Winners will be chosen in three categories, including “Taylor’s Choice,” where the Taylor Guitars staff will pick a winning song. To enter the contest you must record an original song in RiffWorks and submit it between January 24 and February 6, 2008. There is no contest entry fee.

RiffRumble VIII celebrates the launch of RiffWorld.com™, an online community for RiffWorks users. RiffWorks software offers automatic track creation, guitar effects, loop recording, professionally recorded drum loops and much more. Taylor Product Development Manager David Hosler is a RiffWorks fan. “Riffworks is the most musically inspiring recording package I have found. It makes recording feel more like painting with sound than tracking with technology. The ability to write, record, and instantly share what I’ve created just by pushing the Riffcast button is an amazing feature. The bottom line for me is that it’s recording software that inspires!”

For detailed contest rules & entry information visit www.sonomawireworks.com .

 
Love-In Roomful
Last summer, we noted the multimedia/theatrical production Primal Twang: The Legacy of the Guitar, a collaborative project between longtime Taylor clinician Dan Crary and Film and TV writer/producer/director, musician and multiple Taylor owner Anthony Leigh Adams. The ambitious stage affair presented a narrative musical history of the guitar, colored by performances from a star-studded lineup of guitar talent, including Eric Johnson, Doc Watson, Albert Lee, Mason Williams, Andrew York, harp-guitarist John Doan and Taylor artists Beppe Gambetta and Doyle Dykes.

Although the show was only staged in San Diego, the performances were filmed and mixed for a DVD that is scheduled for release this fall. The DVD, which is loaded with Taylors, will include bonus tracks, artist interviews, a “making of” documentary, and photo gallery.

The success of Primal Twang has inspired Adams to create another guitar-centric theatrical production this year to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the “Summer of Love.” Love-In: A Musical Celebration again will feature a stellar lineup of legendary guest performers, along with a spectacular psychedelic light show and rare historical footage. The production will run September 6-9, 2007, at San Diego’s Birch North Park Theatre.

Adams, who was a guitar-playing high school junior in ’67 and attended the Monterey Pop Festival, recalls the “cauldron of musical creativity” that made 1967 so special — epitomized by the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album. He also cites the many now-classic artists who released their first albums that year, including the Velvet Underground, Buffalo Springfield, The Doors, The Grateful Dead, Pink Floyd, Big Brother and the Holding Company and Jimi Hendrix.

“These days, musicians often take a year or more to record an album,” Adams reflects. “In ’67 many artists released two albums, including the Beatles, Donovan, Cream and Jefferson Airplane. The Rolling Stones released three. It was a true artistic renaissance. Boundaries came crashing down like never before. Folkies, rockers, jazzers and players of every stripe listened to each other, combining musical styles with amazing results. The great venues of the day, including San Francisco’s Fillmore and Avalon Ballrooms routinely presented concerts that might feature a psychedelic rock band, a blues artist, a folk singer and an Indian swami chanting Hindu mantras on the same bill. Folk, blues, R&B;, rock, classical, Celtic, East Indian and other world music styles were major inspirations.”

Love-In, like Primal Twang, will feature an emcee/host: Tony Award-winning Broadway star Ben Vereen (Jesus Christ Superstar, Pippin, Wicked). Guest artists include ’60s British Invasion greats Peter & Gordon (“World Without Love”), Jesse Colin Young, vocalist/drummer for Jimi Hendrix and Electric Flag Buddy Miles (“Texas”), guitarist Eric Johnson, original lead guitarist/singer from Vanilla Fudge Vince Martell (“You Keep Me Hanging On”), Strawberry Alarm Clock (“Incense and Peppermints”), R&B; great Earl Thomas (“I Sing the Blues”) and sitar virtuoso Kartik Seshadri, the foremost disciple of Ravi Shankar, accompanied by tabla master, Arup Chattopadhyay.

Adams, incidentally, composed the show’s overture on his maple T5-C1, which he says played a vital role in the creative process.

“The body of the song is comprised of crunchy power chords, but the instrumental dance sequence is pure acoustic guitar,” he explains. “The T5 allowed me to compose and play the piece without switching guitars. The tone and versatility of the instrument is fantastic.”

Goaded whimsically into speculating how popular music might have been affected had the T5 been available to artists in the late ’60s, Adams takes the bait.

“It would have been perfect for the classic ’60s rock bands, who often combined acoustic and electric guitars in their sets,” he says. “Acoustic guitar amplification wasn’t very good back then, and it took time for artists to switch instruments. The T5 would have allowed a greater range of creative expression. If I could put a T5 in the hands of any player from that era it would be Jimi. He was the most lyrical rhythm player as well as the most dynamic lead player. He’d take the T5 to new heights, that’s for sure.”

The Love-In Band includes members of San Diego’s award-winning classic rock group, Rockola, multi-instrumentalist Tripp Sprague, actor/musician Jon Walmsley (Jason from The Waltons TV series) and Musical Director Doug Robinson. The band will perform songs of the era and accompany the guest stars. The program will highlight a number of musical genres including folk/rock, R&B;, blues, British rock, the Beatles, medleys from Los Angeles and San Francisco, and a Monterey Pop Festival tribute.

As with Primal Twang, the Love-In performances will be filmed for commercial release as a DVD and contain a wealth of behind-the-scenes footage and interviews. This time around, we guarantee there will be Taylors at the Love-In.

For more information, visit www.loveinthemusical.com or www. birchnorthparktheatre.net.

WHITE CRANBERRY
Former Cranberries singer Dolores O’Riordan recently took delivery of a beautiful white custom GS6 accented with a sharp black and white checkerboard purfling/rosette scheme. O’Riordan and her band have been rehearsing for an upcoming world tour in support of her debut solo album, Are You Listening?, slated for release on May 15. You can see her sporting the GS in the “Photos” section of her website (doloresoriordan.ie). She performed the album’s first single, “Ordinary Day”, with it on the Irish TV program, The Late Late Show, on April 20; the performance clip and an interview also are posted on her website.

GREENWOOD, DEADWOOD, ROSEWOOD
In February, actor Bruce Greenwood took a break from filming episodes of an upcoming HBO series, John From Cincinnati, to visit the Taylor complex. The project already has garnered some potent advance buzz by virtue of its head writers, Deadwood creator David Milch and novelist Kem Nunn, whose books (including Tapping the Source, Tijuana Straits, and The Dogs of Winter) have plumbed the dark undercurrent of California surf culture. In the series, shot in San Diego County’s Imperial Beach, Greenwood plays the patriarch of a dysfunctional Southern California surfing family. The series is scheduled to premiere in June, after the conclusion of The Sopranos.

A seasoned veteran of both TV and film, Greenwood’s recent movies include The Sweet Hereafter (nominated for two Academy Awards), Being Julia, Thirteen Days, in which he played JFK, and Capote. Upcoming films include the family comedy Firehouse Dog and I’m Not There, in which six actors each portray a different facet of Bob Dylan.

A longtime guitarist and songwriter, Greenwood has played in bands since the early ’80s, but tends to be self-deprecating about his musical pursuits, understanding the inherent skepticism given his day job. He plays for fun, often performing with former Eagles guitarist Don Felder at celebrity golf tournaments, as well as fellow actor/musician Gregg Henry and longtime friend Norman Foote, a Canadian folk/children’s music performer.

Greenwood visited the Taylor factory with his father, who builds guitars in his spare time, and left under the spell of rosewood, having picked up a GSRS, GSRC, and 914ce. (brucegreenwood.com)

LATIN (TAYLOR) LOVERS
Two-time Latin Grammy winner Julieta Venegas visited the factory on Wednesday, February 7, along with her band. Venegas (615ce, NS74ce) was in town for a gig at the House of Blues. Her bandmates picked up a 510 and a 714ce. Venegas not only won a 2006 Latin Grammy (Best Alternative Album) with her latest release, Limón y Sal, but a few days after her Taylor visit, her album tied for Best Latin Pop Album at the 49th annual (American) Grammy Awards.

A day after Venegas’s visit, members of the hugely popular Latin rock band Maná also dropped by the factory, attracting a crowd and signing autographs as they toured the facility. They, too, would go on to win a Grammy; their latest record, Amar Es Combatir, was honored with Best Latin Rock, Alternative or Urban Album. The band had been rehearsing for a major arena tour that kicked off with a pair of sold-out shows in San Diego. The band will be wielding a pair of T5s on stage throughout the tour, including a 12-string and a cocobolo-top 6-string.

Columbian pop diva Shakira also has been playing a T5 on tour, a blue-stained maple-top S1, and reportedly loves it. She took her turn at the podium four times at the Latin Grammys in November.

TAYLORSPOTTING…
Grammy-nominated chanteuse Corinne Bailey Rae played a 410ce in a rendition of “Like a Star” on Oprah Winfrey on January 16…David Lee Roth played a T5 during a show on October 14, Sao Paulo, Brazil…Ukulele virtuoso Jake Shimabukuro recently bought an NS72ce at Island Guitars in Honolulu, Hawaii.

COOL AID
In the Summer 2006 issue, we introduced the “Taylor Guitars for the Gulf” project, by which Taylor will help the post-Katrina relief effort by making a contribution to the Tipitina’s Foundation, up to a total of $25,000, on behalf of anyone purchasing a Taylor guitar (300-900 Series) with a free, custom, mother-of-pearl fleur-de-lis peghead (a $100 value), and registering it within a specified time.

The program got off to a great start in early July with a series of free Doyle Dykes workshops conducted at select dealers in the hurricane-impacted areas. On July 12, Aaron Dablow, our Regional Sales Manager for that area of the Southeast (and the brains behind this project), filed the following report from the field.

“‘Guitars for the Gulf’ with Doyle is going amazing. The July 10 event at MMI Music in Mobile, Alabama drew about 260 people, and the dealer sold a DDSM, a 614ce, and a W14ce with the fleur-de-lis inlay. John, the owner, said that for 20 years he’s done all sorts of clinics and has never sold anything. He’s fired up, and Doyle had a great time.

“Last night (July 11) at Magnolia Music in Gulfport, Mississippi, we sold a 614ce and a PS10-L2, both with the fleur-de-lis inlay. About 160 people were there. It was amazing. Many customers have been coming up to me to thank us for doing this ‘Guitars for the Gulf’ thing and the free workshops. They think it’s awesome and they can’t say enough good things about us — I mean, genuine, heartfelt comments. It feels good, especially after I took a drive down highway 90 from Biloxi to Gulfport and found that it’s still devastated. I mean, there’s nothing on the coast except for foundations of buildings.”

Among the Taylor artists who’ve lent their financial support to the G4G cause are Goo Goo Dolls frontman Johnny Rzeznik, who, immediately upon hearing about the program, made arrangements to buy an 814ce with the fleur-de-lis peghead inlay, and guitarist Chris Henderson of the rock band Three Doors Down, whose members hail from Escatawpa, Mississippi and have been deeply involved in numerous post-Katrina rebuilding efforts in their home state over the past year. Henderson recently took delivery of a fleur-de-lis appointed PS14ce.

A number of customers also have weighed-in, with Mike Dohm’s e-mail representing the common sentiment.

“It was great to see Aaron Dablow in Gulfport, Mississippi on July 11. Doyle Dykes put on quite the show. I was blown away that Taylor Guitars would sponsor an event like this. Thanks for all you are doing for us down here in the South. I can’t wait to get my new 514c and 714c guitars with the fleur-de-lis inlays. My thanks to those (in addition to Aaron) who made this happen.”

As of September 6, we’d sold more than 220 “fleur-de-lis” guitars. To qualify for the Tipitina’s donation, customers had to purchase or order one of the special guitars between July 1 and September 30, 2006. If you have one of those “fleur-de-lis” guitars, you must and register it with us by March 30, 2007. Registration may be completed online, at taylorguitars.com, or by completing and mailing a simple form that comes with each guitar. (Registration of any Taylor guitar activates a limited lifetime warranty and a free subscription to this quarterly publication.)

