Memphis 2015: A Retrospective

[CoolerKing]

This will be a pretty long post, since it was -such- a busy weekend and I have essentially nothing but effusive praise to say about the entire experience. I'll probably be gushing like a tweener at a One Direction concert by the end of the thread, but I will certainly try and give you guys a focused and honest perspective of the guitars I played and the luthiers I met.

I arrived late Thursday night and was able to get the free shuttle from the airport to the Hilton. The location is a very nice hotel to say the least; the rooms were spacious and very clean. Two very minor quips: not super close to downtown, although if you've ever been to downtown Memphis maybe this is a good thing; and the hotel restaurant left a little to be desired. This in comparison to some world class BBQ which I'll get to later. The facilities specifically related to the show were excellent. Super spacious, well lit, and of course very convenient to the room . I rate the hotel 9/10.

Friday morning saw the start of the show. The luthiers had mostly arrived by Thursday night and had been setting up down in the convention room, but the groundlings were only allowed in around 11am on Friday morning. I had the chance to walk the rows and check out all the eye candy. I made a beeline towards the Baranik booth so I could meet Mike in person and finally see my guitar in person. I'll get to that later as well.

I attended several workshops and demo concerts, the first of which was Michael Watts' "Talking Tone" on Friday afternoon. Overall an excellent lecture. Michael took the time to discuss what we may all be missing: Great tone doesn't necessarily derive from great technique, although that doesn't hurt. He emphasized that emotion and care may go a lot further towards improving one's tone. My take away message went something like "maybe the silence between the notes is as relevant as the notes." I'm paraphrasing something he said, which was a quote of some well known musician whom I'm forgetting. If you have the chance to see Michael speak don't miss it.



On Friday night Bob Singer and the rest of the organizers had arranged a night out on Beale Street, which is the heart of downtown Memphis. Having spent a fair bit of time in this town in the early 90s, I can definitively say that Beale has -significantly- improved. Very clean, fun, and safe. I would have never used those adjectives to describe Beale circa 1993. BB King's club was packed with luthiers and attendees. Although we ate at a different restaurant, I gather the food was excellent. Those who appreciate the concept of how Pork should be cooked can appreciate how outstanding Memphis BBQ is! Overall a very fun night. Who knew acoustic guitar luthiers could rock out electric blues?

On Saturday morning, I dragged myself out of bed around 0930 looking for the hair of the dog. I spent a fair bit of the morning meeting a few of our great luthiers, and was able to attend another very cool workshop, "Fingerstyle Orchestration" by Richard Smith. For those of you who are unaware, Richard is an instrumental genius. What a talent! Do yourself a favor and learn more about him. In the afternoon I attended Al Petteway's "DADGAD Blues" seminar. Although it was a little too crowded to pick his brain, I was able to learn a fair bit about how DADGAD is way more versatile than I thought.

I was very fortunate to see quite a few cool demo concerts on Saturday, specifically Al Petteway, Michael Watts, and Macyn Taylor. Al played Wingert, Micheletti and Bashkin guitars; Michael played Kostal's guitars, and Macyn played Petros guitars. A very cool idea that gave me great ideas on the various makers' tone.

On Saturday night we had the incredible privilege to go to Graceland. We were first able to take a tour of the house, which is fascinating. I confess to not being a huge Elvis fan, but perhaps my relative apathy is misguided. The whole evening made me rethink my approach to Elvis. The evening rounded out with an absolutely mouth-watering catering affair from Corky's BBQ in Memphis. I'll specifically call out Jeffery from the Graceland gift shop as a great ambassador of the South's most friendly people.

Sunday morning allowed me a few last moments to say goodbye to new friends and to take a few last pictures of some really drool-worthy guitars. I'll post pix of course at the end of the post but I'd like to take the time here to mention some of the fine luthiers that I met this weekend. Unfortunately these sorts of shows don't allow me to spend time with everyone of course, so please don't interpret any omission as anything other than time management.

