Ken Parker New Yorker
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Transcript of Ken Parker New Yorker
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I1 'n Parker's workshop lies an hour products, designed for assembty rines in ffi:1Xff::i?.1iffiil';il$:ff:tll\northofNewYorkci$r'onawind- ilullerton or ilJazareth or Karamazoo, patents, paraded on the covers ofguitaring forest road that skirts the highlands staffed by "lrdi., *iil-;;';.y. glasses magazines, and exhibited at the Smith-of the Hudson River' Its a trap"ezoidal ut'i hrhor' {r,.-"tiq
to .o*uoyi^aio,' .";;-G the Fly's sales fell far short ofstructure of concrete and glass, set into as Parkerputsit.rnig4g,aformerradio .rp..iu,iorrr. (Fender makes as manya steep slope like a piece of_qtartz, and repairman named Leo Fender took a slab g"i;;; *.ek, parker says, as he madeserves Parker as a kind of Fortress of oiash' bolted ""
-..r--l"J s...w.d i' in thirteen years.) some roved its thin,Solitude' "r'm in hiding," he told me' "I ;;; Tgl.tic pickups to ampli$, the *irfi ,;;p.. ,,It
looks like something*1J;:#,13,f|jHI'" vears that sound. Hira..il;d;', ild.,t.r.- il;;;;" the beach,,,Joni Mitcherita rs ,andat ieas t twoth-ou_\ ry ru€ to ldParker .Theres t jus t
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; |ffiltr "r?*lt1ff* Ken parker says, ,A good guitar is in agreement uitb itsetf ,, ported only by a golden-*ingbehindhim, l ikeanJd
'r-) ^-6""w64'14' LJLrruEtterneu'attoxtsef. post.Thesoundholehadbeen narrowed to a crescentE sailor with a tender back' and speaks in a casters are still made the same way. and moved to the side, where it hung rikef boomy baritone that sometimes rises to a Acoustic guitars with steel strings. have a waning moon. parker called his instru-! high' sweet giggle' His manner is more been arou"nd lo.rger-thef *.rJdeu"l- -;;;4f,. orive Branch,,, but as design! than genial' though it can't disguise his oped in
9. 9+ ii".t..nl'rru.rar.a, *a ,;;;. go it looked more rike a dec-I impatience with fools' refined by th. M".tir, .o-prny rn tt. Tantion of war. It looked like something9 Guitars are often foolish devices, nineteenlthirties-and haue chrrg.d ,h;;-pi;sso orJuan Gris might have! Parker says' Their bodies are ungainly, wen less. "so-. p1.t11ioilaou, ,rung, painted: an old, familiar form made sud-$ their necks easilywarped, th.it int#aaJn hru. ,-ro, b..., tri.d,,, lark r says. ,you ienly, startlingly modem.= unreliable. The great majority are factory pick up a violin and it weigh, ,i*r..r, -"'ii..6fr".
Branch is an a6empr ro
THE NEV YORITER, MAY 14,2OO7
itiiii
i lt1i ij li li li li11li i
tdo for acoustic guitars what the Fly tried
to do for electrics, but it's in every sense
an even riskier venture. It's a virtuoso's
instrument for a PoPulist music; an
acoustic device for an amplified age; a
radical reinvention of a design all but
abandoned decades ago. When I first
saw it, I asked Parker what he was
thinking as he built it. Did he imagine
that sorieday everyonewould make gui-
tars like thii, or that no one else in the
world could make such an instrument?
He was quiet for a moment' seemingly
,t r-p"d. Then he shrugged' "Both,"
he said.
