joy!

arg!

yes, yes... i know there are some typo's and misspellings here but blogger.com is fighting me in the editing department. i promise to fix it up asap. just letting you know that i care.

dig...

Finishing up the West Coast and on to Canada...

hey folks! it's been awhile, eh? we're here in saskatoon, canada waiting to load in and soundcheck for tonight's gig. here's a big update:

way, way back on our last day in del mar, carolyn, her brother, father and i went to check out the stone brewery in escondido, ca. makers of the delicious arrogant bastard ale, stone brewery prides itself on crafting world class beer with primo ingredients. very tasty stuff! we toured the factory and grabbed a bite to eat... not to mention enjoying the sample tasting of the brewery's finest.

the sills men enjoying the tour guide's rap:
carolyn and i left san diego later that afternoon en route to santa barbara. we stayed with our friends, billy and nichole. santa barbara seems to be just far enough from LA for it's own good and has a healthy mix of earthy/hippie culture with older fashionista soccer moms driving their monster suv's. we hiked some great trails in the nearby mountains:
we ate some mind bending tacos at la super rica. it's important to note that these tacos officially kicked off our 'Taco Challenge.' basically carolyn and i agreed to only consume tacos until leaving california. we wanted to see what kind of variety exists in the world of the humble mexican staple. we ate tacos for about a week! mmm....
we wandered around town and came across a dynamite organic food market. we picked up some fresh veggies, an apple pie, a couple pounds of salmon and snapper and made off to billy and nichole's to make some fish tacos for dinner. can you really go wrong with fresh fish cooked on a grill and some fresh n' tastsy mexcian spices?

onwards to san luis obispo to see the national resophonic guitar factory and take a tour. the link will take you to a page featuring a similar instrument that i own: a style 1 baritone model that you can see me playing with sophie sills in earlier posts. these guitars are close to my heart and the stuff of delta blues legend. think of these resonator guitars as the bridge between acoustic and electric instruments. designed in the late 1920's by john dopyera, the resonator guitar was created to amplify the guitar above the bombast of the era's big bands. as you can imagine, a simple acoustic guitar would not really be heard over the blast of a huge horn section and pounding drums. these guitars were popular with blues musicians as they could cut across the racket of a noisy bar as well as hawaiian steel players who loved their rich tone and long sustain. progress killed the popularity of these metal bodied beasts though as the electric guitar was introduced by the end of the 1930's and rendered resonator guitars obsolete in terms of comparative volume. click here to read a more thorough description of these fascinating and beautiful instruments. here are some photos of the factory tour:

our tour guide showing us the metal stamping machine:

some necks in various stages of assembly:



a side bending machine copied from taylor guitars. the guys at national watched videos of taylor's online tour about 60 times in order to build a copy of this machine:

cross section of a body prior to the installation of the resonating cone:

the body of a national mandolin. you could easily be the most annoying guy at your local bluegrass jam with one of these... they're loud as heck!


a single cone body roughly finished. as you can see, the edges of the guitar are still lumpy from the solder. this will all be sanded and polished to reveal the shiny, mirror-like finish of the completed instrument.
the staff kindly let me check out some newly finished instruments:

after san luis, we headed north, sneaking off the highway to see some of the forests and coastline on our way up the PCH:

our next stop was santa cruz to see my man, phil garrison. phil has been a close friend since high school and my first musical partner in the world of RnR. he and his girlfriend, alison, are studying chinese medicine and accupuncture at UCSC. we had a great time catching up and even snuck in a quick needling session... highly recommended! phil and alison:

phil goofin' with some of the crazy herbs he works with:
carolyn showing off her pin ball skills at the boardwalk in santa cruz:

we made it up to san fransisco for a quick visit with our friends, jay and hayden. they live right off golden gate park near haight-ashburry. along the way, we stopped in monterey to check out a classic car show:

we met up with jay and hayden in the park and along the way... behold wayne's world fans: the mirth mobile!!!