Other than the most gracious host of Mike Baranik, whose guitar wizardry you can learn about in my thread "Baranik Meridian Fan Fret/Art Deco", I had a great time talking to and meeting a few other luthiers. Jason Kostal and Michael Bashkin's booths were right next to Mike's, and I was very fortunate to spend time with each of them. I can't say enough nice things about Mr. Bashkin and his guitars. He's one of the nicest people I've met, and his instruments are not only visual works of art, but also have some of the best tone and playability I've encountered (remember playability here, as I'll discuss this later as well.)

Mr. Kostal needs no introduction on this forum, so I'll just reiterate what others have said that he's super nice, and apparently superhuman as well. His aesthetic and tone rival any other top luthier today. I took a photo of this quartet which is well documented in another thread, mainly because I knew they'd never be in the same room together again.



There are quite a few other luthiers I'd like to mention here. Ken Franklin, who is a frequent contributor to this forum, is an extremely gracious host whose instruments both look and sound beautiful. An OM-ish model with Red Spruce and Pink Ivory really stand out in my memory.



Joel Michaud from Canada had some absolutely mind boggling small bodied guitars with super cool aesthetics, and, oh by the way, Tortoiseshell "Tree" candy.



Jimmy Caldwell from Texas had on hand some of the most faithful Martin-inspired guitars I've yet seen, with a few artistic twists. I was most impressed with an OM sized guitar with 30 style trim, Red Spruce on Brazilian Rosewood. Those who missed out on playing this guitar really should revisit his work if given the chance. It was really sublime.





I was fortunate enough to meet fellow Floridian Simon Fay, and let's say he and his work live up to the hype. Beautiful aesthetic, and an extremely nice guy. In addition to his design, he's known for shorter scales, in the <25'' range, which works very well with his design. Highly recommend.

Jay Lichty's booth was quite the treat! He had an absolutely killer parlour, maybe my favorite small body of the show. Fellow forum member John Thomas was also displaying his hand-made all-koa 12 fret parlour at Jay's booth. Jay runs a one week course that is designed to allow one to come to the shop in North Carolina and learn to build a guitar with him. John's experience with this is well documented in one of the recent issues of Fretboard Journal. Here's a photo of Mr. Lichty's killer offerings:



New York Luthier Martin Keith's guitars warrant a mention; they are truly out of the box designs that, to my ear, meld Gypsy Jazz archtop with traditional steel string flattop sound. Combined with a super cool design of adjustable neck, offset soundhole, floating bridge and tailpiece on a flattop make for one of the most unique guitars in recent memory.

[CoolerKing]

I had the pleasure of meeting Niklas Rotemar and playing some of his guitars. This young man is from Sweden and may be light years ahead of his European peers. Keep an eye out for him to break into the North American market soon.



Kathy Wingert's guitars need no introduction. She's about as gracious a host as can be asked, and her guitars sound pretty good too . No exaggeration, after the demo concert Al Petteway was muttering to himself unintelligibly something about "great guitar." If Al is impressed, I'm impressed. This one was an F model, fan fret with cocobolo and euro spruce.



I will take a -very-small paragraph to mention the most important thing I learned about custom luthier-made acoustics this weekend: I learned what I like and what I don't like. A somewhat less than rosy thing I have to say is that I played one or two acoustics this weekend that did not live up to the hype. There is variability in tone and fit/finish if one knows how to look hard enough. Not all of them were as playable in terms of set up, and perhaps that's personal preference. I mention this in full disclosure, mainly so that you know that there were multitudes of luthiers that I didn't get to meet or play their instruments; any omission of their discussion should not be interpreted beyond lack of time to meet them all; 99.9% of the work exhibited is really beyond par. I feel extremely fortunate to have played so many amazing instruments.

