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THE SWEETEST SOUND A LUTHIER HEARS? It's "SOLD." Musicians Terry Kingen, left, and Bear Davis might have been helping out the luthier whose guitars they played at mini-concert demos at the La Conner Guitar Festival last weekend. More than 1,000 people, primarily men, came to sixth annual show in Maple Hall. At least one bought a guitar.
PLAY A SONG FOR ME – Jack Dwyer displayed his musical talent on a Cedar Hollow Guitars model Saturday afternoon at a La Conner Guitar Festival mini-concert in the upper room at Maple Hall. Some 40 half-hour mini concerts played at Maple Hall, with more at four other venues around town.
ANOTHER SMASHING SUCCESS – Maple Hall was filled with the sound of music and its main hall overflowed with tables full of stringed instruments last weekend for the sixth annual La Conner Guitar Festival. John Kinnaird packed up his guitars from the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. Like every other instrument there, his were beauties.
A couple thousand artisans, luthiers, musicians and wood millers from as far away as Italy and Spain, landed here last weekend for the sixth annual La Conner Guitar Festival to see, listen to and play the handcrafted and carefully sourced guitars and mandolins.
Most prices ranged from $8,000 to $26,000.
"I make high-end rectangles!" said walnut-wood lover Felly Smith.
His stack of walnut and red cedar, milled to the size of the neck and body shape of a guitar, begged for a luthier.
Before milling wood for guitars, Smith crafted percussion instruments for members of bands such as Los Lobos and the Grateful Dead.
The front face of an acoustic guitar is usually made from Sitka spruce. The back comes from hardwoods such as walnut – from the Willamette Valley, red cedar – from Skagit Valley – myrtle and other hardwoods, Smith saod.
He pointed me in the direction of Tyson Soth of Spokane, former woodworker and cabinet maker, now luthier. Smith suggested I see the guitar Soth had made from wood he had purchased from him. It was a beauty.
Building guitars was Soth's method of coping with his 13-year-old child undergoing extensive cancer treatment. She is well today.
Next to the guitar Soth had made from Smith's wood, was a poster of "Light the Way" Children's Cancer Coalition in Spokane. He is donating the guitar to the coalition for their care of his daughter.
Ben Feldman, apprentice to Rob Goldberg, a luthier from Haines, Alaska, must love working with his hands. He built a 39-foot sailboat and helped Goldberg build his shop in Port Townsend. "Ruined all my hopes of anything academic," he said. He likes to hang out in lumber yards. "It's rare to come across a tree with the music in it."
Goldberg, tucked behind a table filled with milled slices of Sitka Spruce and redwood, a thin pencil outline of a guitar on some, built his first guitar when he was 17-years old. He apprenticed with William Cumpiano, known for his writing and teaching of the art, including a feature-length documentary on the cuatro, a stringed instrument.
Goldberg doesn't use any models. "Every instrument I make is unique. An American singer-songwriter approached me saying playing the guitar felt like wearing a bad bra." The guitar he made for her was made for a woman's body, with a slight bevel on the side. He then encircled the rosette with inlaid abalone and copper for her red hair. It took 300 hours to create.
Choojit (Tuk) Kongsawat and Paul Ubl, a husband-and-wife team, make mandocellos, a plucked stringed baritone mandolin. Tuk made her first guitar in 2015, "bit by bit." She was moved by how a dead tree could become a beautiful instrument. "It had two lives – first as a living tree and then as a musical instrument."
In college, Ubl liked to use his hands and was fascinated by the specs in guitar building. He built his first guitar from a book – Irving Sloane's classic "How to Make Guitars." It is their third year in La Conner.
Jamie Findlay's (he's from La Conner, you know) workshop on Sunday was well-attended with pickers asking pointed questions about major, minor and diminished chords, chord melodies for diatonic and locrian chords (a B diminished chord with the notes B, D and F)
A WhatsApp phone call from Timbuktu in the Sahara Desert from Ahmad Ag Radouane, a Malian musician, put him in touch with Findlay's workshop.
Tim Lerch, a member of Pearl Django joined Findlay for an improvisational jazz/blues tune – two guitars playing off each other. "What a way to spend a Sunday morning!" said Findlay.
Tracy Spring, shared her music at Santo Coyote. She has been compared to Sarah McLachlan and Tracy Chapman.
Overheard in the hallway: "My wife started this." So said Brent McElroy of his late wife, Shirley Makela, who originated the festival in 2017. McElroy, a regular attendee of guitar shows, including in Healdsburg, California, which folded, saw an opportunity.
After retirement they moved to La Conner and so began the annual La Conner Guitar Festival which luthiers, vendors and the public from around the world come to see.
In 2020 and 2021 the festival was canceled, due to the coronavirus pandemic and the untimely death of Makela.
Workshops at both Maple Hall and the Civic Garden Club offered everything from tricks, riffs and body percussion to smoother fingerpicking.
Santo Coyote's Mexican Kitchen and the Waterfront Café hosted several performers. Andre Feriante performed at Cassera Gallery and Raven's Cup Coffee and Gallery.
In Maple Halle, that kitchen crew provided snacks and lunch to hundreds. "If the kitchen and core crew, members of his late wife Shirley's family, didn't come every year and help me, I wouldn't be able to do this," said McElroy.
After three days immersion into the world of luthiers, it did feel like a family. A family that loved trees, milled wood, finely crafted instruments, patience, practice and music that lifted one's spirits.
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