New Birdies From The Workshop

I view a workshop as a place of becoming for both the crafter and the crafted, where the living via breathing through deliberate act exchanges some life force for a few ripples of involvement in creation of that which lives in other ways. Whatever medium is the means, life is offered and instilled into something manifesting to go out into lives, to hopefully enrich them, and to carry also some magic from the seed of whence it came… both its place and its path. It then lives via vibration. Perhaps another form of breath, or perhaps breath is another form of it.

I call these surroundings where things come to be and everything grows, where visions bloom and people blossom “perpetual springtime” – in trying to surround myself with it as much as possible, I am blessed to find myself where it is warm most of the time and the air is full of birdsong. That’s what our main line of instruments was named after, years back, while in transition from a very connecting chapter of living simply and sleeping under the stars into the hand built life of a craftsman. Life these days is still small, still simple, still connected… but a bit less austere than campstove hot water and a bedroll on top of an old van.

To live surrounded by new growth and becoming is, I think, the closest we get to slowing time. You are what you eat, and that’s not only food – but what you feed your eyes, what you feed your very being with your surroundings. How that feeds your soul. How you integrate your doings with your spirit – what you do with who you are and where you do it. Where you’re at – inside and out – is a huge part of that diet. If you live in an environment of life and nature and replenishment, of constructing and becoming, it’s hard not to feel that way inside.

Every year heading into springtime here in south central Texas, the little birds come looking for places to nest, to bring the new into being. They are drawn to the workshop and, so long as they’re not choosing a spot that is obviously dangerous or directly in my way, I welcome them. It’s not easy for me; I care about them, so I want things to go well for them, but I realize theirs is not my destiny to write. Past giving them some sheltered space and consideration while they’re borrowing that high shelf corner or extra tool cubby, the best thing I can do for them is not to meddle with their happenings. Let them be. Allow them their process of becoming… they don’t need my help; my agenda, my way, my fears, my inserting myself into their ceremony would not help.  

It was 17 years ago in my friend Uncle Johnny’s shop I noticed a nest in a top cubby, up above where he stored the tin of polishing wax for his woodcraft. I expressed my concern for them, and he replied “They come every year. They don’t get in my way and I don’t get in theirs. I leave a window cracked for them while they’re here. They know what they’re doing.” They know what they’re doing. I have to remind myself of this. This is what they do – their lives are uncomplicated, their system very simple, and indeed if they’re here they were the strongest who figured it out and they will teach their young the same. Not all will make it but they know this too. 

Things happen quickly in their world and they don’t waste time. Mama bird waits on a branch by the porch for me to be out of the way and flutters into the nest. I wish her well and welcome the tiny chirps to come. I leave an offering, a little pinch of seed, nearby – she knows I know she’s here and I like to think she knows she’s as safe as my shelter can offer. I do not know if these are the same little friends from last year, the nestlings of years past carrying on tradition, or even some distant relations to those from Johnny’s workshop. Taking the perspective that we are all related, they are all related too – so somehow, perhaps. For all I know one could even be Johnny. I chuckle at that too, but all I really truly know is there’s a lot more going on than meets the eye and I know I don’t know. I believe, I ponder, I connect the dots until it makes some kind of sense to me… but I’m one grain on a vast shoreline facing an infinite ocean and I just don’t know. 

I know the wood and the wire I am given to work, I know sounds and vibration. I know these little workshops. I know the next tasks to do and the tools to do them. I know the basics of my being. The birds know theirs, and I’m honored to live in their world out here. The least I can do is let them use the shop once in a while. 


Listening to: Don Cherry interview; Codona live in Hamburg 1978 (man this stuff is great, look it up on YouTube); some Mesa Music Consort; Joe Henderson So Near, So Far (Musings For Miles) (with Scofield, Al Foster on drums and bassist Dave Holland – fantastic, just go buy it); Grateful Dead Movie soundtrack CD one; Chrome Eyes Viper Dust (to be released soon).
 

The Art In The Craft

It has been an artsy week at the little green workshop in the woods. I’m so grateful for the hands that help – while a big stack of bodies are being cut and edged and a few on the other end of their time in the woodshop are being sanded, I devoted the week to being an artist. Inlaying jade, carving scrolls, melding some Rickenbacker into a particularly creative Sadhana build, working on a doubleneck. 