rFhese ouqht to be excellent t imes
I fot guitar designers. Theirs are the
rnort pof,.ilut instmments in the world,
,rr.d by .ontttry crooners' gothic rock-
ers, and African soukous players alike'
Some three million guitars were sold in
the United States last year-as many as
all other instmments combined-and
the best vintage guitars are extraor-
dinarily valuable. Twenty years ago,,a
oristine 1959 Gibson Les Paul might'have
sold for ten thousand dollars;
todav. it can fetch four hundred thou-
,uttd. Attd yet, along the way' guitars
have become deeply conservative' Most
electric guitars look like Les Pauls or
Stratoca=sters, and three-quarters of all
acoustic guitars are dreadnoughts-
a fat-bottomed design from 1916' "This
is rock and roll!" Parker says' "You
would think that guitar players would be
open and brave and experimental' And
they are not. As a group' they are not'
Thatguywith the Puryle Mohawk? He
*orrt piuy anlthing made after 1960'
Wait a minuie, dudet. You were made
after 1960."One afternoon this winter, I watched
a man named Tom MurPhY sYstemat-
icallv beat up a brand-new Les Paul'
Muiphy, who is fiftY-six, works for
Gibson s custom, art' and historic divi-
sion. He has thick forearms and ruddy
features and a boyish devotion to the
guitar heroes of his youth. Everyweek
i , t *o, the comPanY sends ten or
twenty guitars to Murphjs workshop,
in Marion, Illinois, and he sends them
back looking as ifthey'd been played
for fiftvvears.'v\4ren I visited, he began
by .tciti.tg some lines into the lacquer
vntharazorblade, to mimic the crackle
of an old finish. He shaved the edges
offthe fingerboard, so that theylooked
worn by iountless earsplitting solos'
Then he took a bunch of keYs and
shook them over the surface, like a spi-
der skittering over glass. To imitate
vears of belt wear, he held an old buckle
uguinrt the back and whacked \t a few
tines with a hammer' Then he fliPPed
the guitar uPside down and slowlY
ground the headstock into the concrete
floor.A "Murphvized" Gibson sells for
twice the.ott of u regular Les Pau| and
Murphy's signed Jimmy Page replicas
(complete with cigarette burns) have
go.r.'fo, as much as eightY thousand
Iolats. Fender's aged gr,ritars have been
eouallv successfirl. Customers can choose
from"various degrees of wear, from
Closet Classic ("played maybe a few
times per year and then carefully put
"*"y'') to Heary Relic ("playedwig-
orously on a nighdy basis") to the Rory
Gallaqher Tribute Stratocaster ("worn
to th; wood"). When I asked Matt
IJmanov, whose guitar store has been a
fixture in Greenwich Village fot forty
years, why people buy these instruments,
he made an impatient noise. "Ninetyper
cent of this buiiness is male-oriented,"
he said. "In my opinion, most purchases
are governed by four words: the zipper
is down."Vintage guitars, authentic or not'
are hard to judge on their own merits'
Their sound comes to us as a mixture ot
memory and acoustics, musicianshiP
and wish-firlfillment. Without "Purple
Haz.d' or"Yoodoo Chile," the squeal and
moan of a Stratocaster might seem less
appealing; without "Tangled UP 1"
B1,r.," u Martin might sound merelY
pretty. Still, the best old instruments'hut"'^
harmonic richness that tran-
scends subjectivity. Vintage Telecasters
have been hooked up to oscilloscoPes
and found to generate more oveltones
than newer guitars, and even the small-
est old Maitins can ring as loudly as
church bells. 'You could put a blindfold
on and you would saY' 'Oh mY God'
that is so beautifiil,'" T. J. Thompson, a
guitar-maker in Concord, Massachu-
ietts, told me. "It sings, it's balanced' it's
musical. Every chord you play sounds
magical."Thompson restores vintage acoustlc
zuitars and makes exceptional new ones'
iP*k t calls him "an angelically gifted
builder.") He estimates that only about
one in twenty prewar Martins has that
mesmerizing sound' but that those alone
could drive the vintage craze' "They
should comewith awaming"'he told me'
"IfI out one ofthose old &eadnoughts in
vo.ri h"nd, yotill never forget it' Yotill
io.rg for it' and youll sell any holdings in
ref estate you have, and your marriage
s*/?l F lts
* R A
-t:.'Andjust hous do you ex?ect to beco?71e -a
rna.de tndn' son'
uith out i s o lid^ Iib eral- arts e ducation?"
will end, and your kids worit go to col-lege. But you'll be happy, because youhave a dreadnought."
