[tadol]

Yesterday Bruce and I went to the Sebastapol Guitar Festival, which is a small, local event that we’ve attended for a few years now. They have a small side room where a number of local luthiers bring their instruments and usually spend more time talking to each other than to potential customers, playing each others guitars (and ukeleles, mandolins, basses, pedal steels, etc. ) - a nice day in general, although the storm systems we have running across Nor Cal kept the attendance lower than anyone liked.

There were a couple highlights - local guitarist Walter Strauss did a set with one of Bruces guitars, and it was extremely good. Both the guitar, and Walter, that is. Also, I had a chance to play a couple of archtops by Tyler Wells, who had so impressed Bruce with his guitars at another show that Bruce actually bought one. I’d had a chance to try Bruces briefly, but there were three different guitars Tyler brought to Sebastapol, and all were extremely nice. His tablemate, Maegen Wells (no relation, but both work at Tom Ribbecke’s shop) also had a stunning archtop guitar on display. Both of these young luthiers are worth keeping an eye on -

After the show, we had a nice dinner with Howard Klepper and his wife. Sounds like Howard has made alot of progress in getting his shop set up, but still more to do there, and no immediate plans to start building guitars - he has a good list of personal furniture that he has been working on designs for, and I am looking forward to seeing those pieces being completed. Then, maybe more guitars - we can only hope!