When this all was just a dream, the vision was of sitting in a workshop corner carving a piece of ebony trim all day. As a reality, such detailed craft gets worked in around lumber prep and gluing, cutting and routing, and so many other layers of what it takes to get a custom instrument to become, most of which I love doing. It also gets worked around stuff that drains my time, beats up my hands or I don’t enjoy as much – sanding, some neck work, edging – stuff  I get help with whenever I can. That’s part of the process too; to get great results you have good hands doing what they’re best at. Believe me there’s enough in a build to keep me busy and I’m all over every one and taste their dusts.

There are a fair number of fun, artsy, embellished instruments to build this year; I said yes to a good number of requests. Some will have a lot of woodwork in their layers, others engraving and inlay, some turquoise, a little jade; there’s a handful of scrolls to carve, and some interesting feature combinations to fit together into a few unique pieces.

This week mostly I grouped together some artistic nexts… here are some pictures from the workshop. Enjoy and be sure to reward your hard work with some creative time; then reward the world by sharing what you do. It will make someone happy, and might even inspire them!  

Play nice,

Listening to: A good mix of John Scofield live in ’92, Peter Gabriel Passion, some great delta blues from Jack Owens, and Doug Raney Guitar Guitar Guitar.
 

Magic Times, Magic Tools

It’s 2:45 AM and I’m working on one of MY guitars. I’m listening to some good delta blues. Windows are open, fan on low, and I’m stuffing a VERY old DiMarzio “neck” PAF humbucker into the bridge of one of my favorite guitars. Why am I up at this hour, why am I putting a pickup in “wrong”, and what does the Captain of a guitar company ship play? 

Insomnia is probably the single greatest practical blessing in my life. If I slept and ate and did things like a normal person, you’d probably not be reading this right now because the workshop may not exist. You use the tools you have to build your life, and for those of us with a few quirks they can be tools as well. Context is everything – it’s all about how you look at them against the backdrop of what’s going on. My context was years worth of “day-and-a-halfs” packed into each one to get everything done as it needed to happen. Well, I can do that! My night shifts are a sacred time; dark, quiet, mentally clear, and it’s when I do most of my writing, working out some new chord-melody stuff on the guitar, new instrument designing, research on various things, and some assembly & setup work. I might be up inlaying some turquoise to long jams like the Dead or Coltrane, or channeling ideas into a notebook with incense burning and some chanting softly in the background. Sometimes I mess around with a personal bass or guitar. That’s this morning. This guitar needed something in the bridge position with a bit more character, and I knew what would get me a touch of T out of an LP. 

Here’s something to ponder – the pickup doesn’t know where you put it. It only knows how it was voiced and what type it is. It will do its job, picking up the strings vibration and inherent harmonic content and sending that on with its own particular seasoning of frequency peaks & output wherever you put it. Position, instrument, pickups do not know. And the truth is not that you have conformed to some factory spec (unless you’re going for a specific example of a common tone, a by-the-book recipe), but if what comes out of the speaker sounds great to you as YOURS. If it comes out of the speaker, there’s your truth – you can argue what’s right, what’s ridiculous, and what can’t be until the cows come home, jack. If it’s there, there it is. It’s all frequencies and peaks and you can tickle them in more ways than one. Pickup type, strength and position are three ingredients in a whole recipe. Many of the recipes of the basses & guitars I have been building for 20 years have as a main tonal ingredient pickups being put in differently than the designers had in mind. I see them as a starting point; in this case, a humbucker voiced for the neck can be a little brighter in the bridge, a little underwound, and being a big fan of a good hot Telecaster bridge pickup, this is sneaking over into that room of colors from the other direction. Not the same, but a pinch of that bite & upper mid peak is in there. So long as the pole pieces line up you can try ANY pickup in any position of any type of stringed instrument. If it sounds good to you, it IS good. And besides, I have a thing for old, well-used cream DiMarzios – so putting one in a guitar, that’s like putting a ring on it. But what is that on the bench?

I have a few guitars, and some are from my own workshop. I always have prototypes around before I offer them and they go, and I am in the process of making myself a really nice guitar with a hand carved scroll – a special talisman I’ll show another time. But you know, it’s hard to tickle yourself. So my fascination is the work of other luthiers – their work holds the magic factor for me like mine does for other people. And this purpleburst knotty walnut topped chunk of mahogany with the flame maple bound purpleheart pickguard & purpleheart fingerboard is the first build of luthier Roy Toepper. The original pickups were gone when I got it – the Rockfield in the neck, in this guitar, is perfect for the smoky jazz & deep blues I’m into these days. The no-name bridge pickup? Meh. If it’s going to be there, it should bring some color to the party.