Guitar-makers, or luthiers, as theylike to be known, have tried to isolatethe magic in older instruments, only tofind that itlies largelyin age itseH Timetransforms a guitar's materials. Thewood grows stiffer and more resonant.The lacquer develops hairline cracks, re-laxing its straitjacket grip on the wood.The magnets in pickups weaken andrust, deepening and mellowing the tone.A new guitar is like a novice choir: agathering of disparate parts, held to-gether under pressure, straining to carrythe same tune. The more it's played, themore it settles into its true voice. Theneck and body,joints and braces, bridgeand fingerboard stop fighting one an-other and start to sing in unison.
A good designer can duplicate someofthese effects. But the sound ofa vin-tage guitar is partly an echo of what'sbeen losr Brazi\an rosewood, elephantivory, old-growth spruce and mahog-any-the worlds best acoustic materi-als, now all but unavailable. "I havea piece of veneer from the twentiesor thirties," Thompson told me. "I pickit up and I'm just in awe. I can hardlybend it. It has the weight ofwood but itfeels like ceramic. And I'm supposed tofind a piece ofwood in the world todaythat's forty-thousandths ofan inch thickand that stiff? You know what? Itdoesrit exist."
NTo,long before I met Parker, myI \ wife's uncle Ken offered to buildan elecffic bass for my son. Ken is a re-tired economist in Virginia with a firllyequipped wood shop in his basement.He built a lovelyversion of a'59 Les Paula few years ago, and he seemed happy tohave another project. My son, a vintagebufflike any other, decided that the newinstrument should be a copy ofhis teach-els bass: a hollow-bodied Gibson fromthe nineteen-sixties, with Fholes like aviolin and a huge, echoey sound. (Itspickups are sometimes called "mudbuck-ers.") My job was to buy the materialsand send them to Ken.
Ive probably spent a couple ofhun-dred hours in guitar stores over theyears. Even a megamall can't seem torob them of their charms: the flam-boyance ofthe instruments, the studied
scruffiness of the stafl the eager racketof half a dozen noodling guitarists-
John Cage for boneheads. I usually tryto find the most expensive guitar in theshop, then I whale away on some riffswidely considered kick-ass when I wasin high school. Sometimes, one of theclerks comes over and asls me to stoD.
The bass project unloosed this com-pulsion. The longer I looked for parts,the deeper I ventured into a realm ofgearheads and guitar fanatics, acousticsavants and reverse engineers. Everytrick of modern science and forensicca{pentry, it seemed, was being used toreproduce the sound of nineteen-fiftiestechnology. One luthier, on an island inPuget Sound, dipped his pickups in aCrockpot firll of wax and wound themwith a sewing-machine motor to mimicthe handiwork of the old Gibson fac-tory. Another froze his metal pickups tothree hundred degrees below zero, in-sisting that the molecules would realignas they do with age. Some builders blastedtheir instruments with giant speakers tosimulate the effects of years of playing.Others swore by "timeless timbel': old-growth maple and otherwoods, dredgedfrom the bottoms of northern riversand lakes.
