Nice coverage in the January/February Premier Guitar Mag

[Rick Turner]

Some pickup content...

Rick Turner: The Father of Boutique Guitars - Premier Guitar

[big_teee]

Some pickup content...

Rick Turner: The Father of Boutique Guitars - Premier Guitar

Nice Write-up.
Congratulations!!!
Terry

[salvarsan]

Rick Turner: The Father of Boutique Guitars - Premier Guitar

"Father?"

Have you demanded a paternity test?

Bravo and congrats, Rick.
It's good to have some celebrity & gravitas in this place.

-drh

[Mark Hammer]

Nice writeup, and a legacy deserving of pride. I suppose one could argue all day about who the "first" boutique maker is/was, and bring up folks like Paul Bigsby. But labels are one thing, and accomplishments are another, and the article outlines many accomplishments, one of which is establishing the widespread legitimacy of a boutique builder. We're honoured to have you here as regularly as we do.

I was completely unaware of the musical history prior to the guitar-making self-reinvention, and the start of Alembic. Autosalvage's album was one of the albums they would send you for free if you subscribed to Rolling Stone, if I remember correctly. Or maybe I'm confusing it with an individual track from Autosalvage appearing on a compilation they would send as a subscription bonus. Either way, a part of Bay Area music history.

I was going to ask where the name "Alembic" come from, but took a moment to do the inevitable wikipedia search, finding an appropriate entry: Alembic - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The connection between the alchemical derivation of the term, and its application to music gear, or rather, why you folks thought "This perfectly captures what we're trying to do", still evades me. Any insights here?

[Rick Turner]

Actually, Autosalvage was a New York band...that should have been a San Francisco band. Nobody "got it" in New York other than a few fanatics, film maker Shirley Clark, and one club owner...Howard Solomon at the Cafe Au GoGo. We were way too weird for the Greenwich Villagers who wanted light pop, blues, or folk, and we weren't heavy hard drug users like the Warhol crowd and the Velvet Underground. Neil Diamond's manager heard about us from someone and came down to the Au GoGo to see if we were suitable to be Neil's back up band; NOT! He was completely flummoxed, I'm happy to say.

When I first met the 'Dead I was still doing some studio guitar and bass playing in the Bay Area, so one of the reasons we got on so well was that they knew me as a musician as much as a guitar tech. I played on Don McLean's first album (pre American Pie), played bass on the Joy of Cooking's first studio demos, did an album with Jerry Corbitt that was produced by Charlie Daniels, and produced one with Jeffrey Cain for the Youngbloods' label, Raccoon, distributed through Warner Bros.

[Rick Turner]

Oh, one other thing...all due respect to Bigsby, D'Angelico, and some of the others, but I think the reference as "boutique builder" really best applies to small production shops, not one-man lutherie shops. In my time at Alembic, for instance, I oversaw and directly participated in the building of over 1,200 instruments. At the first round of Turner Guitars, we hit about 200. Since then about another 2,800 instruments have come out of my shop. You can see the influence of my early Alembic design work in a whole lot of boutique and luthier-made basses, in particular. That's not a statement of ego, it's simply a statement of fact. Before I started building Alembics, hardly any makers featured neck through construction (respect to Rickenbacker, of course) or a wide range of exotic hardwoods (OK, Bigsby and bird's eye maple), and nobody, with the exception of Bigsby, was making his own pickups and getting them really out there in the public eye.

[Mark Hammer]

In fact, on my way back up to the office after coffee (I posted before I went down), I started thinking that I may have been wrong about the Bigsby comment; and that there is a substantive difference between making custom one-offs, and the notion of a boutique maker who has a line of instruments made with attention to details. Your comment only serves to remind me that my second instinct was the more correct one.

While I have never been there (Oakland was as close as I've gotten), I am of a generation for whom anything "San Francisco" was implicitly magical. I had the good fortune to attend a massive outdoor Airplane/Dead show in Montreal during 1967, when Pigpen was with the band, and everybody had STP stickers on everything, and saw the Youngbloods about 2 years after that, who impressed me with the fullness of their sound for such a small combo.

One of these days, someone should put together a compilation album of guitar-makers who are also players. les Paul was not the only one. For example, Grit Laskin is apparently a very respectable player, and Paul Reed Smith is reputedly a decent player too. And like yourself, jason Lollar has a track record as a pro musician. When I had lunch with George Gruhn last year, he mentioned that Henry Juskiewicsz was also a pretty fair player....although that was probably the only kind thing he had to say about Henry.

[StarryNight]

nice to see a little canadian connection there with Ian and Sylvia Tyson. he's still on the road as far as I know.

[JoeM]

"..I like the theory to understand what my ears are hearing, but I don’t want to study the theory to tell my ears what to hear.”

Very nice article, Congrats.

[Rick Turner]

Working with Ian and Sylvia was an incredible experience. They were really good to their musicians in the studio and on the road, and I got to play in some of the best...and worst venues in North America.

[Mark Hammer]

Ian's still active, though his recent throat surgery has wrought a change in his voice and style that is about as abrupt as Blonde On Blonde vs Nashville Skyline Dylan, albeit in reverse. He kind of sings like Leonard Cohen these days, in a gravelly voice. ironic, since Cohen started out wanting to be a country singer. Still quite the cowboy, though. And "Four Strong Winds" has repeatedly been voted one of the greatest Canadian songs ever. Never fails to get me misty-eyed. I imagine there is a greater tradition of such themes in African folk and popular music, but the theme of people whose lives are torn apart by the simple need to move to where the work is tends to be a rather unique one in North America. People write plenty of songs about the economy, and maybe even upheaval due to things like Katrina, but they rarely write about economic conditions pulling people apart geographically. Maybe that's just a Canadian thing. Sylvia is still performing, and for a 70 year-old, she's still a damn handsome woman.

I gather your (Rick) tenure in the band preceded that of guitarist David Wilcox by a number of years.

[Rick Turner]

In the line of guitar players, I came after Monte Dunn and before David Rea...way before David Wilcox who is not the same David Wilcox who is well known on folkie circuits here in the US now. I worked with them from early Spring of 1965 through into early Winter when Sylvia gave birth to their son. I recorded "Play one More" with them for Vanguard in the studio, and I'm on "Ian and Sylvia Live at Newport" on a bunch of cuts. Felix Pappalardi joined us as bass player in late summer of '65 and continued on until the break. The next step for them was the move in to country music and a larger band. I'm off and on in touch with Sylvia, but I've missed Ian a couple of times here. Did see him at McCabes about 15 years ago...

[jason lollar]

I had talked to Rick several times on the phone long before I ever actually met him and its funny when I did meet him at the namm show we were talking about building guitars and I told him early on in the 70’s one of my inspirations was a photo of this really way out looking carved electric guitar on the cover or inside cover of a warehouse sound catalog. I cut it out and hung it on my wall- it was like my guru photo I looked at all the time. Turns out it was a guitar Rick built for -I think it was - Johnny Winter. So all that time unknown to me Rick Turner was a big reason I wanted to build electric guitars.
Nice to see a big article – I had no idea you played so much. Hopefully easier times ahead next year!

[David Schwab]

You can see the influence of my early Alembic design work in a whole lot of boutique and luthier-made basses, in particular.

Guilty as charged! And proud of it.



Look, purpleheart!

[copperheadroads]

Very nice , Congrats