Synopses & Reviews
What was it about a small, humble folk instrument that allowed it to become an American icon? The guitar represents freedom. the open road. protest and rebellion, the blues, youth, lost love, and sexuality. With adoration Tim Brookes explores these ideas and how they became entwined with the history of America. Shortly before his fiftieth birthday, baggage handlers destroyed his guitar, his twenty-two-year-old traveling companion. His wife promised to replace it with the guitar of his dreams, but Tim discovered that a dream guitar is built, not bought. He set out to find someone to make him the perfect guitar-- a quest that ended up a dirt road in the Green Mountains of Vermont. where an amiable cur mudgeon master-guitar-maker, Rick Davis, took a rare piece of cherry wood and went to work with saws, rasps, and files. Arriving with conquistadors and the colonists, the guitar found itself in an extraordinary variety of hands: those of miners and society ladies. lumberjacks and presidents wives, girls and boys courting in canoes and frolicking on picnics, Hawaiians, African-Americans. Cajuns, Jazz players rehearsing in a men's room in Atlantic City. spiritualists. singing cowboys of the silver screen. bluegrass musicians, and Beatles fans. Inventors and crackpots tinkered with it. In time it became American's instrument, the rhythm of its soundtrack. When Tim wasn't breathing over Rick's shoulder. he was trying to unvravel the symbolic associations a guitar bolds for so many of us, musicians and nonmusicians alike. His quest took him across the country.talking to historians. curators. and guitar makers. As David Spelman, founder and director of the New York Guitar Festival. raved: Guitaris a love to the guitar. from a guitar-loved extradinaire.
Synopsis
Shortly before his fiftieth birthday, baggage handlers destroy Tim Brookes's guitar, his twenty-two-year-old traveling companion. His wife promises to replace it with the guitar of his dreams, but Tim discovers that a dream guitar is built, not bought. He sets out to find someone to make him the perfect guitar-a quest that ends up a dirt road in the Green Mountains of Vermont.
As Brookes awaits his dream instrument, he explores the guitar's mystique: freedom, the open road, protest and rebellion, the blues, youth, lost love, and sexuality. Arriving with conquistadors and the colonists, the guitar found itself in an extraordinary variety of hands: those of miners and society ladies, lumberjacks and presidents' wives, Hawaiians, African-Americans, Cajuns, jazz players, spiritualists, singing cowboys of the silver screen, and Beatles fans. In time it has become America's instrument, the rhythm of its soundtrack.
With adoration, Brookes tries to unravel the symbolic associations a guitar holds for so many of us, musicians and non-musicians alike. His quest takes him across the country, talking to historians, curators, and guitar makers¾including the amiable curmudgeon master-guitar-maker, Rick Davis, who takes a rare piece of cherry wood and creates Brookes' new companion.
Synopsis
When the author wasn't breathing over a guitar maker's shoulder, he was trying to unravel the symbolic associations a guitar holds for musicians and nonmusicians alike. His quest took him across the country talking to historians, curators, and guitar makers.