Some ofthe worlds finest electric gri-tars, I read in a newsletter called TheToneQuest Report, are made in the townofHyvinkdii, in soutlem Finland. Theirdesigner, a mad young Finn namedJuhaRuokangas, uses flamed Arctic birch,pickups wound by a German guitar guru,and inlal's as exquisite as Faberge eggs.(One shows a scene from the Finnish na-tional epic, the Kalevala.) The wood isthermo-treated-slowly heated, in a pro-cess patented by a Finnish university, tomimic the curing effects of time-andcoated in a lacquer designed to crack andcraze like a fifty-year-old finish. Thecrowning glory of a Ruokangas, though,is the nut-the thin strip at the top oftheneck that lifts the strings above thefingerboard. In some of the best old in-struments, the nut is made of elephantivory and is said to lend an ineffabie res-onance to the tone. In a Ruokangas, it'smadefrom the shinbone ofawild moose.'\Me skin them, chop them into pieces,and boil them in mv vard on an oDenfue," Ruokangas toldthe edtor of Ti ne-
Quest."Moose bone is the best."The Finn was an inspiration. My
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THE NEV YORI(ER. MAY 14. 2OO7
l
i
iiI
rii
son, I'11 admit, was showing signs ot
wanins interest, but the bass project
foreed:ah.ad. I bought thick boards of
Afican black limba-"the holy grail of
tone woods," according to one builder'
I ordered Dark Star PickuPs, hand-
made to replicate a Swedish design
used by the bratefirl D"ad' I found the
origini patent d.t"*t"g: for the Gib-
son bass, and a basstst tn
Louisiana who could wire
the controls with vintage-
correct comPonents. For
the nut, I did Ruokangas
one better. I located a man
in southern Alaska with a
cache of fossilized walrus
ivory, five thousand Yearsold. When I had a chunk
drill press, lathe-stood with clamps
and b-lades at the readY'One of Parker's first jobs was in a
grandfather-dock factory in Rochester,
ind he's never lost his love fot atcane
machinery. 11. srills most of his own
quitars for Pat MethenY,, Iold me when she visited
one daY.) Most luthiers
wax almost mYstical about
wood and the hand-built
qualities of their instru-
ments. Parker comPares
his to speedboats and race
cars-engineering chal-
lenges as much as artistic
ones. "I'm a tJolmaker," he says' "I
it has to be strong. Things dont alrruays
work out. Even iflhe neck doesn't bend,
the bridge doesn t poP off, the strings
don'tbvzz, the guitar maY resPoncl
poorly to playing. Its wood may vibrate
well only at certain frequencies, so some
strinqs souttd weaker than others' It
*"u f,"'u. dead spots or "wolf tones" that
sound muffied or unPleasant' In some
{uitars, the neck and body, top and bot-
t"om, produc. sound waves that are out
ofphase: their peals and troughs flatten
on. "rroth.,
witen th.y collide' In oth-
ers, the sound builds up' wave on wave'
"A good guitar is in agreement with it-
self," Parker said.
T T ow best to achieve that isn t clear'
.f-IA ceflo is a cello, a sousaPhone is
a sousaphone, but the guitar has yet to
find itsbhtonic form. In the three cen-
turies since Antonio Stradivari and Giu-
seppe Guarneri perfected the violin, the
guiiut ft"t moryhed from a thin-hipped
fittt fig*. to a plump matron' trading
double strings for single strings,,in sets
of four, five,iix, or more. Tricked out in
tortoiseshell or mother-of-pear1, it has
been good enough for aristocrats and
warbli"ng ladies, strumming coyly be-
tween v-erses. When cheaply made' it
has been an instrument of the people'
"The guitar is no more than a cowbell,"
the Sfanish Inquisitor Don Sebastidn
de Covarrubias Orozco complained in
1611, "so easy to pl"y' . ' that there is
not astable tad wtro is not a musician"'
That much hasn't changed'
Classical guitars with gut strings hn-
ally found tieir Stradivari in the mid-
nineteenth centur/, in the Spanish lu-
thier Antonio de Torres Jurado, whose
designs are still used. But steel strings
demanded a stouter structure' bome-
time in the eighteen-seventies' a shoe-
store clerkin K^u^ ^o named Orville
Gibson began to wonder whY guitars
weren't -ud" tttot. like violins' A vio-
lin's arched top is inherently stronger
than a guitar s flat top. It needs less brac-
ine, solt canvibrate more freely and give
" irorrg.., more focussed tone' Gibson
mad. f,is first archtop guitars in his
spare time, then quit his job and hired
siaff as orders increased' In the nine-
teen-twenties, a brilliant luthier named
Llovd Loar refined Gibsons designs'
"ddine f-holes and other violinlike
touche"s. By the thirties, archtops were
shipped to Ken's house, he
,.r,r'*. a digital picture of it-black-
ened with "g.
tit i the tip of a charred
spear. Hewa-s getting alitdeworried, he
wTote.