I had the great pleasure of meeting our excellent virtual host, J.R. Rogers. How lucky are we to have this guy around who had a vision 15 years ago that brought many thousands of people together focused on a collective love of the acoustic guitar!?!?! Thanks again J.R., and great to meet you.

I'll wrap up this very lengthy post with a special thank you to Bob Singer and his tireless staff. They did a most excellent job putting this thing together, and I greatly look forward to going again in 2017.

Here are a few photos of the Baranik booth, where I spent the majority of my time. Mike had three guitars there: A Retreux parlour in Palo Escrito and Blue Spruce, my Meridian in Cocobolo and Blue Spruce, and a 00 in figured mahogany and Red Spruce.



Probably the best affirmation I could have gotten about entrusting Mike Baranik to build my dream guitar is summed up in this photo:



Jason had it in his hands for about five seconds and asked was I interested in selling it.

Thanks so much guys! Awesome Weekend!

[Marcus Wong]

WOW! THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR SUCH A DETAILED POST ON MEMPHIS! People like me who haven't had the chance to attend have been waiting for something comprehensive like this... I love how you covered not only luthiers and guitars, but even down to the workshops, food, tours and hotel experience! It just goes to show how much effort Bob has put into organising such an amazing show.

Let's hope this initiation will lead to more sharing sessions from other attendees and the eye candy is of course much appreciated. Thanks again Matthew. You're a hero.

[colins]

Thanks Matthew, I can almost hear the guitars and taste the BBQ! Glad you enjoyed it.
Col

[ewh2]

Great right up Matthew.

I'm in agreement, it's an important thing to find out what one's individual tastes are, I myself have come across/played some high end instruments that have left me scratching my head to the reputation of those instruments.

I imagine aside from playing all the great guitars it must be quite nice to meet some of the luthiers and put to personalities to the guitars we are familiar with. I have a mental picture Jason Kostal would cover your back if a drunken hobo tried to start a fight with you.

[SJ VanSandt]

Excellent post - thank you so much for taking the time to do this! Next time I'm going - I don't care if I can afford any of these super guitars or not (this year it was definitely not). What a wonderful experience!

[Treenewt]

Thank you for sharing that Matthew! I lived vicariously though you as I read! Maybe we can line it up to make the next one, as I have family a little further west on I-40.

I've thought an experience like that would be sensory overload for me. Your post confirmed that it would be, but would be oh so worth it!

Thanks again, and I echo your sentiments to JR! I've really enjoyed and learned so much since finding the AGF a few years ago!

[dcn]

Hi Matthew,
Thank you for making my Monday far better than I expected - thoroughly enjoyable post!
Best,
D.

[lpa53]

Due to the birth of my first grandchild, I wasn't able to attend. Will the next one be in 2017?

[rogthefrog]

Thanks for the report!

Glad to see Kathy is making fanned fret guitars. I think mine may have been her first.

[Brad Ward]

Matthew,

Wonderful post! I did feel like I went to the show. Memphis is a cool place to visit.
Reminds me of the Tom T. Hall song "That's How I got to Memphis"

*If you love a guitar that you know
You go wherever it goes
That's how you got to Memphis
That's how you got to Memphis

* Terribly altered, and profound apologies to Mr Hall.

[steveh]

Hey - this is just what I was after: being there vicariously through you.

The time taken to do this is very much appreciated!

Cheers,
Steve

[Billy Boy]

Thanks, Matthew, for taking the time to write up your post and share your pictures and experiences...appreciate it very much!

[CoolerKing]

I certainly had fun. I believe the next show is slated for 2017, and I have also heard some rumblings about a show in Santa Barbara in October 2016. Fingers crossed.

[riorider]

Matthew - excellent review... thanks v much for both the pictures and the stories behind them.

I will definitely be there next time, and if Santa Barbara becomes a reality next fall I'll be there as well.

Meanwhile, I look forward to the next several weeks and months as you discover all that will be revealed in that Meridian!

Welcome to "the club"!

Best,

Phil