The 2011 Santa Clarita Cowboy Festival

I'm your huckleberry...

Howdy folks! Last weekend, the missus and I drove south through Bakersfield, all the way to beautiful Santa Clarita, California. There, on the site of former owner Gene Autry's Melody Ranch, was the 18th annual Santa Clarita Cowboy Festival. We went to spread the good word about SCGC, setting up a display of 5 guitars for festival attendees to try out.

What made the festival unique was the setting itself: on the ranch stands an authentic old western movie set. The 1/4 mile long 'town' on Melody Ranch has been used in over 750 western films since 1916. The larger than life set is a wonderfully cliched image of the Old West built in vivid detail. Or is it simply cliched since we've seen it in so many westerns? Regardless, what brought the set to life were the people roaming up and down the street, dressed in full-on old west cowboy chic. These folks weren't foolin' about! The costumes were amazing! Many of the attendees have worked as movie extras. I met folks who had been extras in films such as Tombstone and TV shows such as Deadwood and Wild West Tech. At either end of the town were two stages where musicians including Don Edwards, The Hot Club of Cowtown, and The Sons of the San Joaquin performed. We also caught acts by cowboy poet, Waddie Mitchell and a spectacular trick gunslinger exhibition by Joey Dillon. Special care was taken to emphasize that the music at the festival was cowboy music, not just country. This was the original country music.

Ok... on with the photos! (click to enlarge)

view down main street, Saturday 11am. SCGC was set up in the third building on the right:











fiddler in the street:

cowboy singer on horseback:











Hot Club of Cowtown performs:


The store fronts along main street were full of vendors selling everything from hand tooled leather gun belts, buck skin jackets, tacky cowboy art, custom made spurs, cowboy cook books and a whole lot more. I finally found a hat that fit my large melon:


The most recent addition to our company's stable of professional guitarists is legendary cowboy singer, Don Edwards. He and SCGC president, Richard hoover, collaborated to make a signature model guitar, honoring Don's 50th year in the entertainment business. Don headlined the festival and was a major attraction at the SCGC booth. Well, I should say his 6'5" cardboard like-age was a huge attraction. Here's a photo of a young fan at the SCGC booth:

A photo of Don Edwards and me at the SCGC booth:


A Japanese gentleman who spoke broken English stopped to check out a few of our guitars and even sang a few old cowboy tunes for us:

Shopping for wares in one of the many tent vendors on the outskirts of 'town':



Me on day 2, having just picked up the Otis B. Rodeo horseshoe from the blacksmith across the street from us:

It was a great time! The folks at the festival showed a lot of interest in the guitars we had on display and man oh man... what fun to be duded up and part of the fun in this over the top weekend! We're already looking forward to next year.

Archtop Guitars at The Met!!!

I had the pleasure of checking out the incredible exhibit on archtop guitars at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan a couple weeks ago. Simply stunning! Here is a link to the exhibit's website. While working at Rudy's Music in 2007-8, I was lucky enough to play many of Rudy's archtop guitars, some of which are included in the exhibit. The experience of playing, hearing, and just studying the fine craftsmanship of these guitars made by D'Angelico, D'Aquisto, Monteleone, Stromberg & Gibson was a major inspiration. I credit those guitars with getting me into luthiery. It's a rare and humbling experience to play these instruments. What a sound!

I should also note that Rudy Pensa released a magnificent large format book, "Archtop Guitars: The Journey from Cremona to New York" on the three great New York archtop builders: D'Angelico, D'Aquisto & Monteleone. My wife surprised me with my own copy and it's just jaw dropping, gorgeous stuff! Highly recommended. More info at Rudy's website.

New Acoustic Build Begins

Well folks, it's finally time to make saw dust again. I began work on another guitar build the other day. This one will be an acoustic dreadnought. Here are the basic ingredients:

L to R: ebony fingerboard, a small piece of cocobolo for the overlay (a thin decoative laminate on the front of the guitar's headstock), the brownish wood its bookmatched Indian rosewood for the back (the matching sides are not pictured) and two pieces of bookmatched Adirondack spruce lie on what look like two 2x4s. Those 2x4s are in fact a set of tiger flamed maple that I'll be carving into the guitar's neck.

The top, or soundboard, gluing up:


and the back:


You can see two sets of orange clamps applying pressure from either side of the wood in the above photos. The four blocks are firmly wedged under a steel bar to apply downward pressure, keeping the wood flat and preventing buckling. I used hot hide glue to join the soundboard and will also use it to glue the braces to the top. Hide glue is an animal derivative that has been used for thousands of years and has many advantages over synthetic wood glues. Commonly used in violin construction & repair, hide glue dries to an incredibly hard, crystalline strength. This extreme hardness greatly enhances vibration transfer from one piece of wood to another, producing a stronger and fuller tone from the instrument. One disadvantage though, is the fast working time. Hide glue is kept warm in a glue pot and applied with a brush. It is necessary to work very efficiently as the glue sets up extremely quickly as it cools off outside of the heated pot. Read more about hide glue here.

Acoustic guitars are typically built with mahogany necks but I had the hankering to do something a little different. Below are my two maple slabs sandwiching a black decorative strip. When the instrument is done, the black strip will run a simple pinstripe up the back of the neck.

The more clamps the merrier! The next day, clamps removed:

More to come!

Wild Saturday Nights: West Coast Edition

Well folks, what they say about California is true: it's laid back out here. You might call it "slow." Our wild Saturday night is made up of a tasty homemade soup



and some steel guitar searching on the ol' YouTube. Here's a couple jems we found:

LA based Western Swing combo (featuring the amazing Jeremy Wakefield on steel) The Lucky Stars:



this exotic weirdness:



Bob Wills:



and another Wills song ($2 if you can identify the guitar being player upside down by a lefty)



In other news, the RV Bigsby guitar has been refretted and a new nut made. It plays a million times better and will be seeing some action this fall here in Santa Cruz. Perhaps it will be seen at Carolyn Sills' upcoming Patsy Cline Holiday Spectacular at Don Quixote's on December 15th.