T told Parker about the walrus ivory the
I fust time I visited him. He gave me a
look of mild pity, like a doctor who'd
seen these ryrnptoms before, then disap-peared into thi back of his workshop'
iryh.tt he returned, he was holding a
larse grayish bone. He'd done some
.r,rf.*"o.ti*.nts of his own, he said, in
the early nineteen-eighties' "I thought'
O.K., I'il make one out of every conceiv-
able material, then see if I can tell the
difference. I triedwood, brass, nickel sil-
ver, elephant ivory-eveq'thing'' The
bone in his hand was an ostrich femur,
from a bird raised by a friend in Califor-
nia. "He thought itwould make superior
nut material,-so I cut it up and made,a
couple of parts out of it," he sai-d'."And'.rrou kno*' it's iust a bone' It barelY
Lakes a differenie." He handed it to me'
"Changing this is like a girl thinking
that if ;he"changes her nail polish she'll
be beautifi'rl."It was late morning, and a Pale win-
ter sun had risen outside' The light
came slanting through the workshofs
hieh windows, kindling the sawdust in
th! air. Parker had populated the shop
with his preoccupations: wood bins and
tool cabinets, tube amplifiers and bass
scrolls, a tandem bicycle and a wooden
rowing shell suspended from the raf:
t"rs. Along the walls, a battalion of cast-
iron machines-band saw, table saw'
86 THE NEV YORKER, MAY 14, 2OO7
make tools for musicians."
The task that morning was to cawe
the top ofa new guitar. Parker began with
a thi& board of Adirondack sPmce-
flat on the bottom and Peaked down
the middle like a roof-and placed it in
what he called his "duplicating machine"'
This consisted ofan electric carver and a
dummy stylus, running along the.same
st"el beam. The carver moved back and
forth over the spruce, while the stylus-ral
over an archei mold that Parker had
made. As the stylus rose up and down the
mold, the carver moved with it' Sttip Pystrip, the board began to assume the
shape of a qende arch. "It's like mowing a
lawn!" Parker shouted, over the low roar
of the machinery.A zuitar isntt an especially hard in-
,mr*!nt to build-'Try a haqpsidrord,"
Parker said-but it leaves little room
for error. The mechanism is simple: six
strings, stretched taut across an oPen
chaniber. vibrate when struck This sets
the top moving, amplifying the vibra-
tions, turning the guitar into a pump
that pushes iund waves out through
the sound hole. The strings alone make
almost no sound, so everything depends
on the wood's resonance' There's no
bow to keeP the notes from dYing, no
mouthpiece or bellows to sustain them'
The plaver makes the smallest of ges-
t rr.rjtor, *hack the string and that's
it," Parker said-and hopes the guitar
will turn them into music'
To resonate well, the wood has to be
thin. To withstand the strings'tension,
OnaplCleranyRecPocThe
..,:r!r,-4qsr i.ff i j
the most popular guitars in the country'
They weie larger and louder than flat-
topr, y.t more articulate-Perfect for
fleet-fingered jazz solos that could cut
throueh a blare of horns' TheY gave
chordi a ringing punch and bass runs
a penetrating snap: Maybelle Carter
played an archtop on earlycounffytunes-[k"'\Mildl"ood Flower."
