It isn’t an accident that my path in life has involved music and musical instruments. I grew up in a family of musicians. Both of my grandfathers, my father, and my older sister all played. With all these musicians, it also meant that I was surrounded by fine musical instruments. One grandfather played a custom order Gibson mandolin, and the other a beautiful 30’s era Gibson arch top hollow body guitar.
During my teens, I began to work on the instruments I’d been learning to play and also began working on friend’s instruments as well. I learned that I loved it. I loved taking instruments that had looked and sounded beautiful decades earlier and bringing them back to their former beauty.
At about twenty years old, I began building my own instruments in a shop that was about the size of a single car garage.
At thirty something, my wife had the grand idea of getting one of my instruments into Keb’ Mo’s hands following a concert. He liked what he saw and heard but asked if I could make him a full sized guitar with a “robust” voice.
It’s many years later and I’ve now built him a total of four instruments, an OM sized guitar, a dreadnaught, and two mandolins, a second to replace the first one which was lost in a Nashville flood. I have him to thank for my being able to enjoy building instruments for musicians from around the world.
In the last few years, I’ve been able to build my dream shop and studio in a beautiful mountain top setting near the Southern Oregon coast.
As a “victim of pleasant circumstance,” I’m now able to put the profit that I make from selling my instruments towards a number of charities.
Presently, I’m building small runs of specific models of instruments, each different from one another in terms of the blends of woods used and decorative features.
