A Moment for Jimmy Buffett

I have no Jimmy Buffet stories except for maybe some trauma from having to play the same ones in every cover band, ever. Oh yeah, and that time a friend of mine got hired to play a private function and nobody told him it was an AA gathering. He opened with Margaritaville. I have, however, seen a guitar built from parts by my late friend John C. "Uncle Johnny" Kirtland which was finished in clear-over-parrot fabric. It ended up with a friend who was a big Jimmy Buffet fan, a "Parrothead" in Buffettian lingo. Jimmy's best songs were not his famous ones, though they became the soundtrack to untold millions of good times by people having fun together all over the world. As any kind of creative person, to do that is an amazing miracle. And as we reflect on the passing of another icon of or time, let us also remember those who have impacted our lives from within our own circles - now passed, now gone, now dispersed. Let us wish them all well on their journeys, and carry them with us as we continue on our own. ~Scott B.

(CLICK BELOW for Sailing into September, Friday’s post…)

Sailing into September

We’ll start with a Facebook post from Monday. If you’re not hooked to the Scott Beckwith page ( https://www.facebook.com/scott.beckwith.35 - friend & follow), you’re missing most of what I post!

Happy Monday morning, friends! It's springtime. Yeah I know it's summer, heck it was 107 here yesterday. And I know in life seasons we eventually face autumn. And I know not everyone out there lives and works around perpetual creation, there for the choice to see it as that, where it's easy to find rebirth because you're surrounded by it. but I'm here to tell you within everything changing is that potential, a sunrise for something new to begin. It's Monday morning, we're coming up on the first of the month... these are great times to make those changes you know in your heart it's time to make. I'm just a guy who carves out guitars and basses... you don't have to take my word for it. But the butterfly, and this piece of wild pecan, let them be your teachers.

In fact, let these ALL be your teachers. A year ago, many crucial parts of what I build and a few long-term arrangements I had counted on for years had become unavailable due to big changes in the parts supply, their ripples, and changes suppliers and other small business owners were making to be most efficient with what THEY had to work with. I get it, I understand. But it still sucked rhino balls. Today? SIX of what might just be one of the best models to ever come out of the shop, the SPORT BASS, are in assembly. We just introduced this model at the beginning of July; I designed it in June, after looking at the Bean guitar (hanging here up front, leading them in) and some bodies for ITS next version I still had. It hit me. “This is the perfect pocket bass platform!” And, things as they are, I don’t have to run anything by committee. I go by the instincts that got me here. So, under 60 days later to have six actually built and getting parts put on? All of which I have? Unheard of. Yet here we are. Trust in the buoyancy that brought you this far, and keep creating, and keep showing up to do what’s next. It might be fall shortly, but it’s springtime, baby.

So let’s run some numbers, shall we? I get asked about them any time I’m anywhere and somebody’s heard or finds out what I do. Every time. “How many do you make a month?” Well, it’s not an assembly line and those aren’t the numbers all a-swim in my head, bub. Sufficient is how I think of those kind once we’re north of any worries and things are flowing. I think past business being taken care of, while the magic is happening it’s crude to be counting. I don’t count my blessings in numbers. Like what Rolls-Royce used to do when magazine testers would ask how many horsepower their engine makes. “Sufficient,” they’d say. No, the numbers that roll around in my noggin move like this…

That bejeweled pecan beauty is the 350th instrument to be routed by the Bosch Colt router I changed over to years back. 350 is a significant number, being the cubic-inch displacement of the engine in my beloved housetruck Moondancer. Moondancer is a 1982, and that was the year I started playing guitar, my first electric pictured here – a black Cort with gold racing stripes. Adding the numbers corresponding to the letters C O R and T gives us 55. In 1955 Rock and Roll's first #1 hit happened - Bill Haley and the Comets, with "Rock Around The Clock". There is not a clock in my world, friends. No watch either. To find the time, I have to find my phone. The main computer stays fairly accurate but I’ve covered its time display; the laptop drifts, so I know it means nothing. That’s three sources, though – a trinity of sources. And, though batch-crafted in pairs, that line of 6 Sports in assembly (2 of which are available in inventory) did end up going from finish into assembly in two batches of THREE. and at the front of that line in the picture? The Bean from the ‘90s? That was my 3rd guitar made. That ties it up in a nice little circle, doesn’t it? And this is why I don’t go hang out with people very often. Because they want to know who famous I’ve met and I’m trying to stitch together the friggin’ universe.