Those of you who don’t do what we on this side of the screen do have no idea how daring and all-in a guitar like this is to tackle as a first build, especially back in the day it was done. It has all the hallmarks of a first build on something like this – the neck was left too big and its set-in angle is too shallow. As proof that they all find their home, these are two of the main attributes that make me absolutely love this particular instrument. On my personal guitars as a player (and basses too), I love big, round, chunky necks. And on guitars I’m not a big fan of a big neck angle like you find on most carved tops - I like the Fender style where the neck and body are straight with no back angle. This is between the two - a flaw to one, a defining attractive characteristic to another. This is why watching a YouTube gear pundit pontificate on what the “best way” of anything is or some keyboard commando posting about the “only way” something works is, to me, like watching a monkey jack off at the zoo. Once you remove the specific goal (“…to sound just like SRV” or “…to sound like a Motown-era P bass”) and the context you’re working in that you’re going for this goal THROUGH, “best” becomes completely a matter of taste and opinion; it’s no longer a specific recipe, a formula, a paint-by-numbers. And opinion requires some factual knowledge and experience behind it, or it’s more of a belief. It is possible to have just enough knowledge and experience to believe your opinions are facts; the trick is to keep going until you have enough knowledge and experience with some of the patterns and truths you’ll find by DOING to realize all you truly know is that you really have no explanations at all. Just - ideally, educated - guesses. You’re one grain of sand on an infinite shoreline floating in space with consciousness you can’t explain; calm your ass down about your little perceived truth and just go do something, create something – it’ll be magic to someone and find its home and will serve the world so much better. Then do it again. 

When I scored this guitar I got to make the call I get regularly... “Hi! I just picked up one of your instruments and was wondering if you could tell me about it...” A fun call. A good guy. A daring luthier. Who does a Les Paul with a carved knotty walnut top and purplebursts it? Who tries all this crazy binding and inlay into their first build? And who creates such a magical piece that comes alive in my hands? This guy. A kindred spirit. He started building in the ‘90s too, but let me tell you – for all its hallmarks of someone’s early build any luthier could look at closely and see, compared to my first few guitars this thing is the Sistine Chapel. Thank God for learning curves! We certainly don’t all start out in the same place. RT Custom Guitars is in Michigan, Purple Sage has found a home in Texas, and I only hope that magic something a player’s hands feels in the right instrument when they play it, and the intangible vibrations of the soul their heart senses in the fibers of something truly crafted by another, that these are things every client of mine can feel when they pick up their own - born in this little green workshop in the woods. If I'm giving that along with the good tool, I'm thrilled. 

Play on,

Listening to: Professor Longhair live show from 1975; Dr. John The Sun, The Moon & Herbs and In The Right Place; Mississippi Fred McDowell You Gotta Move.
 

MAKING PIECES

Ever wonder what 17 basses look like still in the plank? Here you go! Lots of walnut & some choice mahogany ready to start the process. I listed what I need to get going on, took my body templates and laid out & marked all of the body halves with serial numbers. In here is a good sized run of Shortbasses, a couple of prototypes, and the whole run of 13th Anniversary specials for July. The smaller pieces next to the planks? Read on...

Next we see what about 25 of them look like after the first cut into easier handling pieces, some two or three body halves, others halves by themselves, and a few are separate pieces to glue up into bodies made of more than 2 pieces. I added in the Wimberley flood cypress builds and pieced together a few Shortbasses from leftover strips & pieces. Leftover strips and pieces, when at all possible, should get to sing too! Regardless of how they get to this point, they all get planed to certain thicknesses in preparation for glue-up. Check out what's new on the inventory page, you can see a few of these body blanks. (Some of this batch has begun to filter onto the builds page, too.)

Then the halves are rough cut, leaving flat areas for the clamps to grip; what will be the center is trimmed closely on each half and then flattened & squared precisely; then the halves or pieces are joined via glue and trusty orange Bessey clamps. From here the bodies will be final cut to shape, edged smooth, and take their place by the routing bench. They will be grouped and regrouped by task until they leave the green workshop with their neck on them all carved, contoured, sanded & finished, to hang over the bench in the assembly room and speak their first notes.

There are much easier and more efficient ways of all of this, but that’s manufacturing not craft, and I am a craftsman. So this is the way we do it here. When the day is over there is a list with checkmarks all over it, a sweaty man body with woodchips and sawdust all over it, and a group of musical tools a couple of steps further along their path. It’s a fair trade, a transfer of energy through change in its form, a passing along of life force - from tree to me, from me to thee.