To a luthier in the thirties, archtops
must have seemed like the capstone of
quitar development. Then magnetic
ii.krrot .u*e along and the instru-
it,.nrt changed aga1n. An amPlified
guitar can't b. too resonant or it will
,"qrle"l with feedback. Fender solved
this problem by giving electric guitars
solid bodies; Martin kept most of its
flattops purely acousticl Gibson's arch-
toos fell-somewhere in between' Some
*"r" *ade with dull' laminated toPs;
others had holes cut in them for pick-
ups, or solid blocks of maple running
dt*n the center to dampen the sound'
"lf you had a Martin, a good one, and
then picked up a Gibson Super 400, you
*orlldr,, have the slightest idea whY
anyone would play that," Parker says'
"Iis qigantic, but it doesn't sound gi-
eant[.-Vvhere is the fun in that?" Park-
!1s new guitar was pardy an attemptto
reclaim tlat history-to see what arch-
tops miqht have become if the electric
zuit- nid never been invented' "They
,*ort of became dinosaurs," he saYs''Theywere labelled as the leastversatile
of all guitars. But in mY oPinion an
ar.htof properlybuilt is a chameleon' It
can do anltthing."When-Parker had finished with the
duplicating machine, the spruce board
*", u torrgh arch about a quarter inch
thick. He grabbed it with both hands-
his fingers were a good knuckle longer
than mine-and flexed itlike a Pizzapan. Guitar toPs are made from soft
woods, like spruce and cedar, thatvibrate
easilv: their backs and sides are made
from hardwoods, like rosewood and
maple, that are good at reflecting sound'
Pa.Lt held the board up to his ear and
tapped it with his forefinger' It gave a
duli tine. "Hear that?" he said' "It's a
minor second." He hummed the two
notes of the interval below his breath'
Then he Picked uP a hand Plane and
went to worlg shaving thin ctuls from the
inner surface. 'You want it to get excited
about playing every note," he said' "At a
88 THE NEV YORKER, MAY 14, 2OO7
ON TIME
Time can be told in the opening of a flower,
Trumpet of dawn, flugelhorn of the sun
Sinkine down. Noiseless explosionsGreet i-n attentive eye. And the ear
Is a flower, too, a welcome home for echoes,
Kisses, and cackles. Cauldron of starlight,
Tincture and blaring cry, whatever brushes
Your senses unlatches a doorwaY
Scoured by salt, vanishing as you plunder
The coffeis of sleep. So you will know
What it means to 6e utterly free, floating
Without a hope, floating in hope, a medium
Fit for the beingyou have become, $lvenThe bed you have made, the race you won'
FFOUNIINNOI
quarter inch, it won't get excited about
playing one."' brr"t the next two weeks, Parker
would plane offanothereighth ofan inch
o, *o.., till the top rang at the faintest
touch. Itwas a perilous process. The thin-
ner the wood, the fuller the sound-
Parkels tops are less than half as thick as
some luthiers'-but a shaving too many
could destroy the top or suddenly dampen
it. "The real question is, when do you
stop?" he said. Stradivari seems to have
carved his violins so the tops and bottoms
ranewith the same note when tapped-
"r, F b.lo* middle C. But Parker had
given up on easyprescriptions' uEveryone
f,", u t..t t recipe," he said. "Everyone is
tqilng to do sciatch-for-scratch re-pro-
drr.t[ttt of ancient instruments' If you
had any guts, Youd make a nice new in-
strument-and iet the wodd beat it up for
three hundred years." He lifted the board
aqain, flexed, and tapped. 'You dont get
tier. bv secrets," he said. 'You get there
by doing er.t aY t h in g better."
parker came_of age. in the nineteen-