jay and his dog, coltrane:

we had to book it 10 hours north to portland, oregon to pick up our new drummer, jeremey. as you may know, eric reed is getting married in early october and as you can imagine, last minute wedding obligations precluded his availability for this canadian tour. jeremey is a friend from kelly kendrick's band; another project carolyn is involved in where she sings and plays upright bass. between our return from the balkans and our week at the jersey shore in august, we only had the opportunity to rehearse with jeremey once before the tour. i'm happy to say that he did his homework learning our set and is doing a bang-up job with Boss Tweed. our first show was in seattle where we played the sunset tavern. the gretsch rests after our first show:

we got a chance to spend a couple days in town and man oh man, what a great city! we lucked out and avoided the rainy weather the city is known for and got to check out some of seattle's restaurants, record and guitar shops... what else? the famous fish market:

continuing on our mexican food odyssey, we stumbled upon some of the best mexican food we've ever had at señor moose:

i had to try their signature margarita complete with jalapeño infused tequila and hot pepper flakes on the rim:

right along a strip of music venues, restaurants and guitar shops was bop street records, complete with a basement labyrinth of old vinyl. jeremey is at a loss:

easily the largest record i've ever seen. what would you even play this on?!

we stopped in at emerald city guitars, a swank guitar shop in town with a couple of nice '59 les pauls for sale... only $500,000. a bargain at twice the price! much more affordable was this super cool kay bass and matching amp set, supposedly recently drooled over by legendary gearhead, billy gibbons of zz top:

friends, many of you know where jimi hendrix stands in my life. well, the man himself as born and raised in seattle and as a tribute to him, mega bucks brainiac paul allen built the experience music project, a frank gehry-designed museum to the history of seattle's rock n' roll:

the museum features an exhibit based on the seattle's rock history, an amazing room showcasing the history of the guitar with iconic instruments owned by people such a kurt cobain, bo diddley, & eric clapton, not to mention ultra rare vintage instruments. the real treasure though: the jimi hendrix room. unfortunately photography is not allowed in the museum but i HAD to be sneaky and take this next photo. grouped together in one showcase are hendrix's woodstock stratocaster and pieces of three strats he famously smashed and burned. the one shown here was handpainted by hendrix, played during "wild thing" and then smashed and burned at the saville theater in 1967. also included in the showcase is a piece of the guitar hendrix burned at the end of his history making set at the monterey pop festival. click here for a youtube video of that. if you've never seen it, shame on you... ;) remember when they look into the ark of the covenant at the end of raiders of the lost ark? being there in person was kinda like that, without all that messy face melting. the saville strat:
oh and by the way- also included in the museum are hendrix's isle of wight 'butterfly' costume, the fender bass noel redding used through his career with the experience, and a variety of hendrix's diarys, hand written lyrics and some early childhood sketches.

wow

after carolyn and jeremey peeled my face off the exhibition glass, we headed east to our next gig in spokane. sunset at our hotel that night:

always on the lookout for friendly animals, we came across a super sweet australian sheep dog mix named 'biji' at the club:

on our way through idaho we stopped at a roadside beef jerky stand. we had to pick up some elk jerky:
alright folks... that about wraps up the west coast part of the adventure. after spokane we headed north in canada. i'll be posting all kinds of photos from our tour here. as a sneak peak, here's a photo i took as we drove through jasper national park: (remember you can click on these to enlarge)

Les Cutiepies, non? Mais oui...

we've been out here in del mar playing with sophie (age 3) and charlotte (5 weeks) and i had to share some photos. sophie has expressed a lot of interest in the guitar in her short tenure here on planet earth and you can imagine how excited that makes me... so i went ahead and got the rocker in making her first axe:
she still prefers the sound of the big boy guitar:
charlotte olivia sills, cubs fan in the making:

we caught laura's sister, chrissy, just before she left to fly home to boston:

Touring the Taylor guitar factory

on friday i had the opportunity to tour the taylor guitar factory in el cajon, california. these folks have been in business for 35 years and have created a well respected name for themselves in the acoustic guitar community based on their high quality and consistency of product. next to martin, taylor is probably the most well know and sought after mass-produced acoustic guitar. bob taylor, the founder, turned the guitar building community on its head by revealing and sharing his 'secrets' and design improvements with other builders in an effort to create more of a open dialog between luthiers. nowhere is this attitude of idea-sharing and education more evident than in the free factory tours available to the public during which you are encouraged to snap as many photos and ask as many questions as you like.