In harmony,

 

Listening to: Eric Clapton Rainbow Concert, all week. My favorite Clapton. Townsend, Winwood, those guys help. It's live, it's raw, and it's great rock and roll. Eric plays his ass off and the music has a vibe to it I just don't get from his studio albums or more produced later live stuff. LOVE this.
 

DECOR AS TALISMAN

Anyone who has visited the Birdsong workshop in the past few years, specifically “assembly”, might have heard me describe the décor in passing as “…early Caruso.” I don’t think anyone has EVER asked me to clarify, and really that’s the funniest part. It’s not an official style period like “Rococo” or “Baroque” though that’s how I verbally slipped it in and how I hoped it to be taken in passing. The reality of it is this - it is a reference to an old pizza parlor I used to go to as a kid, owned by a man named Caruso. 

I was reminded of this searching through old picture files for the “Throwback Thursday” I post every week on Facebook (go find us – Scott Beckwith and/or Birdsong Guitars). In with folders of long gone guitars, basses in the larvae stage, helping hands in action and goofy shots of a much more bearded and brightly shirted me, I found a little group of scanned pictures of Don Michele Caruso (Don mi-KE-le ca-RU-so, Italian for “Michael” his name, “Don” a title of respect) and his corner of the new world.

 

Caruso’s Pizzeria on the corner of Main and E. Emerson was a red, white & green beacon of hope in my world where the best pizza on the planet was tossed right before your eyes to the sound of Italian voices; no matter how cold it was outside after school The library was first stop mainly because books were like kryptonite to jocks, but also hey – wow – there were shelves full of people and places and roadmaps for life different than the ones I knew as a kid. Those weren’t gonna work for me, but maybe something in this house of other knowledge would. If the library was where my dreams were hatched, Caruso’s was the incubator. It was my second stop on the walk home from school. I sat in front of a checkerboard tablecloth, watched customers come and go and old gentlemen in fedoras walk to the back room. I ate my pizza slices, looked out through frosted windows at the passing life outside and pondered my trajectory through it. 

On cold afternoons (which is most of the school year in the northeast), opening the door to Caruso’s was a blast of warmth, every bit of it smelling like pizza. It was a magical place, walls completely full of faded photos and hanging memorabilia, swords, artwork of saints, written pieces in Italian with edges sepia and cracked framed up between Padre Pio and the gray & white photo of a young man standing uniformed in the old country, looking at some long forgotten lens and a new life yet to come in a distant land. I had no idea what a lot of it was or meant but I know if it was up on the wall at Caruso’s it meant something and belonged there. It was an incongruous museum strewn onto every vertical surface, but looking as if that “strewing” took 50 careful years. One of the many things I carry with me inside from this formative place, this sanctuary of my childhood, is this type of décor. You take the room and make it yours – you fill it with memories and talismans, the sacred and the seemingly arbitrary – you simmer the space in those powers like your aunt simmers down a pot full of ingredients into a half pot of dense, intense red sauce you can stand a wooden spoon up in. Is it a workspace? A museum? A Temple? Yes it is.

If you had been in either of my music shops, my guitar lesson rooms, or this Birdsong assembly room, you have seen my version of Caruso décor. It might not be an official style learned about in universities all over the globe, but it’s more real to me than any of those and in this little dusty corner of it the magic lives and the memories live and a little slice of Don Caruso lives on too. 

Listening to: The Eddie Trunk podcast; Led Zeppelin disc III of an unknown box set (great collection, only have this disc, Kashmir, Quarter, Levee, In My Time Of Dying... some of my favorite stuff); R.L. Burnside Too Bad Jim (Raw electric delta blues). 
 

 

Against The Odds

Good afternoon friends, greetings from the little workshop deep in the woods of south central Texas. It’s a beautiful day here, sunny blue skies, short sleeves; the birds are out and the air smells of worked wood and sounds like great jazz and birdsong. For those of you new to us, we gather here every Friday to ponder life and peek in at workshop goings-on. 

