Pete Seeger died yesterday.   Still selling out concert halls, and able to make the audience sing along even last year at the age of 93.

“Every kid who ever sat around a campfire singing an old song is indebted in some way to Pete Seeger,” fellow folk singer Arlo Guthrie, son of Woody Guthrie, told the AP.

Not only am I that kid but my father was that kid too.  He used to sing us folk songs accompanying himself on guitar or banjo and my love for the guitar started there.  I am still a huge fan of folk music, bluegrass and related genres.  So, good-bye Pete Seeger and thanks for the inspiration.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete_Seeger

Mostly I try to use a particular piece of wood for structural or acoustic reasons but then there is sheer beauty and when they all come together…

My contact with women in guitar-making has been limited to a very few (Ana Espinosa, Susana Martín, Manuela Reyes and Lisa Burbach) but that doesn’t mean that there are not some great makers among them.  Ana Espinosa Rodríguez is an excellent maker here in Granada who has been building now for over 15 years.  She works with her husband René Baarslag and along with most of the other builders in Granada uses traditional methods and designs.

Susana Martín in Málaga studied with my first teacher José Ángel Chacón and associated herself with another of the students for some years but now seems to be working on her own.  We coincided for a period of 6 months at the Málaga School of Lutherie in the early 1990s.

I only met Manuela Reyes once and I have no idea if she is still interested in guitar-making but when we met here in Granada with her father Manuel and Rolf Eichinger she was quite passionate about learning the family craft and was interested in everything she could find out.  Manuel Reyes had come to buy some wood from Rolf and we all went out for lunch afterwards.

Lisa Burbach is Rolf Eichinger’s widow and helped him with his work in his last years.  She started two guitars under his direction and then built a guitar with Stephen Hill to complete her formation.  Lisa was interested in continuing to build guitars but has since abandoned the idea and those first two guitars were unfinished.  She asked me to finish one of them and I did so just this month.  The box was closed up and the binding had already been installed so I would say that acoustically the sound was already defined for the most part.

Considering this was the first (and second) guitar that she made I was quite impressed with the sound when I put the strings on to try it out “in the white”.  I can assure you that the first guitar I made did not sound like this one.  I like the rosette but will reserve my comments on the headstock.