Thank you SO MUCH for being along, I hope you’re enjoying the cool mornings that have begun. Embrace the changes in the fall. Hold your line against the driftings that aren’t in a positive direction… but the ones that are, surrender to the wind. Life is more than fighting against its natural flow.

Listening to: Joe Henderson, So Near So Far: Musings for Miles; Lindsey Buckingham, Out of the Cradle; Los Lobos, Colossal Head.

Muse: The First Syllable in Music

Look at this! For the first time in quite a while, six bodies in finishing at the same time.

If you are running a business or in a band or on your own path doing something you felt called to, BELIEVE. Have faith and come up with a new idea when it’s needed; work on it. I know other factors play in, but believe in the buoyancy that brought you this far. Birdsong has been my big lesson in that over the decades, and it still thrills me to feel it. Through so much, this brand flies and finds its new springtime again and again like the rhythm of the seasons. I am so grateful to all involved – now, then, here, and beyond. The wild walnut Sport bass with the turquoise fill is AVAILABLE (as is the light colored poplar “Special” – check out the inventory page) – these all have necks ready and going into finishing over the weekend. More pics to come! And the next round begins – more Sports (Spii?) and some fancier carved scroll builds, including some lasts of the older models, and a layer of work on the D’AQUILA guitar. These will be wild to watch form and come together, and become, and fly out into waiting hands to do what they were created to do.

Speaking of callings and inspirations, craft and destiny/dharma, a friend asked about the concept of “The Muse.” To me that’s very similar to asking someone to define the Great Mystery. You’ll get everything from “There is absolutely nothing” to “Everything is God” and five different versions of any major plateau along that vast spectrum between. So here’s what I wrote. I don’t present it to get you to think like me, just to ponder. The ways and forms and passtimes of what is beyond our senses-based perception, they don’t have to be wars or conflict over what we, from here, can only grasp a pinky toe of anyway. They can simply be meditations. Things to think about. Most I know who living lives of creating ponder such things…

Something greater - spirit, entity, or energy - that feeds you creative juice you then form into your art. That's how I'd word it. But it's bigger, divine, unseen. Insanely creative people - words selected carefully because it's a fine line - often pass a point where they think it's all them coming up with all the stuff they come up with. Then we start talking muse. Source inspiration conveying something very deeply into your soul or heart. Seeding the garden or sprouting it in an instant; giving that spark. I could say the highway is my muse, the road. Everybody knows it's my mistress, but if I go out and answer the call, songs pour out of me. Words form in my head as what bubbles up bubbles over and out. But really, we are ingredients, and that mixture invokes some magic from somewhere bigger than the road and bigger than me. Like the sculptor who feels a wave of love, or the painter that feels the Divine in a sunset and paints their masterpiece. Inspiration but higher and deeper within. Generally applied to creative endeavors, creative inspirations. That's just how I understand it - there are many paths and ways it presents… and ways WE present it.

Source of big inspiration beyond what I can tickle out of myself, and of deeper things than I could muster on my own. But that is its form for me, and there is something behind that form. And that I don't know, not from here, with the body, and the senses, and the limited consciousness it and they can house and make sense of. Because those senses only understand this world, and what's beyond them is beyond that. Trying to define THE muse is like trying to define “God.” It's a moving target of many forms appearing only in its prints and the hands of those it inspired. If you see it, you see some of it in everything. Creation. Maybe the muses are in charge of the music & arts division.

I can find and offer deepest reverence from many circles, but stop short of saying I KNOW or defining That Greater as I may see its form. And That Greater – The Divine - that is where the source is, and the creative source... is the muse. The BIG M Muse. That forms in many ways for many tribes. That is their way. Ours is to find a river and take it toward the ocean. So as with any talks of things that transcend OUR place and time and way, there are many layers to it. But it too is a river, and it too flows from somewhere. One may say, "Oh - it begins over there." Where they see it begin. But really it begins in the mountains, and in the rain. And the maker of the rain. We see its manifestation as its form. But it forms there like that for its own part of nature and creation; and perhaps to inspire those who will look deeper.