TAYLORSPOTTINGS
San Diego Padres relief pitcher Scott Linebrink playing a Big Baby in a local TV commercial for a pest-control company (in another commercial in that series, Linebrink is playing another guitar brand, which he smashes in mock frustration at the end of his spiel)… Jon Anderson of Yes performing “Roundabout” on an NS74ce on The Howard Stern Show. Anderson was there to talk about his “Rock ‘n Roll Fantasy Camp”…a 614ce played by the guitarist performing with a small orchestra at the August 7 Humphrey’s concert by Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull….the 514ce played by the guitarist accompanying Peter & Gordon in their July 23 show at Humphrey’s…A Taylor-playing guitarist in the band backing Jessica Simpson’s September 1 performance for the Today show crowd in the street outside Rockefeller Center…A photo in the Ottawa Sun of pro golfer John Daly playing a PS14ce for 300 people in the Cavern Club in Liverpool, England, in celebration of the British publication of his autobiography, My Life In & Out of the Rough…

WEIRD AND WEST
Weird Al Yankovic’s longtime guitar player, Jim “Kimo” West, called the PR Department in mid-July to report that he used his Brazilian rosewood 814 on a new song that Weird Al had recently posted on his website. The target of the Grammy-winning pop parodist this time was the James Blunt tune, “You’re Beautiful”, which Weird Al cleverly lampoons as “You’re Pitiful”. Apparently, Blunt gave Al permission to do it, but Blunt’s label, Atlantic, raised objections, so instead of including the track on his new album, Straight Outta Lynwood, Al made it available online (weirdal.com). West said he loved the way the 814 recorded.

Not long afterward, West, an avid slack key guitarist, sent us a CD from another freshly minted project, Livin’s EZ: The Hawaiian Tribute to Sublime. The instrumental record revisits the music of the memorable SoCal band, whose eponymous major-label debut in 1996 dominated the radio airwaves with its lively fusion of Cali-punk, reggae, ska, hip-hop, and dub, even though lead singer Bradley Nowell died of a drug overdose two months before the album was released.

The groove-laden, melodic tracks from Sublime travel well to Polynesia, especially in the hands of West, whose slack-tuned 514ce is all over the record, and who also played baritone guitar, ‘ukelele, electric bass, ipu heke (gourd drum), and ‘ili ‘ili (lava) stones. Pedal and lap steel master Greg Leisz (Beck, Joni Mitchell, Fiona Apple) vividly channels the tropical island vibe throughout the record, as well, meshing tastefully with West to bring out the natural melodic richness of hits like “Santeria”, “What I Got”, “Wrong Way”, and the Gershwin-inspired dub track, “Doin’ Time”. West closes out the tribute with an original tune, “Kalana ‘Alani”. You can check it out at cmhrecords.com.

BONA FIDE
Cameroon-born Richard Bona, the fluid bassist whose advanced rhythmic approach and multi-cultural musicality have earned him gigs and recording stints with top jazz players (Mike Stern, Pat Metheny, George Benson, Larry Coryell, Joe Zawinul, Bob James, and Randy Brecker are a few that come to mind), is interviewed in the September 2006 issue of Bass Player magazine. Bona is known for the expressive vocals (sung in his native Douala), that grace his original story-songs on several solo albums, the most recent being Tiki (2006, Decca), a CD that Bona describes as being about “how closely Brazil and Africa are related, musically, culturally, and in so many other ways.”

Bona gives aspiring bassists some things to think about in his interview (example: “My bass lines always come from my singing.”), in which he describes his writing and recording process.

“I write almost everything on this [holds his Taylor nylon-string acoustic guitar], or occasionally on keyboard. My concept is that everything is in the guitar part: the drums, the keyboard part, and the bass. The bass part is already there, I just have to polish it and make it better. After I get the tune on guitar, I make a demo in my home studio, playing guitar, keyboard, bass and programmed drums. Then I’ll bring it to the musicians to interpret and record in a real studio.” (Richard Bona photo by Lucille Reyboz.)

NEW CARS, NEW GUITAR
Guitarist Elliot Easton of the Cars has been touring with a retooled lineup of the band, dubbed the New Cars. Original keyboardist Greg Hawkes is onboard, while replacing Ric Ocasek on vocals and guitar is music heavy Todd Rundgren, with former Rundgren collaborators Prairie Prince (also of the Tubes) on drums and Kasim Sulton on bass.

The shows have been getting positive reviews from critics and Cars fans alike, as Rundgren’s singing and fretwork appear to be meshing well with the rest of the band. Although Easton was injured during a recent leg of the tour (he suffered a broken clavicle in a tour bus accident), he gamely played four more gigs before haulting the tour to have surgery.

Easton, whose tasty tone and hooky, well-crafted electric solos helped give early Cars tunes the ring of instant classics, got his hands on a koa T5 recently, and it quickly claimed a place in his guitar arsenal. In fact, he subsequently e-mailed the following note of appreciation:

“To the gang at Taylor Guitars — As part of our tour itinerary, we have been performing live acoustic sets at radio stations around the country, and I’d been having problems getting a really good sound using another brand of acoustic-electric guitar. There always seemed to be a compromise between getting a pure acoustic tone or a good amplified one, with the flexibility necessary for the variety of tones and textures that our music demands.

“I contacted Bob Borbonus [Taylor Artist Relations] and described my situation and needs. Without hesitation, he recommended a T5. I was a bit hesitant at first for no logical reason other than, as anyone who knows me or my reputation will attest to, I am a pretty traditional guy as far as guitars are concerned. Like so many of us, I favor the guitars played by my own heroes and influences. I know it’s childish and a bit silly (well, I am a musician, so perhaps that’s redundant), but I also know that I am not alone among my guitar-playing brothers and sisters in that regard!

“Now, let me set the scene for you. The day after talking to Bob, I had to play an important acoustic show in Minneapolis. As I had to go directly to the station from the airport without even checking into the hotel first, we made arrangements to have the [T5] shipped directly to the radio station. I literally opened the carton, tuned up, and began getting a sound for the engineers five minutes after arriving. That T5, and its impeccable set-up, made the whole experience happen in a phenomenal way! What can I say? The T5 is INCREDIBLE!

“With only my ear to tell me what the various toggle settings were doing, I immediately was able to dial in a gorgeous acoustic sound for ‘Drive’, a snappy, twangy electric tone for ‘My Best Friend’s Girl’, a lush, sparkling tone for an arpeggiated part, and all points in-between. To say that I am blown away by the tonal qualities and versatility of this amazing instrument would be an understatement.

“While I’m still just scratching the surface of what the T5 is capable of, one fact is readily apparent: the T5 has earned a permanent place in my arsenal. There is nothing quite like it. This is not a hybrid that does many things passably but none as well as individual purpose-built guitars that are designed to basically do one thing. The T5 does many things, and does them all flawlessly and without compromise. Thank you for creating such a unique and inspiring tool of expression!”

DUCHESS OF COOLSVILLE
Rickie Lee Jones was in San Diego for a show at the Belly Up Tavern in late May. Of late, the acclaimed songwriting boho has been in the studio recording fresh material (which she described as a blend of “songs and improvisations”), and has been using some Taylors on the project. She owns a rosewood Grand Concert that was given to her by Leo Kottke, and she’s been experimenting with a T5, as well.

Before the show, she told our PR Department’s Jim Kirlin that she likes the comfort of small-body guitars and Taylor’s thin-profile necks, and she enjoyed testing the 512 he brought — enough to play it onstage throughout most of the evening.

Joined by a bassist and a guitar player, Jones played a set that was fairly stripped-down, yet at times also had a rock edge, especially on some of the new tunes. She also mixed in an assortment of crowd-pleasers like “The Last Chance Texaco”, and, on piano, “The Horses” and “We Belong Together”. Jones wrote a couple of new songs that appear on the soundtrack of the recent film, Friends with Money.

SWIFT RISE
Blossoming country artist Taylor Swift continues her sharp ascent, both within and beyond music-industry circles. The 16-year-old singer-songwriter already has a couple of publishing deals with BMI and Sony, and last year she inked a record deal with Big Machine Records, the new label launched by industry vet Scott Borchetta (Toby Keith, George Strait, Reba McEntire). Swift also has been writing with some of Music Row’s top tunesmiths, and lately has been logging studio time to record tracks for her debut album of all-original tunes, due out in September.

On May 8, Swift was featured as the inaugural subject of a new short-form documentary television series premiering on the national country music cable channel, Great American Country. The hour-long program, GAC Shortcuts, showcases Swift’s musical development as she turns her country music aspirations into reality, and offers a glimpse into the world of a star-in-the-making who still manages to balance her artistic pursuits with the daily obligations of being a high school sophomore. Swift also appeared on the program GAC Nights on May 30.

Outside the country music scene, the photogenic talent recently enjoyed cross-market exposure through a pair of other lifestyle “vehicles”. She appeared in a commercial with Darrell Waltrip for NASCAR Autocare that will air over the next few months (in it, she zips down a racetrack in a new Corvette). Swift also was the subject of a multi-page cover story in Sea Ray Living magazine (Spring 2006), serving as the centerpiece of a profile that also involves her family, who are longtime boating enthusiasts. Swift and her Taylor guitars are featured prominently in the spread: on the cover, she’s pictured strumming her custom koa model aboard one of her family’s Sea Rays, and she poses inside and outside the Country Music Hall of Fame with her koa axe. She also can be seen with her one-of-a-kind, bubblegum-pink T5 and her 615.

On June 12, Swift and her mom paid a visit to the Taylor factory, where they ran into a gaggle of Taylor clinicians being given a private tour by Bob Taylor during the clinicians’ annual “Summer Camp” visit to the Taylor complex (see “Almanac”).

TAYLORSPOTTING
Grammy-winning agit-metal act, System of a Down, has been one of the hot attractions on the 2006 Ozzfest tour this summer. Known for their uncompromising, shape-shifting mix of melody and aggression, the band has been playing to wildly enthusiastic crowds, and singer Serg Tankian has been working his 710ce into their performances.

Mike Murashko, L.A.-based consultant to the MGM Worldwide Television Group, was chuckling his way through the book, The Greedy Bastard Diary (A Comic Tour of America) — Monty Python Eric Idle’s recounting of his three-month, 50-city tour of North America in 2004 — when he came upon this passage from “Day Two”:

“I awake refreshed at 4 a.m. after a nap. This morning I have to face the press. I am on Good Morning Canada, but first I have a few hours to myself. I love early mornings. I like nothing more than a little laptop and a nice cup of tea. Oh, and a decent pair of pants, of course. AND a good book, comfortable shoes, cashmere close to the skin, and a decent bed — that goes without saying. A warm bath, naturally, Egyptian cotton sheets, a plumpy duvet, and a Taylor guitar — mustn’t forget that — as well as fabulous sound system, a portable CD player, and a nice invigorating massage from a scantily clad.......come to think of it, there’s quite a lot more I like than just a bloody computer and a mug of tea.”

In the book’s generous section of color photos are several images of Idle with three of his Taylors.

Interesting what you can find on recording artists’ websites. Our Jim Kirlin was virtual-thumbing through the “Gallery” section of David Gilmour’s site when he stumbled onto some photos of the Pink Floyd veteran in the throes of musical collaboration. One black-and-white shot shows him with fellow Brit Georgie Fame, whose Blue Flames had a decidedly un-Invasion-like jazz/R&B;/pop hit in 1965 with “Yeh Yeh”, and whose late-’60s bands included John McLaughlin and Hendrix drummer Mitch Mitchell. A color photo on another page shows Gilmour with David Crosby and Graham Nash. In both photos, Gilmour is playing a Baby Taylor. (davidgilmour.com)

We’ve been well out of the path of the American Idol juggernaut, but that was bound to change. Correspondent Dick Franks e-mailed us in late February with a link to a photo of new AI champ Taylor Hicks taken long before Alabama’s new favorite son became a household name. The photo, snapped by fellow Birminghamian Michael Sheehan, shows Hicks performing with someone named “John”. Both are playing Taylors. More recently, the June 12 issue of People had an article about Hicks and a photo of him playing his Taylor with the Little Memphis Blues Orchestra. (furtherimages.com/gallery55.htm)

Daren Winckel, a director at the WGBY public-TV outlet in Springfield, Massachusetts, could’ve been excused for thinking it was something he ate. Winckel was watching The Tonight Show with Jay Leno on June 6 when David Lee Roth performed a bluegrass version (?!) of the Van Halen megahit “Jump” from the new various-artists tribute album, Strummin’ with the Devil: The Southern Side of Van Halen. Looking fit and happy, Roth fronted a seven-piece pickin’ pack that included a guitarist playing a Taylor. If you want to hear a banjo interpretation of Eddie Van Halen’s famous guitar solo, go to youtube.com, enter “David Lee Roth” in the search window, and scroll down to “David Lee Roth on The Tonight Show”. Whether you’re a fan, an antagonist, or just curious, they are four minutes well spent.

