Redwood
/In my late twenties, I lived in Berkeley, California where I did the same things that I do now: music, cycling, tea, karate, books, the woods, and the ocean. Of course I didn’t have a family, which is everything really. In hindsight, this meant that I had all the time in the world. I worked a handful of different jobs from teaching for the Princeton Review, to the occasional carpentry gig, or hauling a wheelbarrow of manure up a steep hill, week after week after week. Music didn’t pay much, but I gave a valiant effort, striving to play one hundred shows a year, driving all over the greater Bay Area, something I can hardly imagine now.
And then one day, I heard from a musical collaborator that the family for whom she was a nanny, knew another family that needed a nanny. I was a bit overwhelmed by the prospect for a myriad of reasons, but something about it felt right. I still recall vividly, sitting at the dining room table in the waning afternoon light, eating perfectly salted popcorn with the mother, instantly aware that this was our path.
When I began working for said family, the two boys were younger than my own children are now, a dizzying reality. While I was correct about my expectations with the job on many fronts, what I didn’t know was the degree to which I would fall in love with those two boys, and the extent to which they would make clear in my heart, the desire to have my own family. And that twenty years later, that they would still be at the center of my world.
I spent nearly four years with them, playing basketball, reading them lines of poetry, warning them about the ills of popular culture and television, cooking dinner, taking them to parks to play made up games, and sharing my own deep convictions about music. Trying to help them find ways to squeeze the marrow out life. I’m not sure how much wisdom or insight I had about anything then (or now for that matter) but I gave those boys everything that I could. I remain close to the family, and especially so with one of the, now young men, with whom I communicate almost daily. So I was thrilled when he became serious about the electric guitar as his instrument of choice, and yet more thrilled when we began to discuss the possibility of my building him an instrument.
His parents sold his childhood home in recent years, which even made me a bit sad, behind which sat a steep hill that fell down into a creek and the woods. I can still smell those giant redwood trees after a heavy rain, the sweet apple musk of their bark drifting up the ravine. The minute that we began discussing a guitar, I knew that it would have to incorporate something from that land. So last fall, under the cover of the encroaching dark, creeping with the crepuscular creatures, he snuck down there with an ax and a saw and found a fallen redwood, lying in wait by the creek where we would explore. He cut a piece which he later took to a friend’s workshop where they milled the wood and let it dry for a year. Then he sent it to me.
I spent quite a bit of time working on layout, trying to find the most elegant way to incorporate the wood into his guitar, and the result is below. I hollowed out each side of ash and placed the redwood in the middle, then glued it all together. I just love how it came out. These are without question my favourite sort of projects. It’s just wonderful to have a client bring me some wood that has meaning to them, that I build into an instrument, furthering the story. Among others, I’ve built a bass with wood from a client’s late father’s stash, and another from a fallen pine on a client’s in-law’s property in Virginia. And I look forward to the next.
Something about being isolated for so long has generated a new appreciation for the simple feeling of making things; a reverence of sorts. I also added frets to a fretless neck, a task that involved numerous mistakes and diversions. While I learned an immense amount in Trevor Healy’s expert care, and more under the wing of Bill Cumpiano, I find the errors that I make on my own, deeply enlightening.
I hope that you’re all well, and thriving, and that this holiday season will be less lonely than the last. See you when the snow flies…
Below:
A new, ‘before the pandemic,’ record, on which I play only guitars of my own making.
An epic release of “sound collage” (from a friend and collaborator) on which I play, along with one of my favourite musicians, Guy Picciotto of Fugazi, among many others.
The redwood guitar and a few instruments for sale, with links to more info.
A link to a quick read about an accordion repairman in Mexico. And a link to Alvin Lucier’s Obituary. The world feels less bright when luminaries like him depart.
“The practitioner of a stochastic art, such as motorcycle repair, experiences failure on a daily basis. Just today, for example, I was faced with a mangled screw frozen in a cylinder head. I had to cut the head of the screw off with a pneumatic chisel (easy enough), centre punch the remaining stud (ditto), then drill it out with a cobalt drill bit. This last step is always dicey, and in fact the drill bit broke off inside the hole I was drilling. As far as I know there is no drill bit harder than cobalt that I can use to drill out the broken off drill bit. (Apologies to Bob Gorman, the owner of this particular cylinder head - I’ll make it right somehow.). Everything is going along swimmingly, then I find myself with no way forward. Such failures get internalized, and give rise to both pessimism and self-reproach. Not only do things go to hell, but your own actions contribute inevitably to that process.”
~ Matthew Crawford, Shop Class as Soulcraft.
Mike Bullock, Jefferson Pitcher, Jason Robinson, Bob Weiner + Alder and Oak
Lost Forest Records
“Pitcher is nimble and understated on nylon string guitar, speaking an idiom that is both fluid and disjunct, melodic and atonal. There is a near constant conversation between him and Mike Bullock on bass, the two responding elegantly to one another’s meanderings, locking voices without ever really seeming to follow any set path. Bob Weiner creates a world of rattling and rumbling, often sounding like two players, not one. When he settles into a groove at various times on the record, joined by Bullock, the rhythm section builds into something of a real gem; powerful and explosive, without being overt. Jason Robinson is fluid and muscular on tenor, virtuostic in his playing, and elegantly sensitive, and his flute work here shines. All are in sync, flowing through call and response with great ease. Not jazz exactly, but not, not jazz either. Sometimes, music is difficult to place squarely into categories and difficult to summarize. Alder and Oak lands firmly on familiar ground for Pitcher, with much lunging and seeking and hints at middle eastern melodies, while heading off into new and uncharted territory. It is a beautiful record, full of expert playing and the customary seeking in Pitcher’s world.” ~ Lost Forest
Rambutan + Parallel Systems
Sedimental Records
Thirty-three audio collages created with original contributions from 69 artists from nine countries including members of Fugazi, Minutemen, Mission of Burma, Trumans Water, Sebadoh, Olivia Tremor Control, Reynols, Wolf Eyes, and a host of contemporary sound explorers. The alarmingly creative and industrious Eric Hardiman has anchored in Albany, NY a multi-decade hub of individual, collaborative and cross-pollinating experimental music activities and projects, recently manifested in the Sky Furrows (2020) and the Spiral Wave Nomads (2021), his ongoing CD series with John Olson, solo as Rambutan and complemented the prolific Tape Drift label he curates and runs. As Hardiman writes: "This project is a collection of collage works that I created during 2020 and early 2021. As a way to keep my mind busy and fend off the creeping dread of the pandemic, I invited a group of friends, acquaintances and musical heroes from across the globe to contribute an original recording. My task was to take the raw sounds and combine them in new and unexpected ways. I imagine each track as its own 'parallel system', a mysterious sonic world of its own. As the tracks began to emerge, I envisioned the various contributors working together in the same room in a true collaboration. Imagining these weird social and sonic juxtapositions helped guide the project. In the end, there were 69 contributors from nine different countries, spread across 33 tracks. Although many of the sounds have been edited, excerpted, mangled, and otherwise manipulated, my primary goal was to let the musical DNA and personality of each person shine through." -Forced Exposure