*

The anniversary of Woodstock, that little gathering in 1969 in New York, was this week. Like the lyric in the song of the same name, written by Joni Mitchell, it truly WAS a garden. Aside from that many people truly together, it’s amazing to think of the seeds from it who found their way on the stage that weekend, and went on to bloom millions of others as part of all the music that came after, and the moments in our lives they became part of the soundtrack to. We all rise by what we share with the other, how we treat each other. Wrap that in whatever ism you feel you need to so you can discredit the very notion, not have to bother with it, no matter how transparently thin you have to stretch that label to do it. It’s true, and it works when it is allowed to. It’s in your good book, whichever is your way. It’s in there if you read it; and then you either believe it, or you don’t believe it. It’s not easy, but it is that simple.

“How’s this relate to buildin’ guitars?” Man, if I have to explain it…

So, next week I’m going to do things NOT in the heat of the shop, so I won’t have an update for you next Friday. The week after that though, pics and more focus on the actual wood and wire of what’s going on in here right now! Yesterday it was 107. Deep in layers of shade on a back wall that never sees sun, we still crest over into “HF” territory every day. The green shop sees sun. I see sun. I need to give this summer a week to break, it’s cumulatively slowing me down. Hope you’re staying cool, my friends! Thanks for reading!

Listening to: Peter Gabriel, So; Bill Evans, Moon Beams.

"Wasaaaap?"

Greetings familia, time for a Friday update! Hope things are well with you, and you’re staying cool inside and out.

Good luck to whoever won the billion dollar lottery, and I mean that. You’re going to need it. Obviously, if you so choose, lots can be impacted before you peel out the driveway with that last million or two never to be seen again. The potential is astounding but the last thing on earth I’d want to be is famous everywhere for is suddenly having a billion dollars. There’s no hiding from that unless you spend most of it hiding from it. I’d try a few million, though… heck, a few hundred grand and I’d be all set. I’d just play music and road trip and carve out http://www.sbeckwith.com/daquila guitars ‘til the money ran out, and try my best to time it with the last downbeat.

Speaking of, we lost Robbie Robertson and Sixto Rodriguez (an amazing story, the “Sugarman” documentary) this week. Remember the artists and musicians who impacted your path and offer their spirit some music from your essence. Create in their stead. Feed some hunger in their place. Pass something along in their honor. Their ripples now live in us, through us, by us. I do that and play their music while I build your guitars and basses, their vibrations going into the pores of the wood and in with the threads of the screws.

On that note, notes on the batch of Sports! (“Batch of Sports? I saw them open for Bob Seger.”) They are being pair-crafted, two at a time. These are the latest version of our take (as short scale specialists for 20 years) on the guitar-scale “pocket bass.” Ours are HUGE sounding, easy playing little basses with no weird strings or electronic quackery or odd tuning. They fit wherever, you take it out, and play your gig. Simple. Two walnut beauties are in finishing just waiting for their necks, the next two – a poplar “Special” and red & black double topped alder, have made it through routing and shaping into sanding. The two on the shop bench now are “wild woods” getting embellishments in their natural character… the walnut real turquoise in the radiating checks from its knot, and the pecan a mixture of turquoise and amethyst. All can be watched on the BUILDS page. Two of these – the wild walnut and the poplar, are inventory builds worked in with the orders. Want one?

So, last weekend I took a few adventure days and set out on the winding two lanes of Texas headed west and south. I dubbed it the Love Supreme trip, beginning with that John Coltrane album as the opening soundtrack. I wandered through such places at “Stonehenge 2” around Ingram (which also has a couple of Easter Island heads - hey as far as I’m concerned, the Moai the merrier), and Sonora, and into Del Rio – having a great conversation with Border Patrol on the 2-lane headed back. They were cool. I was the guy who looked like a “Coyote” all roadworn, bearded, with a bandana around my neck, and a pack and bedroll in the back of the car. Hey, I roll prepared! I didn’t mention the tent. But what great miles through the deserted open areas. A few degrees cooler and I’d have car camped under the stars – there were many places to pull off and in and go unseen for days. There is something out in the nothing some souls are called to. That’s where we reconnect and recharge. That’s where we connect to That Greater. Temple in its purest form. The desolate hills and valleys revealed themselves in scenes to flute & tabla music from India and the sonic meditations of Alice Coltrane. By Sunday evening I had ended up back in Austin watching jazz and eating pizza at the Love Supreme pizza bar… get the Margherita pizza with the side of Calabrian chiles. Thank me later. And go check out jazz guitarist Jacob Wise wherever you can. He had Alex Bilodeau on upright bass, and these guys were fantastic! So much music in this world to enjoy, I can’t imagine spending most of my time bent over differences or immediately going full rail against what’s different to me. When music opened me up, it opened me up to being more open than closed. Something about the good vibration of sound speaks to my deepest and highest; same for life. Go eat some pizza and feed your soul - everything here isn’t to be taken equally as seriously.