NEW FACETS OF JEWEL
Jewel has been aglitter in the spotlight of late, making the rounds in various media channels to help kick-off the release of her new studio record, Goodbye Alice in Wonderland, which hit stores May 2. So far, the singer-songwriter and former San Diego coffeehouse queen has earned positive reviews from critics, many of whom consider this a reconnection with her acoustic roots and her best work since her 1995 debut, Pieces of You.

Jewel has called this record her most autobiographical to date, and it seems to mark a fresh, more mature perspective after a period of pop and persona experimentation. Producer Rob Cavallo (Green Day, Goo Goo Dolls) adds sonic and stylistic contours to the tunes, underscoring the diversity of Jewel’s songwriting influences. While an undeniable commercial sheen coats the sound, the song structures are strong, and Jewel’s versatile voice arguably has never been better showcased as she swings from soft cooing to upper-register Joni Mitchell; from soul-stirring Nina Simone to rollicking, Dylanesque country-folk.

Jewel’s main stage guitar remains her trusty 912ce, equipped with the Expression System, which she played on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno May 2. She also performed on The View, Late Night with Conan O’Brien, and even The Young and The Restless before hitting the road for a summer tour with fellow Taylor player Rob Thomas.

CALL THE CANNON
Our favorite Adirondack dude, Christopher Shaw, recently wrote and recorded music for a PBS documentary, Seneca Ray Stoddard, An American Original. He was joined by long-time cohort, multi-instrumentalist John Kirk, and percussionist Brian Melick. Stoddard (1843-1917) was a photographer, illustrator, publisher, mapmaker, and tireless promoter of his native Adirondacks who left a legacy of some 10,000 photographs of the region. Shaw wrote a lilting instrumental waltz, “Adirondack Serenade”, for the program’s main theme, as well as incidental music.

“Because we used only a few instruments, the rhythm guitar track had to be huge,” Shaw related. “Enter ‘The Cannon’!” That’s Shaw’s name for his “muscle guitar”, a W15 he’s been playing for years.

“I saw the finished documentary for the first time when I went to the ‘big cheese’ premiere, with the champagne and fish eggs, a week before it aired,” he said. “They used everything we recorded — theme, variations, the whole enchilada — and they included ‘Shebeg Shemor” from my last CD [also called Adirondack Serenade].”

Ever the outdoorsman, Shaw missed Seneca Ray Stoddard when it debuted on WMHT, the public-TV outlet in New York State’s Capital Region, which serves eastern New York and western New England. He and Kirk were “up north fishing.”

STRAIT TO TAYLOR
Some have felt for a long time that country star George Strait and a Taylor guitar would make a nice pairing, including his Taylor-playing guitarist, Jeff Sturms. One night not long ago, Sturms found Strait playing his Taylor and one thing led to another. A call was placed to our Artist Relations guy, Bob Borbonus, and soon Strait was performing with a unique Taylor Dreadnought. You can view numerous photos of man and axe at: georgestrait.com/photo_gallery.asp?pkGallery=57&pageStart;=30

DREAM FOUNDATION, DREAM LOCATION
Prominent stars from the motion picture, television, and sporting worlds gathered May 10-14 at the ultra-exclusive Paradisus Palma Real resort on the Dominican Republic’s legendary Bavaro Beach to raise funds for the Dream Foundation, a national charity whose mission is to enhance the quality of life for individuals and families battling terminal illnesses. Produced by Marjoe Gortner, the one-time child evangelist who won a 1972 Academy Award for his confessional documentary, Marjoe, the Paradisus Palma Real Sports Invitational culminated with a gala dinner, live and silent auctions, and a concert featuring Christopher Cross playing a 514ce donated to the event.

William Sweedler of Westport, Connecticut had the winning bid of $8,000 for the mahogany/cedar Taylor, but after the auction John Paul de Joria, owner of Paul Mitchell Systems (hair care products), purchased another Taylor autographed by Cross for the same amount, with proceeds going to the Dream Foundation.

BIG APPLE JAZZ
Jerome Harris and his Taylor AB1 bass have been gigging and recording with the Paul Motian Band, among many others. Earlier this year, the versatile bassist joined Motian for a six-night engagement at New York’s legendary Village Vanguard before playing his first klezmer gig in the new Jazz At Lincoln Center complex with renowned clarinetist David Krakauer’s outfit, Klezmer Madness. Performances with drummer extraordinaire Jack DeJohnette and kora player Foday Musa Suso would follow, and as this issue was going to press Harris was preparing for more gigs at the Vanguard with the Motian group.

“I’m also on the Motian’s band new ECM release, Garden Of Eden,” Harris reports. “I think the CD turned out quite well.” He’s being modest — it’s excellent.

SHINING RAY
Paul McCartney launched his fall 2005 “US” tour of America with a September 16 concert in Miami. As the entourage snaked its way across the country, the reviews were almost unanimous in their praise for the show, and especially for a set list that included some long-unperformed Lennon-McCartney songs.

The 63-year-old former Beatle was ably backed by a young band that featured drummer Abe Laboriel, Jr., guitarist Rusty Anderson, keyboardist Paul “Wix” Wickens, and guitarist/bassist Brian Ray, who wielded an ES-equipped Taylor 655 played through a K4. Sound engineers (including FOH knob-pushers) told Taylor Artist Relations Manager Bob Borbonus that the ES/K4 combination is “the best acoustic amplification system [they’ve] ever heard.” The tour ended with two dates in late November at the Staples Center in Los Angeles.

BRONX IN BLUE WITH BABY
Some might be surprised that Rock & Roll Hall of Famer Dion has released a new acoustic blues CD, but Bronx in Blue is more a return to his roots than a departure. Born Dion DiMucci in the Bronx in the late ’30s, the always-evolving artist would have hits spanning several decades — from the teen doo-wop of “I Wonder Why” and “A Teenager in Love”, to such early-’60s solo classics as “The Wanderer” and “Runaround Sue”, to his elegiac 1968 folk-pop hit single, “Abraham, Martin, and John”. If the blues wouldn’t seem a likely next step in that progression, it’s entirely natural to the Dion.

“This music is part of my very fabric,” he recently told Austin-based writer Dan Forte in an exclusive for Wood&Steel;. “There was no rock and roll when I was a kid. I grew up on Jimmy Reed, Howlin’ Wolf, and John Lee Hooker. Rev. Gary Davis used to sing on the street in my neighborhood in the Bronx, and my friend Willie Green, who was a janitor of a tenement building, played guitar, so I picked it up from him.

“You put country music and blues together, and it’s almost like if you turn blues into a major key — you get rock and roll,” Dion continued. “You get what Chuck Berry and Fats Domino and I were doing, like ‘blues-country’. But that’s what we called ‘rock and roll’ back in the ’50s.”

On Bronx in Blue, Dion does justice to the music of Reed, Wolf, Robert Johnson, and Lightnin’ Hopkins, employing his “backpack guitar,” a Baby Taylor.

“[The Baby Taylor] almost sounds like an official Delta blues guitar — to me, anyway. That guitar has a lot of midrange. It’s not the big bass and the fullness, but you grab a chord, and it just jumps right out at you — bing! It’s right in the middle. When you’re playing some guitars, if they sound too pretty, you can’t get what you want out of them when you’re playing that kind of music.”

The Baby obviously is special to Dion. “I accidentally left it in Italy and had to pay $435 to get it back [via] Federal Express,” he laughs. “That’s more than the case and the guitar cost me. But I just like it, and it’s worth it. All guitars sound different, even when they’re the same model, same specs, made from the same wood, but you have a favorite among them. That’s why I didn’t just buy another Baby Taylor; I wanted that one.”

’CANE REACTION
The ReAct Now: Music & Relief concert and fundraiser held on September 10 brought together a raft of artists to solicit donations and other support in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The three-hour, commercial-free program aired on MTV, VH1, and CMT, and featured a mix of live and taped performances and messages, broadcast from staging areas in New York, Los Angeles, Nashville, and Atlanta, along with satellite feeds from bands during their concerts in other cities that evening. Taylor was well represented on stage by many of the usual suspects: Dave Matthews (914ce), Jewel (her older 914ce), Goo Goo Dolls (915ce), Maroon 5 (814ce), Alan Jackson (custom 610), Three Doors Down (710), Rob Thomas (914ce), the Radiators (814ce and another GA), and Mark Broussard (T5). The big surprise was seeing Sir Mick Jagger strumming his 414 on a rendition of “Waiting on a Friend” with the Rolling Stones during their show in Milwaukee. (Jagger bought the Taylor a while ago in the UK.) Artist Relations rep Bob Borbonus had spent some time with Mick and Keef at A&M; Records earlier this summer during a private listening event to preview the new Stones record, A Bigger Bang, and in addition to showing them some T5s, he talked Mick into having us install a pickup on his acoustic so he could play it live if he wanted to.

FOREVER YOUNG
Neil Young closed the July 2 Live 8 event in appropriate style, leading an all-star cast of musicians and singers in a rousing rendition of his “Rockin’ in the Free World”. A late addition to a lineup that featured major artists performing at eight different places around the world, the Canadian-born Young performed at the 35,000-capacity Park Place venue (formerly Molson Park) in Barrie, Ontario, Canada. He was one of several artists who also played at the original “Live Aid” concert 20 years ago. Like its predecessor, Live 8’s purpose was to raise money and awareness of the need for more aid to Africa. Young performed at a grand piano and on a Taylor 510ce.

LOST AND LOVING IT
It’s no surprise that a Taylor guitar would be an essential desert island item for many music players were they to find themselves stranded. Actor Terry O’Quinn would agree. Quinn plays castaway John Locke on ABC’s hit show Lost, now in its second season. On the recently released DVD set for last year’s debut season, O’Quinn is shown in one of the “behind the scenes” features playing a Taylor 30th Anniversary Commemorative 714ce-L30.

I HEAR YA ROCKIN’
Add old-school roots rocker Dave Edmunds to the list of T5 lovers. He just took delivery of his second — one for London and the other for New York — and e-mailed Bob Borbonus to thank him. “I can’t really find the words to describe how pleased I am with her — perfect fingerboard dimensions, sounds unbelievable, classy looking, and very easy to play. Absolutely perfect for Atkins/Travis fingerpickin’ style — and I have two! Once again, thank you (and your staff) for sending me the best guitar I’ve ever played.”

Meanwhile, Prince’s longtime guitar tech and liaison, Takumi Suetsugu, recently e-mailed Bob Borbonus to report that Prince has been enjoying his purple T5. “He has used it on most of the stuff we’ve done since we got it,” Takumi said. “He doesn’t even change guitars; he just turns on the distortion pedal, changes pickups, and goes. It has made my gig easier. Thank you, thank you, thank you. [The T5] rocks.”

MACPHERSON AND MACPHERSON
The August issue of Vanity Fair (with Martha Stewart on the cover) features an article on Elle MacPherson. The title page photo shows the 42-year-old former supermodel and her two kids playing with guitars, one of which is a Baby Taylor.