stacks of raw wood, cured and waiting to be shaped into guitars:
neck blanks:
view of the headstocks. the taylor logo is inlayed by a machine after a laser cut removes the wood from the headstock. a perfect fit every time. this is one of the many ways in which taylor is able to speed up production in order to pump out roughly 300 guitars a day.
the side bending room: taylor engineered many of its own machines to preform specific jobs in the building process. side bending is one of the most time consuming and difficult steps in crafting a guitar. these machines can bend the sides of a guitar into proper shape in 2-3 minutes. the wood blank is lightly sprayed with water then wrapped in thin paper before being fed into the bending plates. the plates themselves run at about 300°F in order to heat and mold the wood to shape.
these wooden molds retain the shape of the newly bent sides as they cool down after being pulled from the bending machines:
each step of the building process is preformed by 1-2 craftsman. here two guys work on gluing pairs of sides together:

the mold at work:

a stack of completed sides:
strips of kerfing are glued along the inside edges of the sides. kerfing is a strip of wood (typically mahogany or basswood) cut in small intervals so that it may bend and be molded to the shape of the guitar. up close it looks kinda like a wooden zipper. it is used to strengthen the bond between the top and back to the sides of the guitar by providing a larger surface area to glue these all together. the metal clips seen here were designed by talyor as a more efficient means of clamping the kerfing to the sides. a very particular angle must be used to ensure a tight bond. in the past, most builders simply used clothes pins as clamps but bob taylor engineered these specific clamps to provide the appropriate grip and angle necessary for this crucial step:
a quick shot of one of taylor's hallmark innovations, the 3 bolt neck attachment system. typically a guitar neck is attached to its body with a dovetail joint. while this method provides a strong bond between neck and body, it is quite time consuming to preform work on. as years go by and humidity changes and environmental stress add up, many guitars will require a 'neck reset' which means removing the neck from the body and reshaping the joint so that the guitar fretboard is level and plays in tune. this can be a 10-12 hour job and cost upwards of $600 by some estimates since a dovetail joint needs to be steamed open and then sanded, shimmed or reshaped. taylor's 3 bolt system allows the repairman to remove the neck and preform the necessary work in as little as a half hour. below is a neck and body pair set aside for demonstration purposes during the factory tour. you can see a single bolt on the top or fretboard side of the body and two more where the bottom of the neck joins the sides:
our tour guide holding up two tops to show off taylor's bracing system. the top on the left is a jumbo sized steel string, beefed up with extra bracing to compensate for the 150-200lbs of pressure a set of steel strings places on a guitar top. on the right is a nylon string classical guitar top with lighter bracing:
the machines that route out the sound holes:
holding docks with metal molds keep the glued together bodies stable as they setup:
here's a shot of a few cutaway instruments. interesting to note that the areas of the top and backs that are removed for the cutaway are left on until after the top, back and sides are all glued together:
a couple shots of the spray booth. bob taylor sat down with a team of chemists to develop a new finish which can both easily be sprayed onto a guitar as well as producing very little in environmentally toxic waste. essentially, the new finish is positively charged so that when it is sprayed at the guitar body, it is attracted to and instantly bonds with the wood. typically you will spray a fair amount of lacquer finish off into the air when finishing a guitar, wasting expensive materials but this chemical process ensures that the vast majority of the sprayed finish ends up on the guitar. the spray booth here used to be cleaned out and all the filtering material used to 'catch' the wasted finish was brought to the dump twice a day. now they only make two trips to the dump per week. nice way to save $ and the environment, eh?
enclosed in the spray booth is a robotic arm which grips guitar bodies by the three bolt neck attachment system. the arm moves the body around a spry nozzle, going over the top, back and sides in three coats. you can see a guitar body hanging in wait on the left side of the photo. when the robotic arm finishes with one body, it hangs it on a spinning window on the far side of the booth. the arm then pops back over to the other side and grabs the next instrument to be sprayed. a single spray booth operator sets up each new body in the 'ready' to be finished after hanging a freshly sprayed body up to cure.

a close up of the arm in action: you can see the arm on the left, holding the guitar body by the three bolt neck system with a steel rod.
finished bodies hanging with newly glued and clamped bridges:

and the final assembly room:

it takes about 10 days to build a taylor guitar start to finish. the tour was great and our tour guide was very knowledgeable about the entire process. the tour ran for about two hours and was pretty exhaustive in covering all the work that goes into crafting a taylor acoustic. if you're ever in san diego, it's definitely worth visit. pretty amazing stuff to see the whole process from start to finish!