This may sound like a travel brochure, but Hexham really is a good place to live.  It’s also just a few minutes drive to open Northumbrian countryside; the journey to my workshop in Whitley Chapel takes a whole ten minutes (instead of the previous three).

Having been in Turf House for forty years the move into a much smaller house was a huge undertaking and I took around six weeks out of the workshop to concentrate on it.  I’m back at work now, but this time out means waiting time for some of my instruments may be longer than expected, and I apologise for this.  I’m also sure I’ve missed emails and forgotten to do things I’d planned, and I apologise for this too.  Do remind me if there’s something I’ve promised but missed.

From Steinbeck’s ‘Grapes of Wrath’

And perhaps a man brought out his guitar to the front of his tent. And he sat on a box to play, and everyone in the camp moved slowly in toward him, drawn in toward him. Many men can chord a guitar, but perhaps this man was a picker. There you have something — the deep chords beating, beating, while the melody runs on the strings like little footsteps. Heavy hard fingers marching on the frets. The man played and the people moved slowly in on him until the circle was closed and tight, and then he sang “Ten-Cent Cotton and Forty-Cent Meat.” And the circle sang softly with him. And he sang “Why Do You Cut Your Hair, Girls?” And the circle sang. He wailed the song, “I’m Leaving Old Texas,” that eerie song that was sung before the Spaniards came, only the words were Indian then.

And now the group was welded to one thing, one unit, so that in the dark the eyes of the people were inward, and their minds played in other times, and their sadness was like rest, like sleep. He sang the “McAlester Blues” and then, to make up for it to the older people, he sang “Jesus Calls Me to His Side.” The children drowsed with the music and went into the tents to sleep, and the singing came into their dreams.

And after a while the man with the guitar stood up and yawned. Good night, folks, he said.

And they murmured, Good night to you.

And each wished he could pick a guitar, because it is a gracious thing

I get a couple of mentions in the Mark Knopfler interview in this month’s Guitarist magazine.  The first is in relation to finding suitable apprentices.  After saying John Monteleone couldn’t find one, he goes on to say

“And I was also asking [luthier] Stefan Sobell about that in Northumberland a couple of years back.  There was a young guy making a guitar in Stefan’s workshop, and I said, is this your apprentice? And he said ‘Oh no – he’s a perfectly nice young man.  But no, I’ve never been able to find anybody”.

Incidentally, the ‘young guy’ (very pleased to be called young) was my friend Jack Hind.  But Mark was right, and I’ve still not found anybody.

The second mention is about the guitar he bought from me.  After talking about his mid 30s Martin and a Froggy Bottom parlour guitar, he went on to say:

“…and the other one is a Stefan Sobell flat-top guitar.  It’s a beautiful guitar and you’re conscious that to be worthy of a thing like that you’ve got to play it.  So I pick that up and play it a little bit.  It’s like getting a guitar from John Monteleone or something.  You’ve got to play it in to try to bring it on, which is what I’ll try to do every now and again.  But they’re all so beautiful.”

Another couple of pictures of Trevor and the boys.  Outside the sun was shining; early June is the most wonderful part of the year in Northumberland

Martin also brought me the African Blackwood New World guitar he is selling to look over.  It’s perfect and as new. Pictures up soon on my ‘available now’ page.

Most of the arch-top guitars I build now are my arch-top 12 strings, large bodied with 12 frets to the body.  The arch-top sound suits the 12 string particularly well; the rather hard arch-top sound is softened by the pairs of strings but the arch-top punch gives good separation and a clean strong bass.