Bill Macpherson (no relation) might not look good in a bikini, but he’s doing great stuff with his Taylors, and considering his life and his globetrotting ways, he couldn’t have chosen a more appropriate musical genre in which to play them than world-beat/jazz. The American-born guitarist was raised in Zaire, where he developed a taste for traditional and popular African music. After graduating Magna Cum Laude from Boston’s Berklee College of Music, Macpherson became the first student to earn a Master’s in Jazz Performance at San Diego State University, where he also taught jazz guitar and improvisation.

Eventually, he and New York-born, Ghana-bred bassist-vocalist Nee Quaison-Sackey formed the nucleus of Native Vibe, a genre-defying band that released several CDs and played at major jazz and music festivals, as well as at Taylor’s NAMM showcases. Macpherson interspersed band and solo engagements with numerous trips to the Costa Rican village of Luna de Nosara to surf and play music. Lately, he’s making the latter a more formal commitment.

In March, Macpherson established the Native Vibe Music Institute at Villa La Joya in Costa Rica with the goal of providing quality (and entertaining) music instruction in that region. Two one-week class sessions in May and June concentrated on a beginning-to-intermediate curriculum that included training in guitar, songwriting, and pop, jazz, and rock music theory. Macpherson even partnered with the Safari Surf School to offer a combo course of guitar and surfing instruction.

Although for years his acoustic axe of choice has been an 815ce, Macpherson bought an NS32ce for his Central American journey. “The Taylor nylon-string is excellent,” he reported in May. “I’ve played it a lot and have been writing a bunch of acoustic-oriented songs for both another African-flavored CD and a Spanish-flavored one.”

Between class sessions, Macpherson made a brief trip home to Los Angeles before flying off on a three-week trip to Africa with his Big Baby. He visited the Congo, Ghana, Kenya and Sierra Leone, gigged and recorded acoustic African music with Quaison-Sackey, and sat in with African bands in each country.

“We’ve been invited back to Ghana and Sierra Leone for some jazz festivals in December of this year,” Macpherson reported upon his return to Southern California, where he gigged with Keeva, a Brazilian-music project he co-leads with Rogerio Jardim. He also played with Native Vibe and Len Rainey and the Midnight Players before jetting off to Costa Rica again for some Native Vibe concerts, and winging it back to Miami to perform with Deblois, an acoustic artist whose debut CD he’s co-producing with Jardim.

Macpherson is scheduled to play the “wild and crazy after-parties” for the 19th Annual JazzTrax Jazz Festival, taking place the first three weekends of October on Catalina Island, off the Southern California coast. (billmacpherson.net)

THE BOYS WERE BACK IN TOWN
When Kenny Loggins and Jim Messina started working together in 1970, Bob Taylor was in ninth-grade metal shop learning many of the skills he’d later put to use as a guitar maker, and Kurt Listug was a senior in high school. The duo recently reunited as Loggins and Messina after a much-publicized split three decades earlier, and on July 7 they performed at the Embarcadero Marina Park South near San Diego’s downtown convention center. Today, both musicians are devoted Taylor players, and Messina publicly credited his longtime friend and collaborator for his conversion.

“It’s great to be in San Diego, the ‘backyard’ of Taylor Guitars,” Messina told the crowd at one point. He went on to say that Loggins had turned him on to Taylors years ago, and that he has loved them ever since. He talked briefly about Loggins’ koa Taylor, and made a few nice remarks about the DDSM he was playing, emphasizing that they play Taylors because they like them. Those words and the crowd’s enthusiastic recognition of the Taylor name were sweet music to the ears of two people in the audience — Bob and Cindy Taylor.

SOUL PROPRIETOR
Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter Chris Pierce recently wrapped up a summer stint on tour with Seal. “All went great!” he reported. “We did Europe twice, and hit the West and East Coast of the U.S. The 514ce is great! Beautiful, in fact.”

Pierce’s gig as Seal’s opener was the fruit of a chance encounter, after Seal showed up at a party where Pierce was playing. The two later struck up a conversation and hit it off. The next day, Pierce got a call from Seal’s management with an offer for the opening slot on the European tour, and a week later, he was across the Atlantic.

At a musical glance, Pierce’s soulful pop fits comfortably between Jack Johnson and Lenny Kravitz. An acoustic groovemaster, Pierce sounds like he was nourished by the Beatles and a hodgepodge of ’60s soul, and his stage chops are as smooth as his grooves — he’s been playing L.A.’s club scene since he was a teen.

At 18, he found a musical mentor in Jon Butcher, who took him under his wing, bringing him out on the road and into the studio. He’s also toured with Sonia Dada, Macy Gray, Chris Isaac, and George Clinton. His profile got a lift when one of his songs, “Are You Beautiful”, made the soundtrack to the Don Cheadle/Sandra Bullock film, Crash, and was used in a Banana Republic TV spot. Pierce’s recently remixed and remastered record, Static Trampoline, was released in mid-September. (chrispierce.com)

ALMOST FAMOUS
“My mother passed through my life a stranger to me. Shirl-ee May is everything she might have been and someone I wish I knew. These are songs about the promise her future once held and the sadness she left behind.”

Shawn Amos’s words reveal some of the depth of thought and feeling that went into making Thank You Shirl-ee May, the touching and musically sophisticated concept album he recorded as a tribute to his mother’s memory. The son of Wally Amos, wealthy founder of the Famous Amos cookie empire, Shawn grew up in a single-parent home and never knew his mother. He recorded his album after her suicide in 2003.

Shirlee Ellis Amos (Shirl-ee May was her stage name) lived the life of a chanteuse in New York City in the 1960s; she studied at Carnegie Hall, modeled, appeared in newsreels and on TV, wrote and self-published three books of poetry, recorded for Mercury Records, and headlined at nightclubs along the Eastern seaboard and up into Canada. Sadly, Amos only discovered his mother’s career after her death, when he found recordings, press clippings, and publicity photos stored in an old trunk in her apartment. These heirloom scraps inspired an album that proved cathartic.

Thank You Shirl-ee May paints an absorbing and colorful picture of the life Amos’s mother must have led, chronicling her sojourn at an early age from the back hills of North Carolina to the entertainment hub of the Big Apple. Her misadventures in romance, her excitement and eventual disillusionment with show business, her struggles with self-esteem, and the mental illness that finally brought about her demise, are all represented in Shawn’s songs. It’s a loose “plot” that provides a framework within which Amos makes lyrical observations, some subtle and some pointed, about African-American culture, show business, racism, and family.

The album is impeccably produced. One hears instrumental and melodic echoes of the Beatles and Steely Dan, with occasional nods (some intentional, some likely the result of artistic “osmosis”) to Prince, Rick James, and even Elvis Costello. These influences are subtly woven through the songs, which, despite their stylistic diversity, hold together because of the subject matter, cinctured by the continuous thread of Amos’ gritty-yet-mellifluous vocals.

The only song Amos (615ce, 610) did not write on the CD is a buoyant, gospel version of “Dear Lord”, by critical-fave singer-songwriter Joseph Arthur. The words deal with moments of lost faith, and match what Amos imagines must have been his mother’s final thoughts. He sang the song at her memorial.

Although the album ends on a down note, the overall effect of Thank You Shirl-ee May is an enlivening mix of the moody and the joyful. There is a spoken-word cameo appearance by soul legend “King” Solomon Burke, and two notable duets with young rocker/Vanguard recording artist Garrison Starr (she sings on “Dear Lord” and on the emotion-soaked country blues, “The Bottle Always Brings Me Down”).

Amos’s long list of highly credentialed backup musicians includes such veterans as Ray Parker, Jr., Gregg Bissonette, and Chuck Findley. With heavy-hitters like those involved, it’s no wonder that the musical performances on the CD are absolutely flawless.

A beautifully done DVD accompanies the CD; it contains interviews and in-studio performance footage, plus the entire album, coupled with an animated photo montage featuring many of the documents Amos discovered in his mother’s trunk, including an original, hand-written poem that he set to music in the song, “You’re Groovy”.

In addition to writing and performing music, Amos is a family man, a three-time Grammy-nominated producer, VP Artist Relations for the Shout! Factory independent label, and a social activist who tours colleges, presenting discussion group programs on everything from racial/social balance in Los Angeles to the role media plays in shaping our self-identities. (shawnamos.com)

TRIBUTE TO ANOTHER CHET
On July 29, several icons of San Francisco rock’s golden era converged at the Great American Music Hall to pay tribute to Chet Helms, founding father of that city’s history-making 1960s music scene. Helms, 63, died on July 25 of complications from a stroke suffered four days earlier.

Although the general public came to think of the late Bill Graham as San Francisco’s rock impresario, it was Helms’s production company, Family Dog, that served as the original catalyst by promoting concerts at the legendary Avalon Ballroom and producing the now-famous series of “psychedelic” concert posters by such artists as Alton Kelley, Stanley Mouse, and Rick Griffin.

Indeed, by organizing and energizing a loosely connected community of musicians, visual artists, light-show pioneers, and social activists, Helms was instrumental in creating the milieu that encompassed “the San Francisco sound” and the “Summer of Love”, in the process conceptualizing the “multimedia” approach to the modern rock concert. Helms also founded/managed Big Brother and the Holding Company (bringing then-unknown Janis Joplin to the band) and provided the public platform that launched the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, the Charlatans, and the Great Society, whose original vocalist was Grace Slick.

The lineup for the ChetFest Benefit Concert featured Paul Kantner (Airplane/Starship), Bob Weir and Mickey Hart (Grateful Dead), Country Joe McDonald, David Frieberg (Quicksilver Messenger Service), a recent vintage of Big Brother and the Holding Company, Wavy Gravy as emcee, T-Bone Burnett, and a host of Bay Area musicians and singers, including two younger torchbearers who are among the best vocalists you’ll hear anywhere — Diana Mangano and Darby Gould. Guitarist Roger McNamee played his blue T5 in sets with the Flying Other Brothers and with other ad hoc bands.

BAREFOOTIN'
In mid-July, acoustic rockers Jon Butcher and Ben Schultz, his co-conspirator in the band Barefoot Servants, filed a progress report on their current tour (for details, see “Soundings”, Summer ’05 issue of Wood&Steel;). “It’s been a gas,” Butcher e-wrote. “We’re playing smallish venues (350-2500 seats) with extremely receptive audiences. At times, it’s quiet enough to hear a pin drop! The guitars are performing really well.” Barefoot Servants’ other famous members are session aces Lee Sklar on bass and Neal Wilkinson on drums A review of the band’s new CD, Barefoot Servants 2, appears in the Fall ’05 issue of Wood&Steel;.

WAITING FOR MY CLOTHING TO COME
Singer-songwriter Jason Mraz stripped things down to the bare essentials for a photo feature in the June/July issue of Jane magazine. Mraz posed wearing nothing but his T5. He did, however, manage to find some threads to wear in a music video for “Word Play”, the single from his forthcoming CD, Mr. A-Z, due for release on July 26. The video pokes fun at the sophomore pressures of following up his successful debut, Waiting For My Rocket to Come — sparked by the radio-friendly groover “The Remedy” — with another hit single. The footage alternates between Mraz rocking out on a black T5 and strumming a Taylor acoustic while sitting on a log in a picturesque alpine meadow, as a gathering crowd, apparently unimpressed with his new tune, pummels him with rocks. By the song’s end, he and the acoustic are both a battered mess. You can watch it online at VH1.com.

JAYE TALKIN’
“I love the freedom of making music,” says singer-songwriter Courtney Jaye. “I love being able to try anything and just throw it against the wall, and if it sticks it’s a beautiful thing.” Jaye chatted with our PR Department in early June, on the eve of the release of her Island Records debut, Traveling Light. She talked about bringing her songs to life, the collaborative songwriting process, and how travel flavored her record.

Jaye says she was inspired to write her first song after a close friend’s death in 1995, and it opened a door for her. She continued penning songs inspired by the events of her early 20s, including stints living in Atlanta, Flagstaff, Kauai, Athens (Georgia), Austin, and Los Angeles. Each environment, she says, brought a different stylistic inflection to her songs.

“I would write this thing in Georgia and it would be almost country-sounding. Or I’d write something in L.A. and it’d be very slick-pop sounding. So I wanted to kind of bring it under one roof and allow it to have that rootsy, slightly island-y groove.”

