(Guitar) strings attached: A musical passion

“Any Texas evening,” says TH Staff Photographer Stan Williams, “You can stroll down a Hill Country lane, an inner-city street in Houston, or a farm road in Abilene, and chances are you’ll here the sweet strings of an acoustic guitar dancin’ on a gentle breeze while fireflies perform an aerial two-step. Maybe a banjo or a mandolin sweeten the mix. The siren song of the violin (better known as a fiddle in these parts) puts the icing on the cake. It’s a Texas symphony.”

Such romantic musings are born out of a love for music, and of a love for guitars. Williams describes how the December issue’s feature on luthiers came into being:

It all started when I was 12 years old.  I asked my dad to teach me how to play the ten-dollar Sears guitar that sat in a corner of his bedroom.  He spent the next several weeks teaching me how to play “Tom

On April 4, 1971, I was just discharged from the Army, and I was walking in downtown Houston searching for a pay phone when I walked by a freight salvage company.  I glanced through the open door and saw a guitar hanging on a wire from the ceiling; it was hanging on my back when I found the phone and called home.  That old Framus, made in Bavaria, still resides in my bedroom—even though it never could hold a tune through the upper octave.

Sometime in 1997, I test-drove a Chevy truck and dropped an entry in the box to win a Gibson J-200 guitar.  I was stuck in traffic on the Interstate when they announced on the radio that I had won.  I

That series of events led to my attendance of a guitar demonstration by Lawrence Juber, guitarist for Paul McCartney and Wings, at a local music store.  Juber demonstrated the features of each of the sponsor’s guitars and why the different types of wood produced different sounds and different body shapes produced different tonalities.
At one point, he asked the crowd, “Would any of you like to hear something on my own guitar?”  Every hand shot up instantly.  We all strained to see what he was pulling out of his gig bag; tt was a Collings, made in Austin.

For the next 20 minutes, he played a blur of chord changes with a sprinkling of incredible lead runs sprinkled about like bluebonnets on a hillside.  Every note spoke with clarity and brilliance and every chord rang with harmonious resonance. Goosebumps covered my neck and arms, feeling like electricity running down into my hands.  I suddenly understood what a friend had told me so long ago, that upon hearing Pavarotti sing in New York, his eyes filled with tears at the purity of voice.

I practically ran to the computer when I returned home, speeding down the information highway to find out more about this wonderful instrument that had so captured my senses.  Somewhere between the pages of delightful html coding, a thought burst into presence.  “How many other guitar-makers are there in Texas that I don’t know about?”  In this feature, I share with you some of the guitar-makers I discovered. I hope you enjoy it. –Stan Williams

See the full article in the January 2009 issue.

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