-F s.lrenti.s, when guitars were sorely in
need of a little idealism. He grew up in
Islip, on the South Shore ofl'onglsland,
the eldest son of a Methodist minister
notably more progressive than his con-
sreqation. The Parkers joined the March
6nWashington, in 1963, and received
-Phillis Lertin
death threats for taking on a black stu-
dent pastor. "On the spectrum from Bible
thumper to social helper, my father is way
on the social-helper side," Parker told me'
"No thumping at all." His mother had a
master's in religion and education from-
Columbia and was, if anything, more of
an activist. Until she died, two years ago'
she had a gold P\T nouth plastered with
bumper stiikers-"MyJob Is to Comfort
the Disntrbed and Distub the Comfort-
abldLthat Parker now drives. He took
me to lunch in it one day. "I wonder if
President Bush misses the letters he used
to get from Grace K. Parker, Methodist
Woman," he said.After graduating from high school, in
1970, Parker spent the better part ot a
year ̂ t Goddard, an alternative college
in northem Vermont. He took a class in
furniture-building and made a fretless
bass for his brother Alan. But the schools
long-haired h.yd"y had passed ('It Y"tafte-r the nude class picturd'), and Parker
found better fumiture-makers elsewhere'
Rochester, then as now' was a city fi'rll of
musicians and craftsmen-the Eastman
School of Music and the Rochester In-
stitute ofTechnology were there' Parker
worked at the grandfather-clock factory
for fwo y"att, then tried his hand at
making five-string banjos and kinetic
furniture. He took some group guitar
lessons, but was never more than a ser-
Pa
.:i r Plgagtt, Isouro
z "Atir€gD, BI
viceable player,*,n " :::lg-Olldopp{ ation of gifted luthiers who were con_touch' still, his teachels guitar ent anc.i uinced thEy.o;d d" ;."*'i" co*n*
lffir.:JffiGibson ;hr"p;;H
1, i*rrr, Jean Laniv6e in British Co_F", " ;d; after that,parker did lr*'l#i;ffi*n::.tl}.i,}l1nothing but build archt3gs. H. -o*J -oi.uing rh.i, work on prewar Martinsback to Long Island
""a irru,.a
" -tr.] .ti1":"t*tars. parkerhad otherideas.shop with a rutemaker named Robert lilrr"*li.**d;:ffi;.quitandMeadow. when he'd finishe-Jhtr;;;; *i'ilo into his grandfathels house in
#j|''lt::f*:i},Y:: t1i1{; 3;"* connecticur He had rew ex-r store' in Greenwich vrrug.. u-"".' ;.iffi;:ffi:;r$lr#:l*ff$,told him that it rooked ur..i"*.J'i"f" :F "
,r;;r;;;;jyi.rig' and repairhippie had made' so?arr<etrrr"*.J'irt j.r, s", r"r"rr,;;;;;hry.ars, he qui_
{pxr",'*nxJtr til :i,l..,tT i*ifiqffi*H,it1,'"n; ;;.';,neighborins town on i*g rrr""a. a
-};q#iri'rr*rr.* scratch_ro
f:i-:*:-.1*"r:rrn"-i,?ffi*rf, go back,hot ouire to the hnr^..._r^_ ^_thedashingr.r".i,-yfi"#,il'fjff ff trJ:,ifi$:;ti",|T,,3-Jlnad apprendced under Iohn D'fs.ti9o, *lo* ,i6.rr,"iti.Jri_o "*., __the other giant of pos-nvar -.t to! a.J .Jrr'i r"r*_ents. He read manuals onffi-li:ffiff:J:H:# ffj::;"' ;*:s y rc- il ffi; (.,r, is n.i
1e64;DAqui""'"i-.pir.p,i.r.L*.,ffi-*i"dfirr{.r#:r"_"r',ln5in 1995.) When parker.iro#q:,
lt J""*.,f;d, ,first yoy irurt
"ppty an ex_shop, DAquisro was used to visiis from l.tt.rrt.nrrirt, and then ,poil ir.,,; Bu,acolltes. He told parker tfr"t fr. aa"{ *r*rn. thought aboutlutes.need an apprentice. Th,
rhat his archtop *, ,1.,..^1"1?j:li|11 - Lutes *.r.ih. St
"ro.rrt.r, of ,f,.that his archtop was the u*, n", g'rr* *."1T,.,'i"xrril',iil?ffiilr',:*:ilC Tl,*
You're *u'v irv',?.,op iltyl+:rd"y rh.y'*J,. teardrop-, .1yri* *"' **v-qq.,He rert as ir ;H.'i*Hf ffiilm*:: n:he'd been kt'ish*d' h*ora -., uu, r,.