She probably had no idea how much impact an “island” would have on her music. For starters, signing with the Island label brought some choice creative collaborators her way. Several songs on Traveling Light were the fruit of her co-writing efforts with Matthew Sweet, Gary Louris (Jayhawks), Butch Walker, and Nina Gordon (Veruca Salt).

“Co-writing opened me up so much,” she says. “To sit in a room with somebody you don’t really know and to create with them is a pretty amazing thing. I feel very connected to every person I write with in that respect. With Matthew Sweet, before I could get through his door, he’s like, ‘Check this out!’ And I’d listen and say, ‘That’s a great place to start. I love that as a B section.’ And then we’d build off of that. Or with Gary Louris, I’d come in and say, ‘Hey, I have this progression that’s kind of this groove, and then we’d build a melody.’”

That bouncy groove can be heard in one of the album’s singles, “Can’t Behave”, which conjures up a honeyed, early-era Sheryl Crow.

The record also features some ace studio talent, including drummer Jerry Marotta (Peter Gabriel, Tears for Fears) and guitarist Rusty Anderson (Paul McCartney), and was produced by Peter Collins (Rush, Bon Jovi, Indigo Girls).

“Peter was just amazing. I was skeptical going into our initial meeting because I kind of wanted a young, hip, Butch Walker type. I told him I wanted to make a very organic sounding record, not overly done but lush, that these songs are poppy, but I want this to bring together the influences of all of the places I’ve lived in my life with a worldly, eclectic, breezy kind of feel. I knew I wanted tons of percussion, I wanted flutes, ukuleles — I had a list of all of the instruments that I wanted. And he said, ‘I get it. I’m so glad that you had this vision.’”

Last year, Jaye picked up another instrument she wanted — an 814ce.

“A guy in my band had a Taylor. I had an old [other brand] and just played his Taylor one night at our gig, and I fell in love. I didn’t really know much about Taylors. All I knew was that it was a guitar I would play and then go, ‘Oh, one day…’ [laughs]. So when I got signed last June, I thought, it’s time for me to upgrade. Courtneyjaye.com.

COFFEEHOUSE JAM
Brothers Ed and Dean Roland of Collective Soul love their new T5s, which they’ve been playing in support of their new EP, From the Ground Up. The acoustic collection of hits and rarities follows their full-blown studio effort, Youth, released in late 2004. On May 30, the Rolands jammed on their T5s at a special VIP show at Lestat’s Coffeehouse in San Diego as part of radio station My 94.1’s “Underground Lounge”.

“Boy, those guitars sounded nice,” commented Lestat’s soundman Louie Brazier after the show. Later that night the band rocked San Diego’s new House of Blues. The band will be releasing a live DVD later this year, and the T5 promises to get plenty of stage time.

SNEAKY PREVIEW
On March 16, our former VP of Human Resources, Suzanne (Peña) Pratt called our Artist Relations guy, Bob Borbonus, to report that Dave Matthews was shooting a video for the song “American Baby”, from his new album, Stand Up, in her residential building. Apparently, the production company rented all the residents’ parking spaces and basically took over the building (and their lives) for the duration of the shoot.

Borbonus called to check it out and was asked, “How did you know we were doing this?” Apparently, the video shoot had to be done by 5 p.m. so Matthews and band could fly to Australia for the start of a tour. Suzanne met Dave’s guitar tech at the shoot and he told her, “All our Taylors are on their way to Australia, so we had to choose between the [other brand] and the Taylor T5. Dave went with the T5….”

Matthews and Co. will be touring in support of Stand Up this summer. You can see the video on the VH1 website.

STILL GOOD
Austin-based singer-songwriter Bob Schneider has been a ramblin’ man as of late, making the rounds in support of his second solo record, I’m Good Now, and giving his NS32ce and NS42ce some quality stage time. Schneider made his mark on the music scene as frontman for a few different bands in the ’90s, including Joe Rockhead, funky groove-jammers the Ugly Americans (building a fan base as an opening act for Dave Matthews), and the raucous rock outfit the Scabs (winners of an Austin Music Award for Best Band in ’99).

While Schneider’s solo work tends to have a mellower vibe, he’s maintained a loyal, passionate following, dishing out quirky, eclectic slices of Americana that sidewind their way through folk, funk, hip-hop, outlaw country, and alt-rock. On the new record, Schneider’s husky, laid-back vocals drift by with a vagabond soulfulness, mixing bittersweet ruminations about detachment and lost love with plenty of wry humor and offbeat observations. www.bobschneidermusic.com.

TAYLORSPOTTING
Like many who achieve sudden fame for their superhuman exploits, world-class triathlete Scott Tinley wisely “diversified” after winning the grueling World Ironman Triathlon in Hawaii in 1982 and 1985. He authored several books, launched a successful line of specialty clothing, worked as a motivational speaker, personal coach, and sports marketing consultant — and competed in more than 400 multisport events around the world, winning an unprecedented one out of four.

If you catch Tinley in a public forum these days, he’s as likely to be playing his Taylor and singing his own songs. But there are times when a full-size guitar isn’t practical, especially for someone in perpetual motion. Recently, photographer John Segesta sent us a photo of Tinley preparing for a bike ride, Baby Taylor at his side.

A RIVER'S WIDE NECK
In early January, Nicholas DiFabbio sent us the following e-mail: “I currently am the guitarist in the international touring production of the Broadway musical Big River, where my 712W sings sweetly every night. I have it listed in the program that I use Taylor guitars.”

The odd model number on Nick’s guitar prompted us to check our collective memory bank. Turns out, we did a short-run of 700 and 800 series guitars in 1991-’92 with the designation “W” for “wide neck” (1-7/8 inches).

“I got this guitar at Rudy’s in New York City,” added DiFabbio. “It is the sweetest-sounding acoustic I have ever heard. It’s what I play the most in the show; the rest of the time I’m playing tenor banjo, five-string banjo, mandolin, or Dobro.”

Big River: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, with book by William Hauptman and music and lyrics by the late Roger “King of the Road” Miller, premiered in 1984 to great acclaim at the La Jolla Playhouse near San Diego and eventually jumped to Broadway. Although DiFabbio contacted us while performing in the Deaf West Theater of Los Angeles production, the resident of Guilford, Connecticut works mostly in the New York theater scene. In addition to a six-month stint in Les Miserables, he has played his Taylor in Broadway productions of Fiddler on the Roof, 42nd Street, Oklahoma!, Miss Saigon, City of Angels, and Aida.

TEARING UP
Tears for Fears principals Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith have been making the rounds to promote the first new TFF album in nearly 10 years. The wonderfully melodic Everybody Loves a Happy Ending was released in the U.S. in mid-September, and the band followed the release with tour dates.

In late August, the band was in San Diego to perform at the 46th annual InSights & Sounds.04 convention, which brought members of the not-for-profit National Association of Recording Merchandisers (NARM) to a local Marriott. Orzabal played his 514ce during the band’s set. Incidentally, the group’s touring drummer is Nick DiVirgilio (Spock’s Beard), who also pounds the skins in the Mike Keneally Band, and who both played on and produced bassist Bryan Beller’s recent debut CD, View.

BAD CHOPS RISIN’
John Fogerty and his primary acoustic pickin’ partner, an ES-equipped 810, are all over the February/March issue of Guitar World Acoustic. The former CCR frontman chats with writer Harold Steinblatt about his acoustic reawakening back in the early ‘90s, inspired by the Dobro prowess of Jerry Douglas and acoustic virtuosos Tony Rice, Russ Barenberg, and Ricky Skaggs. Fogerty recalls that as a music-smitten teen, he aspired to elevate his guitar-playing chops to the level of Chet Atkins, but that surf music and rock ’n‘ roll detoured him, spawning some bad playing techniques along the way. While living in Nashville in the ‘90s, Fogerty decided to rededicate himself to the guitar. He took advantage of the neighborhood talent, scoring lessons from some of the best flatpickers around, and learned to free up his wrist for picking instead of anchoring his hand on the soundboard, which he had done for years.

“I wanted to be able to do on guitar the kind of thing Bill Monroe did on mandolin — that lilting, endless flow of notes,” he says.

More recently, Fogerty has been working on his fingerpicking, the results of which can be heard on the track “I Will Walk with You”, from his latest CD, Déjà Vu All Over Again. Fogerty used a Taylor 912 on that track, and several Taylors on other cuts, including the 810 and “a magical old 510, my Number One,” which he used on much of the record.

“That poor guitar’s been out on the road for 10 years, and it’s had its share of abuse — been to campfires, my kids’ outdoor variety shows,” he says. “I didn’t take particularly good care of it, but I do now. It’s never going anywhere, other than the studio.”

Speaking of being born on the Bayou, singer-songwriter Marc Broussard’s star — or maybe bad moon — is on the rise. The 22-year-old Southern Louisiana native belies his youth with a gritty, soulful baritone that packs an emotional wallop, pulling inspiration from Otis Redding, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, and Donny Hathaway, along with Cajun, gospel, the musical gumbo of New Orleans, and contemporary artists like Martin Sexton and Dave Matthews.

Broussard has been a road dog as of late, doing more than 200 dates last year, opening for the likes of Robert Randolph and the Family Band, Willie Nelson, Maroon 5, Dave Matthews, and Gavin DeGraw. The exposure has paid off. In September, he made his debut on national TV as the musical guest on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.

A month earlier, NPR’s All Things Considered had aired an interview segment in which reporter Jennifer Ludden talked with Broussard about growing up in a multi-generational musical family, and about the delayed influence of his father’s record collection. Broussard admitted that Chick Corea, George Benson, and Wes Montgomery didn’t really appeal to him when he was a kid, but that later they subconsciously seeped into his musical development.

He also told Ludden that his music is about honesty, and that an honest, soulful perspective is what touches people. Having absorbed so many influences, Broussard said, he’s exploring his own artistic voice. “I’m delving into what I can bring to my game that doesn’t exist in the world.”

Broussard, who loves his 714ce, is currently touring in support of his new record, Carencro (named for his home town), which is chock full of Louisiana grit. marcbroussard.

DREAM GIG
The Dream Foundation is a great organization that for 10 years has been doing for terminally ill adults what the Make-A-Wish Foundation does for children — underwriting the fulfillment of a long-held desire or dream. Recently, longtime DF supporter and Taylor player Kenny Loggins was asked to be the featured performer at a September 11 gala awards dinner and benefit concert/fundraiser held at the top-rated Alyeska Prince Hotel in Girdwood, Alaska, 40 miles south of Anchorage. Prominent stars from the motion picture, television, and sports worlds were in attendance at the evening event, part of the Alyeska Celebrity Sports Invitational, produced by Marjoe Gortner.

Loggins agreed to perform, on the condition that Taylor donate a guitar for the celebrity auction. We sent a 614ce to the chilly north, and its impact was more than anyone could have imagined. Loggins played the guitar onstage, then signed it and handed it to the person with the winning bid of $15,000 — the highest bid of the night for any of the fantastic prizes.

TAYLOR NOTES
Former Creed guitarist Mark Tremonti is back in the music game with his new band, Alter Bridge, which released its debut album, One Day Remains, in August. Tremonti, a longtime Taylor player, is currently leading the band in a series of acoustic performances for radio and retail promotion.

Tremonti’s main axe is his Taylor K22, but the band is currently making the rounds with a 714, 514ce, and an 855. Alter Bridge hit the road for a two-month U.S. tour starting in September.

Guitarist Hershel Yatovitz, a member of Chris Isaak’s band (he also plays himself on Showtime’s The Chris Isaak Show), e-mailed our artist relations rep, Bob Borbonus, in September to rave about his new 855ce: “I love it! Sound, feel, looks, the whole thing. I played it all week in rehearsals and after hours, then today I put it on the truck for our two TV shows in Chicago next week. I know I will be happy with the guitar for years to come. I've already written a song on it.”