You won’t hear this from me often but how about that game? Though the entire east cost Italian side of my family – which is to say, numerically, the majority of it – was rooting for the Patriots, probably very loudly, those alive AND those departed spinning themselves clear through to China by halftime, I had no real “Dog in the hunt” as they say here in Texas.  I wanted to see a good game, well played, without a lot of those “he touched me” penalty calls I find at odds with a field full of 275 pound alpha males with hallway trails of inappropriate contact and unsportsmanlike conduct in their wakes. Now you’re going to flail there in your stadium because another guy put his hand up to keep you from catching the ball? Really? Spare me. Shut up and take out his sternum like a warrior. I want to see gladiating not gladhanding. And boy did we – great game!

First half we saw team A playing good ball but team B, with their eyes on the prize and fired up to unsustainable levels, just run roughshod over them. Shut down. Dominated. Then after the whole Gaga dog and pony show we saw team A bottom out in their ugly circumstance, wake up and refocus not on the mountain but on the next step. What is the next thing that has to happen for us to survive? What is the next movement that HAS to be completed to put us in a position one step forward from where we find ourselves? What is the one immediate goal that MUST be reached so we are still viable? From here we watched them pull off a dozen of those like a machine. And I’ve never set foot on a football field – they’d use me as the ball – but I can guarantee you from there it was just “What’s next? Ok. Check. What’s next now? Ok. Did that. What’s next?...” And that’s how you climb back. That’s how you show you’re alive when conditions are against you, when you’re written off, when it looks all over. Leave it to others to be smugly daydreaming about the riches in Vienna. You just decisively take the next hill. And the next one. And the next one. Congrats to the Pats, and really to all on the field for a good clean game without a lot of tantrums and bellyaching. Both teams played incredibly; one just showed a little more spirit with their backs against the wall, and that I can always respect.

So what’s happened around the workshop since their stunning victory? A bunch of little daily ones here. A sojurn up interstate 35 to a wood source we’ve used from the beginning found us trucking some dense mahogany, beautiful walnut, lightweight Spanish cedar, and some nice poplar back to the nest. We’re ready. Much of it is already destined for 2017 basses & guitars on order. Here are necks out the wazoo ready and almost ready for bodies catching up in various states of routing and carving and sanding.

This is the sort of thing I’ve been talking about when mentioning 2017 as the year of special orders. Over so many years there are times I feel most at home sticking mostly with the standards as designed. Customs take a lot more focus with their pages of scribbled specs and things to remember about each special process – because, remember, one detail to you is a series of alternate steps in here. In the shop it’s Rubik’s Cube-like; many times by changing that one detail a lot of others are affected. Where the holes you don’t see can go. How to screw down that template on this shape with nothing where the screw holes are; is this pickup up to the neck or back a hair to fit in a ring? Did I leave enough room beside this bigger rout for the body edge roundover? Everything affects something else. This year I’m finding that a lot of fun actually to where over the past several months I’ve said “yes” to a bunch of really cool, really unique builds, and there’s quite a few build sheets with quite a bit if little stars and scribbles in the margins on both clipboards.

Shown fresh off the routing bench are two Birdsong basses – one a custom bodied one-off of mahogany & cypress with ebony stringers and twin humbuckers, the other a stripey Sadhana with SD Curlee Creambar pickup routs and the beginnings of a hand carved scroll on the top horn. Next stop for these are Johnny’s old drill press for “drill-out” – neck mounting holes and bushing countersink, string through holes and ball-end ferrules. Then it’s time to carve in contours and additional shaping, and on this Sadhana to do the first layer or two on the scroll. I’m actually routing a second bass with a scroll over the weekend and will bring them through that process together.    

This is just the beginning – wait and see what else makes it across the routing bench in the months to come! Or, better yet, be waiting for YOUR special recipe to come together in the kitchen... ‘cause it’s cookin’ time in here! But gimme a call before I'm covered up for the year - that happens every year by about summertime, and we're looking at the busiest spring ever. We don't work any faster, they take what they take to craft; the line just gets longer... so hop in it!

Don’t forget to like/follow the Birdsong Guitars Facebook page, you’ll get nothing in your feed from me but during-the-week workshop shots, “Throwback Thursday” archive pictures, the great “Saturday Sales” and the occasional ratty musclecar! You don’t want to miss anything. 

See you here next Friday for the next news page blog ramble post. ‘Til then treat yourselves nicely and don’t look at the mountain, and don’t worry if you’re facing some odds. Take that next step towards your goal today. It’s important but more important that you take it.  

Listening to: Doug Raney Sextet Meeting The Tenors; Scuzz meets Jason Newsted (fantastic interview from a few years ago, look it up on YouTube); Stephen Stills with Manassas Down The Road.
 

