During the late 1980’s in the midst of playing in punk bands, I became inexplicably obsessed with Spanish guitar music.

In Jorge’s home studio, I was stunned by his Sobrinos de Esteso guitar and began to dream about owning an instrument like that. The bubble burst quickly when I discovered the impossibility of that idea, due to scarcity and cost.  So at the behest of Jorge, I ordered a custom guitar from Pedro Maldonado Sr. of Malaga, Spain, and became enamored with the fact that people could make these remarkable things by hand.  I wish that I had recorded my lengthy phone conversations with Pedro; what a kind and generous man he was, happy to explain the nuances of sound, and laugh at my imperfect Spanish.  I still own and play that very guitar, the label that reads “1995,” and I am still effected by Jorge’s Esteso; the sound of that instrument has haunted me for decades.

After college, I moved to Spain to study flamenco and to immerse myself in Spanish culture, a remarkable and deeply enlightening education.  I lasted less than a year before I broke my jaw at a skateboard park, ran out of money, and admitted to myself that I could never be Spanish, and therefore flamenco could never be mine.  What I had believed was just music tied to history, was really the soul of a people; their sorrows and triumphs, the terrors of Franco and the persecution of a people and culture, the heat and the Caballos, and the food and the Orange Trees, and long tendrils of Garcia Lorca reaching down into the marrow of sound. It is something that we non-Spaniards can love and mimic, but it is not something that we can ever embody. I did however have a memorable evening with Vicente Amigo, during which I felt like I belonged; people kept asking us if we were related.  Alas, no. 

I went home and spent a decade playing in various bands in San Francisco; everything from Avant Jazz to Latin inspired “World Music,” to my own best interpretations of Radiohead and Sigur Ros.  The words of Jorge Strunz, “find your own music,” wouldn’t leave me.

On rainy nights at home, tinkering and recording, I became increasingly interested in what I call the minutiae of sound and found myself tumbling further and further into the world of Noise, New Music, the Avant-Garde, and Sound Art.  I eventually went back to graduate school to study listening, composition, improvisation, and not surprisingly meditation, with the late Pauline Oliveros, which was every bit as formative as my initial discovery of flamenco.

Shortly after graduate school, I visited the shop of a close friend and violin maker (David Prentice), and within minutes I knew what the path would be for the rest of my life.  I wanted his world. I began learning about wood, handplanes, and chisels with David, before beginning an apprenticeship with Trevor Healy.  I eventually became an employee of Trevor’s before leaving to build my own guitars.  I did two years of one-on-one classes with Bill Cumpiano who literally wrote the book.  Somewhere in there I went to guitar building school at The Whetstone School of Lutherie in Vermont, and I still write my pal Creston Lea for advice now and then.

I believe handmade instruments are an embodiment of their maker.  They are, in some way, inescapable extensions of the builder him/herself/themself.  And while they are tools, they have their own identity, much like any work of art.  To that end, we builders must pay close attention with our ears as well as our eyes and our hands.  For what is music without listening?  

Pauline Oliveros taught me more about listening than anyone or anything I’ve ever encountered.  Years of performing with her taught me about the present in ways that I did not previously understand.  She taught me how to comprehend the silence that permeates flamenco, and she taught me how to hear the smallest of sounds.