We’ve become accustomed to seeing Taylor written about or mentioned in a variety of magazines, from trade and music-oriented publications to corporate, industrial, and in-flight mags, but this might be a first. The January/February 2004 issue of Organic Style, a food-health-home-beauty-travel-soul periodical that promotes “the art of living in balance”, had a feature on Grammy-winning, urban soul/hip-hop artist Erykah Badu. Among the items listed in a sidebar about things “Badu Digs and Depends On” is a Baby Taylor.

Apparently, Badu bought it at a store in New York. A guy named Nobody recommended it, showed her a few chords, and when she got the Baby home she wrote some songs on it. The item ends with Badu’s shout-out to the man who introduced her to Taylor: “Nobody, wherever you are, thank you.”

THE REPLACEMENTS
Singer-songwriter, musical activist, free spirit, and longtime Taylor player Michelle Shocked dropped by the factory on June 17 and left happy: she had a new 714ce to sub for the 1993 810 recently stolen from her car, and a new Baby Taylor to replace her road-weary one.

Throughout a sidewinding career, Shocked has followed her muse from the fertile musical soil of East Texas and Texarkana across nearly every type of musical terrain, embracing strains of folk, blues, punk, bluegrass, jazz, country, Texas swing, gospel, and electronica. It’s a self-described “mongrel mixture” that she has made her own brand of Americana.

While plumbing her roots influences and the history within the old songs she grew up with, Shocked also was inspired to write tunes that reflect her world travels and progressive activism. She long has fought for the rights of artists to overcome their position as glorified indentured servants to the music labels and to own their master recordings. In her own recent triumph, she was able to re-release her old catalog.

Shocked also has worked tirelessly to illuminate the plight of the downtrodden, in the spirit of Woody Guthrie. She’s about to launch a new magazine, Jams, which she intends to make a cultural crossroads for music and activism. She also was planning an eight-week concert/urban festival series in Los Angeles for July and August, which will draw from L.A.’s diverse pool of musical talent.

[Michelle Shocked photo by Erin Fitzgerald.]

PARTY OF FOUR
In May, Kurt Neumann of the heartland-rockers, the BoDeans, ordered a black 610 for the band’s summer tour in support of Resolution (Rounder Records), the band’s first new release in eight years. The Wisconsin natives sprang out of the gate in the mid-’80s with their debut, Love & Hope & Sex & Dreams, which helped earn them “Best New Band” honors from Rolling Stone magazine. They went on to tour with U2, record with Robbie Robertson, and build a loyal following with their catchy guitar-driven tunes and vocal harmonies. Years later, the BoDeans extended their appeal to a younger fan base with the help of the upbeat pop track “Closer to Free”, which became the theme song for the TV show Party of Five.

SAN DIEGO GOTHIC
In its June “Best Of San Diego” issue, San Diego magazine spoofed the iconic image portrayed in the Grant Wood painting, American Gothic, in which a pitchfork-wielding, Depression-era Iowa farmer and his unmarried daughter sport a “dour and sour” pose in front of their farm house. This time, the couple was Steve Poltz and Anya Marina, both local Taylor artists.

Deemed “Best Musical Couple” by the glossy city mag, Poltz and Marina did their best to strike a stern pose, but one can imagine the two goofballs busting up moments after the photo was snapped. The clincher: instead of wielding a pitchfork, Poltz is clutching his beloved “Flowerpot”, a 710 with a Guinness bottle cap imbedded in the well-worn peghead.

On May 22, Marina appeared as a musical guest on Whad’ya Know when the nationally syndicated show, hosted by Michael Feldman, touched down in San Diego for a live taping before 1,700 fans at the Civic Theater. Whad’ya Know is distributed to more than 300 Public Radio International affiliates in the United States, reaching 1.3 million listeners each week.

Although her own axe is a Taylor 312ce, she borrowed Poltz’s K14ce to perform two songs from her current CD, Exercises in Racketeering, accompanied by bassist Rick Sybrandy and percussionist Brad Davis. Feldman, who works out of Madison, Wisconsin, obviously was taken with Marina’s beachy good looks and seductive vocal style.

“I love your music, Anya. I love everything about you,” the host gushed between songs.

“Anytime anybody treats me with any kind of affection, it makes me feel validated,” Marina later admitted.

[Anya performs as Whad'ya Know host Michael Feldman looks on. Photo by Randy Hoffman.]

GIG LATIN
Latin alt-rock-pop star Julieta Venegas stopped by in May to purchase a Taylor and take the factory tour. Venegas first gained a measure of notoriety in the mid-’90s as a member of the cultish Southern California punk-activist band, Tijuana No! After going solo, Venegas earned the 1997 Nuestro Rock best-album award for her debut, Aquí, and the following year she won MTV’s Best Female Performance honors for the video “Como sé.”

But it was 2000’s Bueninvento album that earned multiple Latin Grammy nominations and put Venegas on the map, and on the cover of Rolling Stone in Mexico. Her latest album, the effervescent Si, is solidifying the singer-songwriter/multi-instrumentalist’s position as a critical and fan favorite. Singer-guitarist Beto Cuevas of the Latin pop-rock group La Ley dropped by the factory on March 12 to chat with our Artist Relations guy, Bob Borbonus, and check out some guitars. The Grammy-winning band was gearing up for a South American tour before swinging back through the U.S. for some shows this summer.

Cuevas loves our guitars and plays Taylors exclusively. In addition to his 710ce, the band took a pair of 614ce’s and a 655ce out on the road last year, and they plan to take a K4 out on tour this year. Such Latin acts as La Ley, Bacilos, and Maná (all Taylor-playing bands) have amassed huge followings throughout Mexico and Central and South America.

[Above: Julieta Venegas poses with a few fans during a Taylor factory tour. Photo by Rita Funk-Hoffman.]

HANGIN’ WITH HAGAR
There were Taylors all over the stage as former Van Halen frontman Sammy Hagar and his band, the Waboritas, dished out a live acoustic set at The Grove in Anaheim on Wednesday, September 17. Hagar was celebrating the release of a new DVD, The Long Road to Cabo, and after the DVD was screened for the crowd, longtime KLOS (Los Angeles) DJ Jim Ladd hosted an hour-long show with Hagar and friends, which was broadcast live. Hagar performed a half-dozen tunes, including a couple of Van Halen numbers, and was joined on-stage by VH bassist Michael Anthony (on an AB3), along with former Grateful Dead members Mickey Hart and Bob Weir (who played a 510ce). Not surprisingly, the ES was an all-around hit among the artists, guitar techs and the sound engineers. Sammy fell hard for a K55 that Taylor artist relations rep Bob Borbonus had brought to the event, and ended up buying it.

That marked the second recent Taylor purchase for Hagar, who’s also been performing with his former bandmates from influential ‘70s hard rock band Montrose, featuring guitarist Ronnie Montrose, bassist Bill Church, and drummer Dennis Carmassi. Ronnie Montrose owns an older 812ce, and Bob Borbonus had recently sent him a fat-neck 712ce with the ES. Apparently Ronnie loved it, and Sammy decided to buy it for him as a surprise.

SHOW & TULL
Taylor clinician Mike Keneally was the featured guest of Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson during the Tull frontman’s performance at a venue near Taylor Guitars in El Cajon, California, on Tuesday night, September 30. Anderson’s Rubbing Elbows tour blends live performance with a talk show/Q&A; format, in which a local radio DJ emcees the event, audience members submit requests, and Anderson brings a standout local musician on-stage to sit in on a couple of tunes. The host of the El Cajon show was longtime San Diego radio personality Jim McInnes. Keneally joined Anderson and his acoustic trio for a rendition of “Father’s Day” from Mike’s Wooden Smoke album, which ended with Mike and Ian trading guitar and flute solos. Later, Mike was invited to join the band for a rousing encore of the Tull classic, “Locomotive Breath,” complete with kazoo participation from audience members.

[L-R: Mike Keneally with Ian Anderson backstage. Photo by Scott Chatfield.]

TRICKED OUT
Cheap Trick guitarist Rick Nielsen paid a visit to the factory on Thursday, October 2, taking the opportunity to have his custom Taylor guitar (the basis for his RNSM artist model) retrofitted with the ES. The band’s longtime lineup of Nielsen, bassist Tom Petersson, vocalist Robin Zander, and drummer Bun E. Carlos remains intact, an impressive feat given the crazy rollercoaster ride of the music biz, not to mention the expected “dysfunctional family” dynamics that come with nearly 30 years of being in a band together. They still have a blast playing live, Nielsen told Bob Borbonus, and haven’t shown signs of letting up on their touring pace. Even though their fans tend to crave the nostalgia trip of their older power-pop hits, especially from their breakthrough multi-platinum live album Live at Budokan (“I Want You to Want Me”, “Surrender”, “Hello There”) their shows still have a fresh bite to them. The band has been opening their shows with a mini-acoustic set, featuring Nielsen on his Taylor.

[Cheap Trick guitarist Rick Nielsen at the Taylor factory. Photo by Erin Fitzgerald.]

NEW LUMBER
Former New York Met, current San Diego Padre, and Taylor owner Mike Piazza was in the house on August 20. Artist Relations dude Bob Borbonus gave number 31 a factory tour, during which the 10-time All-Star signed lots of stuff and chatted with Production staffers. Piazza had just returned to the Mets’ active roster after three months on the disabled list (presumably, his guitar chops are up). He ripped a homer in his first game back, currently is second on the career home run list for catchers (he ended this season with 369), and is closing-in on former Boston Red Sox catcher Carlton Fisk (376).

Earlier in the summer, Taylor Regional Sales Manager Rick Fagan paid a daytime visit to the San Diego Padres clubhouse and sold 310s to pitchers Matt Herges and Scott Linebrink. Apparently when catcher Miguel Ojeda saw the guitars, he played some Mariachi music on one of the 310s and told Rick he’d like to buy a Taylor, too.

[L-R: Mike Piazza tours the Taylor factory. Photo by Erin Fitzgerald]

FOREVER YOUNGBLOOD
Folk-rock singer-songwriter and former Youngbloods frontman Jesse Colin Young visited San Diego’s independent radio station, 102.1 KPRI, over the summer for an in-studio interview/performance. Young and the station’s owner/host, Robert Hughes, had no shortage of great things to say about Taylor during the “Live from Studio i”segment.

“I think at this point [Taylor] is the best-selling of the major acoustic brands,” Hughes said. “And one of the reasons is because of the high quality. I can’t tell you the number of artists who come in here, and out of their cases come Taylor guitars. I would say probably half the artists who come to this studio are playing these guitars.”

Young, who’s been a Taylor guy for 15 years, had just received a model equipped with the Expression System, sent over by Bob Borbonus.

“I’ve been waiting for this kind of sound from a guitar pickup for 20 years,” Young said. “And they didn’t make this guitar for me, they just pulled it off the production line, and it’s just perfect. So that means the average person who goes in to buy a [Taylor] gets a perfect guitar.”

Young also gave props to Taylor’s Customer Service department for always doing a great job.

The Youngbloods are best known for their recording of “Get Together”, which was a Top 10 hit in the late ’60s and perhaps the definitive peace anthem for the Summer of Love. Young and his Taylor performed the tune live on the radio show, along with “Darkness, Darkness” (originally on the Youngbloods’ Elephant Mountain album), which Robert Plant covered on his 2002 album, Dreamland.

These days, Young lives in Hawaii and cultivates organic Kona coffee, but he visits Southern California from time to time to visit his mother, who lives in Oceanside, about 30 minutes north of our factory.

PASSING TIME, PRETENDING
Al Stewart, another hit-credentialed recording artist (“Year of the Cat”, “Time Passages”) ordered a 612ce and a 914ce while he was at the factory in August. Stewart brought a friend, guitarist Paul Robinson (Dan Hicks & the Hot Licks, Hot Club of San Francisco).