Throwback Thursday. It was 1987, I was 18. My world was about to turn into a big adventure, but I didn't know that. All I knew was I was committed to the path of music and wherever it would lead me. I was pumping gas on Cape Cod when a customer I'd chat about music with came in in his Peugeot sedan. "I'm listening to the new Robbie Robertson album, which is an absolute masterpiece," he said. Part of my devotion to the path was to take such statements from older people who knew more as seeds. I didn't know who Robbie Robertson was. I didn't understand how groundbreaking The Band had been. It wasn't my bag and I didn't have that kind of depth to my musical awakenings yet. But I bought a cassette of that album without knowing anything but that it had moved someone to say that about it, and listened to it, accepted it as it was, and enjoyed what I enjoyed of it. That simple.

Now I like it more, along with other amazing works of that time - like Peter Gabriel's "So", for example. But by merely embracing this that meant something to another, more seeds and artists and music and threads of influence and inspiration were brought into my life. And this has been my constant higher education, the garden that has grown anything of worth I have done, and remains my river going forward. So, on this day, I dedicate those ripples to the man in the Peugeot, to Robbie Robertson, and to all the teachers who seem to appear when we are ready. I got home from my little journey and shaved, just to make sure that young guy is still in here, still up for the adventure. He is.

Before I left on my little jaunt, I handed in Vol.4 of The Audio Notebook. This ongoing release of a lifetime’s worth of songs is happening here: https://jennifinlaypromotions.bandcamp.com/album/audio-notebook-vol-3 Vols. 1 - 3 are up, please download to help keep the project going. I have about 30 more volumes to go! A reminder that my books, including A Craftsman’s Path, are here with links: http://www.sbeckwith.com/books.

Thank you for your interest in anything I have to say in words or in wood. Warmest wishes whoever you may be and a blessed now time to you wherever you find yourself.

Listening to: Oliver Nelson, Blues and The Abstract Truth; John Coltrane, A Love Supreme; Maharishi Gandharva Veda Vol. 16 no. 5 - Raga Puriya Dhanashri; Richie Havens, Grace Of The Sun; Alice Coltrane, A Monastic Trio.

A New Dawn and an Old Friend

It's been an amazing week out here in the little workshops in the woods, where orders are being taken and parts are being ordered and wood is being crafted into tools of creation. Sounds so simple, doesn’t it? That’s the way it’s supposed to be. It was like that for a long time; the past couple of years, not so much. Being caught up on builds for the first time since 2004 (deliberately by choice in our case), some new models using new parts, a weekly very progressive neatening and refinement of shop areas and processes, and though it’s been hotter than Satan’s nuts, by God it feels like springtime again!

Work is good; sweat is righteous. But every day a battle? No, that’s exhausting and life doesn’t have to be that way. Doors and windows open, John Scofield A Go-Go, Dave Brubeck Jazz Goes to College, and a few Bill Evans trio and quartet recordings have been the tunes to a new batch of new designs in a new dawn. Jazz is the music for “becoming” in here, coming in as planks and becoming bass bodies-to-be. Aerosmith is for routing. But music with improvisation as its DNA is the soundtrack for this stage – meandering, flowing like a river. Long Grateful Dead jams, Miles Davis’ early ‘70s sonic explorations, those too. And Bill Evans… one of the biggest musical influences on me now, though I’m not a pianist and don’t play real jazz. His influence on me is harmonic, and that’s deep in the basis of everything any way it comes out. I like how this guy stacks his notes into chords and the notes he connects them with. It can sound very complex but there is a simplicity to it underneath, this note and… then… that. Delicious.

