Have you ever witnessed a performance where you’re instantly stunned by the shear impact of musical talent, emotion, vibrancy and excitement that you know you’re in for a whirlwind, two hour non-stop treat!? Well, that’s what we experienced at the Liane Carroll Trio’s performance at the Oxford Jazz Festival’s headline concert a couple of weeks…
Paul Heumiller is one of those affable, level headed people you hope you’re going to be lucky enough get on the other end of the phone when you really need some sound advice from an experienced professional. He listened patiently to my various attempts at describing the sound I was looking for and my hope, after many fruitless visits to numerous ‘high street’ music stores, that Dream Guitars would be able, finally, to fulfill my long term ambition to acquire a ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ instrument of superb quality.
In an earlier article, I wrote about once owning a rather wonderful example of a Martin D-28, albeit very briefly. The ‘heavyweight’ sound it produced and its ability to project that sound to the back of a hall was stunning – a never to be forgotten experience. Mixed in with that memory are my distant recollections of Martin Carthy’s sound, Nick Jones’ sound and the magical Martin Simpson, among many others. I asked Paul if it was feasible to capture all of this in one instrument. He said the only thing to do would be to visit the studio and play a wide range of guitars until I found the one that most closely matched the sound I had in my head.
Great advice. He was right of course, so I arranged to visit the studio in early March, and did just what he suggested – for nearly three days! …….
Finding myself in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and having decided to visit all the local music stores on a guitar hunt, I stumbled across Blue Moon Music. It’s an unassuming place from the outside, but once you step inside you find a veritable treasure house of vintage tube amplifiers, double basses, mandolins, violins and of course, acoustic guitars. Having spent many uninspiring hours playing Martin, Taylor and Alvarez acoustics in the other, more premium local stores, I was not expecting to find anything special at Blue Moon. I could not have been more surprised.
I think I played my way all the way along the guitar racks until I found the Bourgeios. As soon as I picked it up I knew it was a ‘special’ instrument and I suppose it took me all of ten seconds to recognise how alive it felt. I must have lost the next hour just playing it and getting a feel for its special qualities. The owner of the store told me its background. It had been sitting in a collection, unused, until very recently and was underplayed and he thought that it would ‘open up’ when fully played in. He told me that it was hand made in 2002 by a luthier called Dana Bourgeios from Lewiston, Maine who makes about five hundred guitars a year from carefully selected tonewoods.
This guitar has an Adirondack (Appalachain) Spruce top and Bubinga (African Rosewood) back and sides. It resonates beautifully, with a full bass, a superbly balanced, sweet, singing treble with choir like overtones and outstanding sustain. In the store, it was one of those ‘decisive moments’, when you just know that something was meant to happen. So, of course, I made an offer and ……
It’s been a while since I picked up and seriously played any of my very small collection of guitars. They’re instruments I’ve acquired through my on-and-off love affair with the guitar, which began when I was sixteen. Like many teenagers back then I was a member of a ‘rock’ band (The Blue Diamonds) playing covers…
What is it that drives a musician to learn to play? It’s an intriguing question; one that has always fascinated me. Albert Einstein understood the relationship we have with music. He once said “If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music, I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music…. I get most joy in life out of music.”
Other than a brief flirtation with the violin at school and dabbling at my Grandmothers’ pianos whenever we visited them, it wasn’t until I started work that I was able to buy my first instrument. A sixteen year old engineering apprentice earned just £3.50 a week in those days, out of which you had to pay for food, lodging and rail fares to London. It didn’t leave very much, so it took way too long to save six guineas (that’s £6.30) to buy the sunburst, steel strung, Selmer acoustic guitar from Francis, Day and Hunter’s music shop in London’s Charing Cross Road, one dark and rainy December night.
It didn’t last me long, but it got me started, and like many aspiring Hank Marvins, I worked my way through ……
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