Around the same time, Ken Wood, guitar tech for the Pretenders, dropped in to talk shop with Dave Hosler and learn more about the nuances of the Expression System. The band recently purchased a couple of ES-equipped guitars, and Wood said they sound great; the band apparently did an acoustic pickup “shoot-out”, and the ES slayed the other pickup systems. Wood said that Chrissie Hynde, who isn’t a gearhound and normally doesn’t gush with compliments, instantaneously commented on how much she liked her “Summer Special” rosewood 412ce, while lead guitarist Adam Seymour fell for an 814ce. The band finished a U.S. tour earlier this year and will be gigging in Brazil this September, then head off to England, Ireland, France, and Spain in October. There are also talks of an acoustic tour next year.

[L-R: Allan Karl, Al Stewart, and Paul Robinson. Photo by Rita Funk-Hoffman.]

AXE WRANGLERS
Rich Baum was working as assistant propman on a photo shoot for a Wranglers jeans ad when he decided the scene needed something. He had just the item - his somewhat rare, 1990 Robert Taylor Signature Brazilian 810 with herringbone binding (number 3 of 8).

“We were creating an ad and also shooting a video for internal use in all the Wrangler stores,” Baum explained. “I’ve always thought it’s better to use my fine example of a guitar than use a cheap ‘prop’ guitar. I’ve been a propmaster in Hollywood for 23 years, so I’ve been able to get my Taylor into some movies, too. I love Taylors so much, I named my son Taylor!”

WOODSHREDDING
The presence of Anthrax isn’t always bad. In August, New York’s enduring purveyors of speed metal showed up at San Diego’s KIOZ Rock 105.3 studios to chat with jockette Shanon Leder and to play a couple of tunes, acoustically, in front of about 30 fans who’d won seats through a weekend promotion. Taylor provided the guitars (and bass) for the segment, and despite the fact that it was only the second time the guys have formally played together “unplugged”, they easily pulled it off.

Anthrax was in town for a show that night in support of the band’s new release, We’ve Come for You All. Mohawked guitarist Rob Caggiano wore one of those generic conventioneer’s name stickers that read, “Hello, my name is… Satan”, while singer John Bush led the band through its current single, “Safe Home”. He then got the crowd to sing along on a rendition of “Antisocial”, from 1990’s State of Euphoria. After the set, the band signed a Taylor 110 to be auctioned off by Rock 105.3 as part of their “Axes for X-mas” charity to benefit Children’s Hospital of San Diego.

[Acoustic Anthrax. Photo by Jim Kirlin.]

BIG BABY BOOM
Actress/singer Taryn Manning of the brother/sister duo, Boomkat, was pictured performing with a Big Baby at L.A.’s House of Blues in the June issue of W magazine. Manning has been a multi-media force of late -- as an actress, she’s gone from roles on TV’s The Practice and Boston Public to the Silver Screen (Crazy/Beautiful, White Oleander, 8-Mile), while Boomkat made its Dreamworks label debut, Boomkatalog One, in April. Amid a sea of formulaic Pro Tools pop, Manning and her brother Kellin have scored high marks for their inventive amalgam of urban soul, trip-hop, and textured beats, propelled by Manning’s vocals and colored with cello riffs, moody guitar, and other original emotive touches. The Big Baby showed up again in a full page photo of the two (shown here), celebrating blue jeans in Glamour magazine's September issue.

POCO A POCO
Being a concert promoter is not as glamorous as people think; dealing with unrealistic agents and petulant artists can leave the sturdiest of pros blowing straw bubbles in their milk. One antidote is occasionally to “book one from the heart” as a reminder that this is supposed to be about exposing great music to real enthusiasts. On July 20, promoter Kenny Weissberg of Humphrey’s Concerts by the Bay in San Diego played matchmaker with some of his favorite acts, and the result was magic.

Weissberg assembled a “dream theme” bill featuring Poco, Richie Furay, and Chris Hillman because he’s a longtime fan of and friend to them all, and because members of all three acts had played with each other in various configurations “back in the day” (Weissberg wanted to get J.D Souther but couldn’t locate him). At times, the concert was more like a reunion jam featuring original members of the Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, Poco, and groups in-between.

Hillman, Herb Pedersen, and bassist Bill Bryson opened the show and did no fewer than five vintage Byrds songs, “Western style”. Furay, now a pastor in Colorado, brought his 814ce and his church’s music director to accompany him on some great renditions of songs from his various career stops.

As Furay was waving goodbye after a well-received set, the members of Poco sauntered onstage. “Oh, no you don’t -- you’re not done singing yet,” pedal-steel player Rusty Young said to his former bandmate. Furay stuck around to sing several of the more familiar tunes from the Poco songbook, and threw in stirring readings of the Buffalo Springfield tunes “Go and Say Goodbye” and “Kind Woman”, as well as the Everly Bothers’ classic “Bye Bye Love”. Sometimes, it all just works.

[Richie Furay (foreground) performing with Scott Sellum at Humphrey’s in San Diego. Photo by Randy Hoffman.]

SUM FUN
In mid-June, Bob Borbonus delivered a couple of new Taylors to Sum 41, who were in Los Angeles playing a summer festival sponsored by the influential L.A. radio station, KROQ. Sum booked studio time to follow their Warped Tour this summer, and the record promises to add a heavy acoustic flavor to the band’s catchy pop-punk sound. The Borb also delivered a guitar to AFI and was recently tracked down by the Brit-rockers, Blur, about acquiring some Taylors.
 
SHARP SHAW-BLADES
Guitar World Acoustic / April 2007
Longtime pals and former Damn Yankees bandmates Tommy Shaw and Jack Blades are featured — Shaw with a 2006 Fall Limited cocobolo/Engelmann 910ce, and Blades with a 714ce-LTD. (Shaw also owns a 614ce and a 654ce.) The two talk about their new acoustic-heavy cover record, Influence, and both acknowledge that they’ve written a lot of rock hits from each of their former bands on acoustic guitar — Blades cites Night Ranger’s “Don’t Tell Me You Love Me” and “(You Can Still) Rock in America”, while Shaw points to Styx’s “Blue Collar Man”.

The natural musical chemistry between the two was obvious on the Taylor stage at the Winter NAMM show back in 2006, when they played several covers that would end up on Influence. Despite the spate of cover records from classic rock acts in the last few years, even prickly music critics have been giving Influence the nod for the crystalline vocal harmonies, organic arrangements, and pure heart that give the songs a fresh, vibrant air.

Interviewed on the VH1 Classic series, Hangin’ With, Shaw and Blades described the project as a labor of love, in which they selected songs with great melodies that inspired them as young songwriters, largely from the ‘60s and ‘70s. Free to record without the typical commercial pressures of a record label (VH1 Classic actually is the label), the tracks have an infectious, sun-drenched vibe that makes you want to crank it in the car on a sunny day with the windows rolled down — or bust out your Taylor and strum along.

Among the harmony-rich faves: “Summer Breeze”, “Time of the Season”, “California Dreamin’”, “For What it’s Worth”, “Your Move” (Yes), and a pair of Simon & Garfunkel cuts, “The Sounds of Silence” and a more revved-up version of “I Am a Rock”. The two played a pair of tunes acoustically on Hangin’ With: “Your Move” and “High Enough”, the latter of which they wrote together in Damn Yankees. The harmonies sounded superb, as did their guitars. For that set, Blades played a 914ce while Shaw blended nicely with a 954ce. (Shawblades.com)

ACROSS THE BOARD
Spin / March 2007
Eight-time surfing world champion Kelly Slater is pictured strumming a 614ce, with the North Shore Oahu, Hawaii surf in the background. Slater was photographed in early December, 2006, while in Oahu for the Vans Triple Crown of Surfing event.

“I didn’t know Eddie Vedder surfed when I fell in love with Pearl Jam,” Slater says in the spread. “There’s something in his lyrics that resonates with surfers — he talks about the ocean a lot.” Slater got to jam with the band during the trip, joining them on stage for an encore during the band’s VIP concert on the North Shore.

Slater carried a lead into the final round of competition at the North Shore’s famous Pipeline, but rival Andy Irons’ epic skills on the Backdoor break helped him overtake Slater in the finals for the crown.

BEFORE THE MINI-VAN
Guitar Player / February 2007
Deborah Holland, who waxed ecstatic about her new 814ce in the “Soundings” feature of the Winter 2007 Wood&Steel;, got some major face-time in this issue of GP. Holland has pursued a solo career since making her mark as the singer and songwriter for Animal Logic, a late-’80s progressive pop-rock trio formed by Police drummer Stewart Copeland and Return To Forever bassist Stanley Clarke.

Indie releases are the perfect matrix for self-referential material, and fittingly her most recent CD showcases no-holds-barred writing and wry, confessional lyrics that one might not want mom to read. The “Riffs: Songwriting” section of GP features a full-page interview and a big picture of Deborah working her magic on the 814ce.

“The title track of her new CD, Bad Girl Once…[Rage On] … takes a listener on a journey through her mercurial youth,” writes Anil Prasad. “Ultimately, the song ends with reflections on her current life of content domesticity as a soccer mom, with a nod and a wink to everyone now in the know about her past exploits.”

“There isn’t a word in that song that isn’t true,” Holland relates in the interview. “I sometimes wonder if I should have gone as far as I did with portraying the specifics, but I don’t censor myself. I’m making honest music that represents my experiences.”

Holland’s latest music project is with the Refugees, a supergroup of songstresses that also features Wendy Waldman, Cindy Bullens, and Jenny Yates.

CHILLIN’ WITH CHEZ
Country star Kenny Chesney is pictured poolside holding his custom Taylor in the July issue of InStyle magazine. The axe looks to be a rosewood Grand Auditorium with an ab-trimmed top, vintage (early 900 Series) fretboard inlays, a custom label with Kenny’s name printed on it, and a customized truss rod cover that reads “Chez”.

JUST A GOOD OLE BOY
San Diego Padres pitching ace Jake Peavy is profiled in the June 6 issue of ESPN magazine. Writer Tom Friend’s piece, titled “Country Rock”, leads with a full-page photo of Peavy picking on the K22ce-L7 he bought after a visit here a few weeks ago with Pads teammate Scott Linebrink and Friend. The 24-year-old Alabama native has an old soul, Friend writes, a testament to the influence of Peavy’s grandpa, who taught him the focus that has helped the pitcher blossom into one of the best slingers in the league, drawing comparisons to future Hall-of-Famer Greg Maddux. Peavy, who led the majors in ERA in 2004 with a 2.27, acknowledges being a down-home, pickup-truck-driving country boy (when he bats at Petco Park, the house DJ plays the theme from The Dukes of Hazzard). Peavy apparently was thrilled when former Padres infielder (and Taylor player) Tim Flannery taught him to play one of his grandpa’s favorite songs, “Pancho and Lefty”, on guitar.

THREE SHADES OF BELEW
A full-page photo of guitarist Adrian Belew playing his 612ce leads off an interview with the shape-shifting axesmith in the May 2005 issue of Guitar Player. The master of animal guitar sounds talks about the trio of solo projects he’s releasing over the course of this year, beginning with Side One, which hit the street in late January. Although Side One clocks in at a terse 33 minutes, it packs more creative punch than most double albums. Belew played all the instruments, save for three cuts in which a ferocious rhythm section comprised of Primus bassist Les Claypool and Tool drummer Danny Carey helped color the sonic adventure.

Belew says that each of the three solo records reflects a distinctive area of interest for him: Side One explores looping; Side Two indulges in DJ-styled music (drum machines, loops, synth pads, repetitive vocal motifs, a lack of verse-chorus song structure); Side Three conforms to Belew’s approach on prior solo albums: “an eclectic mixture of different styles”. www.adrianbelew.net

XXX RAIDED
Contemporary folk singer-songwriter Richard Shindell is pictured on the cover of the February/March Dirty Linen playing his new XXX-RS. Shindell fell for the 30th Anniversary short-scale while in San Diego for a gig in late 2004, after a test-drive arranged by Taylor Sales staffer Jay Morrissey. Morrissey bears the distinction of having been Shindell’s first and only guitar student when he lived back in New Jersey in the mid-’90s.

“You got me,” Shindell told Morrissey after some playing time with the guitar, and with that, it became his touring guitar in support of his latest release, Vuelta. Shindell relayed to Morrissey that after one show, an audience member raved that his guitar sounded like a piano. Shindell subsequently picked up a K4, as well.