“The Bean” guitar was not my first build, but it was the first I designed off of a blank page, 25 years ago. Completed in June of 1998, it taught me more about what was to become my career than any other. An exercise in simplicity and versatility, how their extremes can work together, and - in that – a bit about life as well. Its influence can be seen in the lastest Birdsong bass, the Sport (models). With the Bean (originally referred to as the ”S1”), I wanted one simple line and an organic shape, like something that could have grown from the earth. One simple pickup that, with simple controls wired to be a bit more interactive with each other, could be versatile while not sounding like other common guitars. I needed twang, sing, and some cool and dark smokey tones – so I aimed for Garcia twang, Santana sing, and Stills “Wooden Ships”… and I got really close!

Once it was done, it looked like a bean. And I had a little music shop up in Massachusetts at that point with a helper who called me “Scott Bean,” so the name stuck. To the guitar, not me, except when I hear from Alan G. Long before Birdsong, this was the first model I made and sold more than one of, so it taught me about templates and process. I used it live, taught a bazillion lessons on it, used it in the studio. It sat in well because it sounded different, having its own voice that wasn’t a Strat or Tele or a Les Paul. This shape grew a tiny upper point for the ”S2” which never happened – a big move, short scale bass ideas, and Birdsong DID.

Having recently turned an original S2 body into the Sport bass prototype, I missed my old friend and took it out of its dusty, musty bag for a photo shoot. It felt so good in the hands again; this is a stage in my life where I am craving the simplicity of life I’ve known at times, times with less and much less concern… but trying to balance that with what life has become and the blessings that came. Certainly not overly big or complex, just filled with more than I dreamed of or ever really planned for from the back of a van out on the highway with one key. And that young guy is still very much alive in me and sticks his head in the door when things become more difficult than they should be. “You lookin’ for me, bub?” I’d say no, but he’s the guy who draws the lines and writes the words. So yeah, man, come in.

The Bean reminds me of a lot – about that time and about who I am, and about the essence of anything I craft, whether words and music or wood and wire, or the life that gets lived and arranged around these. I’m amazed to be here 30 years later, in a garden partly formed by those dreams, as followed and chased though at times just which is unclear. I sit in the rebuilt workshop of a mentor now moved and mine for many years. There is a screen in front of me where, if I filter out all the trash, I can see video posts from Neal Schon, one of the sounds that woke me up to music over 40 years ago, doing his daily jams to keep his chops up. People can comment, ask a question. He answers. Unprecedented access and connection. I can reach YOU in a dozen ways wherever you are; we can talk, share, do business. This is an amazing age we live in, with incredible tools. They simplify and complicate at the same time, and I just have to try not to do that. Years ago I reached the limit of the technology I can reasonably work, and I’m watching that grow obsolete by the day.

But there is a liberating feeling that comes with loss, and we do the best of what we’ve held a disservice by not embracing that too. Because life is amazing and there is more to it than what’s next on a list. Its magic is often to be discovered where you just follow the calling and show up like some missing piece of a magic moment. That’s what it feels like to have a great song fall through your head or a design that really works come out of your hands. Those take time and space left open, and room in life for the quest, to be wandering but not lost, for me at least. That’s when they come. That field is the playground of the muse. And the muse likes me to be distracted from the distractions. Nothing full to the point of diminishing returns. Staying rooted to what really works. Making the basics the most important, and bringing my highest and the absolute best of all this life and time has to offer TOWARD THAT.

This little guitar may only mean a lot because of what happened after it, but it represents even more to me now than it did when it was the greatest thing I’d ever done. I’ve always wanted to get back to them and make more, and maybe there will come a time that happens. When, after having come so far, maybe it’s time to go back. For now, onward! T.S. Eliot: “…and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”



Thanks!

19th Anniversary sale is done, thank you SO much to all who bought, ordered, checked in, reached out, looked over, or in any other way was a part of these great days! 19 years, in the books. Onward to 20. Hoping you and your circle had a wonderful 4th! Onward, with gratitude and plenty of good work to do. ~Scott the woodgnome