Steps Towards The Goalposts

Hi! Be sure to friend Scott Beckwith on Facebook and go like/follow Birdsong Guitars. Nothing but guitar & bass posts, with the occasional old car and a bit of Monday morning inspiration thrown in. Throwback Thursday posts from the photo archives and special Saturday sales too!  (This weekend get a standard Cortobass – the little bass that built the company – for 2004 pricing through Sunday night!) I post here on Fridays, I post there during the week. Don’t miss anything fun!

*******

As I begin typing this it is blue zone and, having awakened and offered my gratitudes, I will begin the day with Richie Havens and a good list of nexts.

We all walk our goals to us through steps. Everyone’s situation is a little different, and so their steps may seem different. I see it from behind these workbenches like this – commitment to the goal is devotion to the steps. Whether it’s one big huge life event or, as in my case, a series of assemblies that constantly become whole completions and leave. We all eat life by the bite; a Birdsong bass averages about 50 steps between getting the lumber and handing off the packed box to FedEx. Each step is its own series of actions, motions, and tools – its own smaller steps. 

I firmly believe if you’re up and at it, all in and balls out and staying at it, that mountain will move. Something’s gonna happen. Do something that moves “what is” closer to “what will be” every day and time is the wind in your sail. Here’s a mountain that was made this week. Everything in this pile had at least one or two “nexts” done to it – now they all need something from the routing bench, so here they are. 

This is the last time this group will all be together – from this bench different hands will sand in a readjusted order of priority and each will have its own final chapters and schedules here, a few inventory, most shipped in all directions at different times, some prototypes to be revealed and maybe offered when it’s time for that. 

Top down you’re looking at:
A Texas Lap Steel Co. “Uncle Johnny” model...
A couple of wood templates for one step on something you’ll be seeing shortly...
A one-off prototype body in mahogany...
A “Wimberley” model lap steel in cypress...
Birdsong “Especial” bass in zebrawood, ash & bloodwood...
D’AQUILA Imperial guitar out of cypress & rosewood...
Stripey walnut & maple Birdsong Sadhana bass with a little wenge...
A cypress & rosewood Especial bass with a scroll horn...
Mahogany & ebony custom Birdsong guitar...
Custom Birdsong bass of mahogany, ebony & cypress...
...and another prototype body – waiting on those templates up top for its “next” to happen!

Next to the pile a clear routing template on yet another prototype body also waiting on those other templates.

As stacked it was by one order of happenings, as it's gone through it becomes another when I pair and triple up whose nexts happen to be the same rout or use the same bit in the tool, or logic it – those prototypes aren't happening until the templates I’ll use to guide the rout into them, so we know what comes first there… and next just kind of appears.   

This is one stack here in the green shop. Not much in assembly (Johnny’s old workshop  now right next to it – that was ITS next about 2007) at the moment, but it’s just a pinky toe into February. By March I won’t even be able to walk in there.   (Here are some necks getting finished in another corner of the green shop)...

My goal is to build you a life-changing instrument. I figure aim that high and if I fall short into “The best thing I’ve ever played” or even just one more inspiring presence in your music room you enjoy, hey – all for it! So every day, every dawn, professionally, personally, I have decisions in the moment to make that will either align me with my goal at least, and ideally walk it a few steps closer… or will veer us from each other. Half of accomplishment is just not veering. Don’t be distracted. All in. Balls out. Get after it and get on with it. Better yet, GET IT ON with it. Do the dance of life with it whatever it is. Let it build you as you build it; bring your highest to it and let it walk you to yours as you walk it to its. The Born To Runs, the long-career quarterbacks, the sculptor and the sculpted of this world know all about this dance because it’s how such things happen. Step by step. Day by day. Onward.

If a Birdsong or any other instrument I’ve had the honor of helping to become and the privilege of presenting you can even touch the shadow of being something great in your life, that’s why the sun – not every morning but more often than not – has to get up to catch the Scottrise in the morning. There were very few times in my earlier life when I  truly felt “I can do this – I’ve got this!” like I do now in these little temples of wood and wire, with more seasons behind me than in front of me, savoring each and every one. 

Play at peace,


Listening to: Best of Richie Havens; JJ Cale & Leon Russell at Paradise Studios Los Angeles ’79 (they’re high as hell and this is a great set of rock and roll – find it on YouTube); Joe Puma It’s a Blue World; some Gordon Lightfoot and of course still deep in Doug Raney discovery mode with Guitar Guitar Guitar and Back In New York. Amazing.