The consummate song craftsman, Shindell has amassed critical acclaim and a devoted following since his 1992 debut, Sparrow’s Point, and with each ensuing record has furthered his reputation as one of America’s premier singer-songwriters. With a rich baritone voice, Shindell paints vivid, character-driven narratives that often flicker with haunting beauty and reflect the complex underpinnings of his protagonists’ lives. Filled with sophistication, nuance, and oblique details, a Shindell song often manages to be at once stark and intricate, and rarely fails to leave an afterglow of emotion.

An expatriate who has lived in Buenos Aires, Argentina with his family since 2000, Shindell recorded Vuelta with the Argentinian ensemble Puente Celeste. www.richardshindell.com.

GROOMING MAROON
In the December/January issue of Guitar World Acoustic, Maroon 5 singer-guitarist Adam Levine (414ce) and guitarist James Valentine (714ce) talk about the importance of playing acoustic shows to attract industry attention to their debut record, Songs About Jane. Although the release would eventually blossom into a multi-platinum seller and garner the band a Grammy award for Best New Artist, the record didn’t make an immediate splash upon its release in mid-2002. So the band took a guerrilla approach, playing countless acoustic showcases, often in unusual settings.

“We’d go to a radio station and play our songs in a conference room for the staff in an effort to get people to believe in the band,” Valentine tells writer Richard Bienstock.

A sonic snapshot of this early period is 1.22.03.Acoustic, released in 2004 and recorded from a live acoustic show the band played for industry reps. The live EP captures the band’s acoustic arrangements of the songs that would spark the group’s meteoric rise over the next two years. Valentine estimates that Maroon 5 played hundreds of those types of gigs, and that the stripped-down live format was effective for a couple of reasons: it exposed the underlying craftsmanship of the songs themselves without studio gloss, and showcased the band’s musical interplay.

“There is just so much weird, ‘unmusical’ music out there, and all these acts that don’t play their own instruments,” Valentine says. “We don’t want to be thought of that way.”

The challenge was for the band to find acoustic arrangements that carried the rhythm, especially on occasions when just Levine and Valentine performed with guitars.

“All of our songs are very beat-oriented,” says Valentine. “The challenge is to come up with an acoustic part that conveys the melody but also moves the rhythm along and highlights the beat. It certainly helps that the acoustic guitar is a very percussive instrument.”

GOOD NEWS
Award-winning contemporary Christian artist Steven Curtis Chapman and his 714 made the cover of the September/October Christian Musician. Chapman talks with editor Bruce Adolph about the making of his 14th album, All Things New, which was recorded in Hollywood and features a stellar cast of West Coast studio cats — Lyle Workman on lead guitar, Chris Chaney (Jane’s Addiction) on bass, drummer Matt Chamberlain (Tori Amos), keyboardist Patrick Warren, plus special appearances by Jonny Lang and Lifehouse singer Jason Wade. The album went on to earn Chapman his fifth Grammy, for Best Pop/Contemporary Gospel Album, in February.

PIECE OF DRAKE
Sam Beam, better known as Iron and Wine, is one of three artists profiled in “The Kings of Quiet,” an article in the December issue of Acoustic Guitar. The piece tracks a breaking wave of neo-folk/indie-pop acoustic artists who’ve been inspired by the intimate-voiced fingerstylists of the late ’60s and early ’70s, most notably embodied by the late Nick Drake.

Beam, a native of Florida, says making music has always been more of a solitary act for him, and acknowledges Leonard Cohen, Paul Simon, Townes Van Zandt, and Tom Waits as influences. Iron and Wine’s latest offering, Our Endless Numbered Days, is slightly less low-fi than 2002’s critically acclaimed The Creek Drank the Cradle, yet preserves Beam’s wispy, reflective, “handcrafted” sensibility, flavored with Southern lyrical imagery.

Beam recently acquired two Taylors, a 714ce and 314ce, “because I like that new Expression System.” 

  A WEE GIG FOR A BIG ISSUE
Taylor enthusiast David McCall sent over a newspaper clipping of the Scottish band Travis performing an impromptu lunchtime concert October 6 on the streets of Glasgow. Published in the Scottish paper, The Herald, the photo depicts the band, with Taylors in tow, returning to their busking roots by playing in support of the Big Issue, an organization that helps support the homeless in Scotland.

A SWIFT RISE
The August issue of Vanity Fair features an Abercrombie & Fitch fashion spread that showcases 27 “Rising Stars”, one of whom is 14-year-old Taylor Swift, a blossoming country musician who recently scored a record deal with RCA Nashville. Pictured holding her main axe, a beautiful K65ce, Swift clearly sports the Abercrombie “look” (she’ll also appear in the company’s catalog), and musically, has a sweet voice and promising songwriting chops. She’s already been paired up with several veteran Nashville tunesmiths to write material, including last year’s BMI Songwriter of the Year, Troy Verges. It may not hurt that she’s managed by Britney Spears’ manager. Swift is profiled in the summer issue of Wood&Steel;, as part of another installment of our “Kids Who Play” feature.

XXX COVER MODEL
A Brazilian rosewood 30th Anniversary guitar body fills the cover of Acoustic Guitar magazine’s May issue, kicking off a story that celebrates Taylor’s illustrious three decades in business. Titled “American Dreamers”, the piece is an adapted excerpt from the recently published hardcover book Taylor Guitars: 30 Years of a New American Classic, written by Michael Simmons. The retrospective chronicles the company’s rise from its early American Dream salad days to its current position as an innovative industry leader and “one of the most successful guitar companies in American history”.

Simmons traces Bob’s evolving quest for quality, efficiency, and consistency, exemplified by his pioneering use of CNC technology. The article also notes other key guitar refinements spawned along the way, such as our UV-curable finish, the Baby Taylor, our NT neck, the nylon-string series, and the Expression System, capped off stylishly with a mention of our short-scale, slotted-head 30th Annies. The ultimate success of the company so far, as Bob and Kurt point out in the story, is underscored by their complementary dynamic and mutual trust, which has enabled each to focus freely on different components of the enterprise — guitar innovation and business development — and bring them together into a cohesive whole.

OUT OF AFRICA
The May issue of Acoustic Guitar also includes an interview with eclectic blues guitarist Corey Harris, whose music plumbs the connection between African music and the Mississippi Delta blues. Harris has earned heaps of critical praise as an artist who can tap the visceral soul of the early blues á la Robert Johnson, and cross-pollinate it with contemporary styles like funk and hip-hop, while still retaining an authentic feel. Some of you may have seen Harris in Martin Scorsese’s recent documentary series, The Blues, first aired on PBS in 2003. In the first episode (“Feel Like Goin’ Home”), Harris travels to Mali, in west Africa, to trace the musical ancestry of the blues. The trip inspired interesting musical collaborations with Malian guitar master Ali Farka Toure, and helped spawn Harris’s most recent CD, Mississippi to Mali, parts of which were recorded in both regions. Harris’s main axe is a 514ce, which he says he uses for fingerpicking, solo shows, and songwriting.

ACOUSTIC "ONENESS"
The March issue of JAZZIZ magazine features a two-page spread titled, “Gone Acoustic”. It’s about a small but esteemed group of jazz guitarists who have retained a loyalty to acoustic axes the despite electric guitar’s instrumental prevalence in jazz circles. Among the well-known string-slingers represented in the article are Paco de Lucia, John McLaughlin, Pat Metheny, Ralph Towner, Al DiMeola, Kevin Eubanks (Tonight Show), Earl Klugh, John Abercrombie, Bill Connors (the original Return to Forever guitarist, before DiMeola), Larry Carlton, Joe Pass, John Scofield, Bill Frisell, Larry Coryell…..and Taylor nylon-string player Wayne Johnson. Although each also plays electric guitar, all are repeatedly drawn to the unique inspiration that comes from the purity and immediacy of an acoustic.

Wayne gets almost the entire last column of ink, and the two axes mentioned are his one-of-a-kind nylon-string made by William “Grit” Laskin and his “road acoustic”, a Taylor NS62ce.

“There’s a oneness that absolutely comes to me in the acoustic when I pick it up, and it’s different than the electric,” Wayne says. “I don’t get that same feeling of oneness from holding those [electric guitars] and playing with my fingers as I do with the acoustics….If you have a really good acoustic guitar, you just pick it up and it’s there every time. And I really like that.”

Wayne recently released One Guitar, an improvisational gem of an album that showcases his virtuosic touch and rhythmic flair on solo acoustic nylon-string.
 
BORN TO THE PURPLE
2004 Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame inductee Prince again is a ubiquitous presence in the public spotlight, as is his gorgeous new purple-stained 612ce. The word from his court is that he loves the guitar, which he’s been playing on solo acoustic tunes on his tour in support of his most recent album, Musicology. And this time, he allowed us to put our logo on the peghead (see the “1984” entry in the Taylor timeline.

The cover of a recent issue of What’s On in Las Vegas magazine proclaims the return of Prince’s purple reign with a great shot of him wielding his custom Taylor, while the July issue of Guitar Player features a full-page Prince/Taylor photo. In the related GP cover story, Prince talks about important skills for young guitarists (“A lot of cats don’t work on their rhythm enough, and if you don’t have rhythm, you might as well take up needlepoint….The next thing is pitch…you’re either in tune or you ain’t.”); some of his musical influences (Sly & the Family Stone, Ike Turner, James Brown); and the art of soloing (“Guitarists should listen to singers for solo ideas — especially women singers.”). He also said he might consider doing an acoustic tour.

Sometimes, even Prince has to improvise. For an interview on the CNBC program Special Report with Maria Bartiromo, he borrowed the segment director’s Taylor 414.

“The producers had been trying to get [Prince] to play something when they booked him for the show…but he was very reluctant,” read a subsequent post on the director’s website. “It occurred to me to bring in my two-week-old Taylor 414. I figured we could put it on the set near him, and it wouldn’t be as big a deal as getting up and going over to a piano. Well, come air time he still wasn’t wanting to play (he said he’d only woken up three hours before). By the third segment he said he’d play the guitar, but only if Maria would sing (which she can’t). Short story long, he played my Taylor on the air…parts of ‘Purple Rain’ and some bluesy licks.”
 
M-TAYLOR-V
The “unplugged” trend that MTV helped popularize nearly 15 years ago not only is alive and kicking, but has become standard operating procedure for virtually every emerging pop act these days. A regular feature on the music network’s website, MTV.com LIVE, presents exclusive footage of many of the hottest young bands playing acoustically, recorded at MTV’s in-house studio, and throughout much of 2004, it’s been a virtual parade of Taylor players.

During the last week of July alone, seven of the featured artists had Taylors in tow: Story of the Year, Hoobastank, Avril Lavigne (her lead guitarist), Yellowcard, Trapt, the Killers, and Maroon 5. Among the other young Taylor-wielding acts recently showcased were Switchfoot, Ryan Cabrera, and Chronic Future.

Speaking of Story of the Year, SOTY bandmates Phil Sneed (guitar) and Adam Russell (bass) dropped by the factory in late September. On the heels of their summer Warped Tour performances, the guys were in town to headline a show at Soma (the Nintendo Fusion Tour), and took advantage of their time here to sample a guitar prototype that’s in development for next year. Both were thrilled to meet Bob Taylor, and later showed Marketing Director Jonathan Forstot a rough cut of the upcoming video for their next single, “Sidewalks”, which apparently showcases their Taylors prominently.

Meanwhile, we’re told that guitarist Jade Puget of A.F.I. (A Fire Inside) loves the 712 he’s been playing. In June, A.F.I. claimed three California Music Awards (formerly the “Bammies”) at the event’s 27th-annual fete in Oakland, including Outstanding Debut on a Major Label, Outstanding Group, and Outstanding Rock Album (for last year’s major label debut, Sing the Sorrow). The Bay area quartet has built upon its hardcore punk and brooding goth-rock influences, balancing its heaving riffs and mosh-pit pulse with more dynamic, nuanced song structures.