R.I.P. Klon Centaur Overdrive

Well maybe rest in peace is a bit much.

One of my favorite overdrive pedals, the Klon Centaur, is no longer being made. As of December 22 of last year, the production of the Klon ceased, presumably to allow full time devotion to the R& D of the infamous pedal's successor. Below, the first version of the Klon featuring a gold finish and red centaur logo:

The Klon Centaur Overdrive is a hand made guitar effect pedal built one at a time by the inventor. It is a simple and sturdy unit with a unique look. Apparently the original unit has been discontinued in favor of a new version housed in a smaller chassis. The new Klon-Jr is slated for release sometime this year. No word on any mods to the circuit design. I stumbled upon the Klon years back thanks to a tip from Jim Campilongo. Check out another House of Twang post about him here.

Smaller pedals are all well and good. There's nothing like conserving space on your pedal board, especially if you're one of those fellas whose uses a ton of different stomp boxes:

I love guitar effects. However, for the music I play, I rarely feel the need for anything more than a Fender amp's spring reverb and tremolo coupled with a good analog delay (I'm a big fan of the Maxon AD80) or even better: the lush tape delay tones of a Fulltone TTE (Tube Tape Echo). So in this case I'm not to broken up over the idea of the Klon shrinking in size. I have to imagine the fella that makes the Klon will retain the stomp box's unique sound. It's hard to describe what the Klon does but in a nutshell, is gives your amp more of itself.

Mo' betta.

Using this pedal, you can get that wide open, cranked amplifier sound without having to turn your amp up to deafening volume levels. I employ the Klon when using a higher powered amp so I can get a nice overdriven tone without being too loud. When Boss Tweed was touring Europe, I just used the Klon and my Maxon delay night to night. I was always able to dial in a sound that I liked no matter what the provided backline might have been. To my ears it is exceptionally transparent whereas many Tubescreamer-type pedals kill your guitar's natural tone with thin, mid-rangey overdrive. Not into crazy overdrive? Then back off the Klon's gain, add a pinch more volume and it's like putting a tone magnifying glass on your amp. Mo' betta.

The Klon is a fairly mysterious beast. I say mysterious because the fella that makes these things pours some kind of black goop all over the circuit board inside the pedal in an effort to protect his design from would-be copy cats (below). Note the stamped out area for secure positioning of the 9 volt battery. Smart. Why aren't more effects built this way?

Like most guitars, amps and effect pedals, it's hard to understand what the Klon sounds like and how it interacts with your guitar rig without actually playing it. Problem is, the Klon is sold direct from the builder/inventor himself, so you can't just zip down to your local guitar shoppe and try one out.

Either you like it... or you don't.

A good saying for all guitar gear. Not everyone likes this pedal, of course. There are numerous haters out there and that's fine. This guy goes on and on saying what a gimmick the Klon is while pimping his own overdrive pedal. Classy. To me, you're missing the point if you don't use the Klon with your live rig. It is made with the performing guitarist in mind, with amp dialed up to loud, not the bedroom picker forced to play at a tame volume.

For guitarists, the internet buzz over the Klon is heavy. For me, I'm happy to have scooped one up for cheap on eBay a few years back. Checking in on the 'Bay today, the same old Klon Centaur is fetching prices close to a grand! I'm sure there will be all sorts of speculation over whether the new version is as good as the old one. We'll see...

Either way, I'm proud to own one and consider it a sound investment... yuk yuk.

Below, the second version of the Klon which I use:

Guess we'll have to wait and see what the new version holds. I throw my support behind this pedal and its inventor. He has managed to carve out a niche in an over saturated market. Based on my experience with the Klon, I expect the new version to be as good if not better than its predecessor.

Oops!

I Did It Again...

Sure we all know the Britney Spears pop song but my mind was blown last week when a co-worker played me Louis Armstrong's original version of the song, recorded in 1932 in Chicago. Click here for the Depression-era version and here for more info on the tune.

Free Music!

Folks, I've never been one to download someone else's music for free. Some people consider it illegal. But I do enjoy listening to old records and if I can get 'em for free, so much the better. I thought I'd share a link to bunch of old time music compiled by the good people over at The Old Time Hearld. It's got all kinds of goodies from the great radio station, WFMU in New Jersey, Alan Lomax's archives and even a site called the Honking Duck. This music was recorded long ago and aside from these online archives, may only be available on the original 78s. Click here for links to all the freebies.

Over the past couple years I've turned into a certified Western Swing nut. Western Swing was a popular form of music emerging in the '20s and fading from the public eye by the late '50s/early 60s. With influences ranging from swinging jazz to cowboy, hillbilly, polka and country music, the large, multi-piece western swing orchestras of the day dominated the airwaves and dance halls from Tulsa to San Diego. I think of it as cowboy jazz: sophisticated yet light hearted. Fathered by stars of the genre such as Bob Wills, Milton Brown, Cliffie Stone and Spade Cooley, Western Swing brought together top notch, inventive musicianship, wholesome, cornball lyrics and a dance-able beat. Instrumentally, the focus moved from horns, accordions and fiddles in the early '30s to amplified electric guitar (thank you Charlie Christian) and non-pedal/lap and pedal steel guitar in the '40s. Instrumentalists like Leon McAullife, Joaquin Murphy, Merle Travis and Jimmy Wyble pushed the limits of what was possible on amplified strings. Check out this link to another fellow blogger, Western Swing on 78. He's also got a listing of current bands playing this music. Great stuff!