".J p*r.., r,ad watctred Meadow make
[1fqf;I[ii',?l'::i:i:*fl:]T *'H ", r""glr*J";t.t,r'".r..a 1b.,itd''T'"'ra"is.;#.,t d," h.,rid. ffiH:T*.:#,'i;llru.Tja /#;r*:;:td
ao"*", n" otf,., p.opf.;, ffi by .bo'y yeneers, their bodies hetd lIn tgii,pa&n rook a ioh es o _,ir.- llg:lh.:
wi.th parchm.rr. "frr.r. _"1 /rn 7eze, parker took a job as a suitar ;".ffilJrfiJ,1,TffiLl[.J:,il$repairman at StuwesantMusic, ""'W;; *lL rn. r.rrrt ofan equation. you had aFortv-eighth street in u""r'.l*. ri. rl'il,or.uro.- rrG ;i;li inr.rri.,.r,shop was a crossroads q,=ilhi"; ,lr'rr"a to fil'a;r";rh:rund, andplayers of every swte;{obertnttd ii.r"ry*y-;.,rhil"lr-e andpro-Andy Summ.rr, Ioi,r, n,.i"rghftffi n[r* ry": to make them light. Its likePass-and theiizuitars,"*ai.aiji.'"n'iro-rurt,oned
sports cai-ane*1s1*l;j,ffii ?;h::j:*1;; ;ilT"" s,.ii 9s.ioe. that's been rorgotten. you^a"*"ti.,?ffiHiit{il#+H.:i}T;*T,ql:;i#fyi1r,,,,#;;and standards had fa[enac;"; ili.,i] f"'" r"o. u guit", *or. rik
",*::Z (The ladies in cat s-eye glasses
raqe a g''tar more like a lute? /hadn't done such bad work,'^f,8,
"ffj /\Players -."ra ..-.lI *rrr brand-new UffJ"ll-of Parker's workshop is
guitars that were armost unplavabre: ;,.j'[*ffi ::f,f;'ftf.ffi$'ffi*,necks bent' frets uneven, i"*rioriffi rrl, "rroui.graphy in instrument fom."The Seventies were it. o*r.a*.rf; #nl1^, -i, r,#.;;"ud.rnoor,, r,..Parker says' "r dont knorvo t *iv;; p"'.i.n* 9re of the thinnest cases andlogue in American manufacturingwhere tr.r"a ,l +; ;il#I; .:mpressor.
,t ,*:T$',::l';,*o o*ot 'itt 'onl ii." 11g1.9.out a Fryguita,, gr.u-r,,g
fl;;;;i'ffi; opening for a gener_ t,Tl#,1.ri.",,",11ls:.;'"
piece of
* * . . ail ;q'pu.;t'; maf kSThe New yorker promotion
Department invi tes youto look for this release.
uBtr{[{G W|THDEAD PEIIPIE'
BY MONICA HOLLOWAY
"Al{ ut{FltR0tnAB[EI[EIS0|R. . . "-Newsweek
"Joining searing childhood rnernojrssuch as The 6lass CasileandRunning with Scissors canesthe impressive \riving withDead people, a fascinating,gritty, hilarious read ...,,*teslie Moryan Steiner.
Los Angeles &nes best-sellingeditorof MannyWars
THE NEV YORKER, MAY 14,2OO7
drifwood than like a modern dancer:
shoulders thrown back, thin arms con-
torted, every excess trimmed away' Its
headstock had been whittled to the
width of two 6.ngers. Its sides were bent
as if poised to leap into the air' When I'd
ordei.d materials for my son's bass, the
wood alone had weighed forty pounds
uncut. Ifwe were lucky, the finished in-
strument would weigh between eight
and nine pounds-about as much as a
Les Paul. The Flyweighed half that, yet
its lightness was less startling than its
balan"ce. "Let go ofa Stratocaster and the
headstock hits the floor," Parker liked to
sav. "f,et qo of a Les Paul and it hits your
."t." Tn."RY sat quietlY on mY ht1-
no hands requireJ-and waited to be
played.' Parkels guitar was made with fibre-
qlass and carbon graphite, rather than in-
iestines arrd parchment, but it follow-ed
the lutemaler's basic equation' Its
strength lay in its surfaces. The carbon
a.rd g'l"rs dbt"t *.t. impregnated with
resin and laminated onto a core of sprucet
Doplar, or basswood. Parker had discov-
.t a A. technique in the mid-eighties'
when he visited a maker of racing sculls
with Larry Fishman, the engineer who
later designed the Fly's electronics'
Within a iareek, Fishman had made a
pickup out of the material and Parker
irad made a zuitar. "Itwas almost like in-
venting a nJw sp"ci"s of wood," Parker
said. '{ou startwith the attributes ofthat
wood and then You add stiffness-as
much as you want' in any direction you
want. Idsquite the Paintbrush"'The composites helPed solve an old
luthier's conundrum. The neck of a gui-
tar has to be thin enough to be played
comfortably, yet strong enough to keep
from bending. It has to resonate with
everv note, but not so much that its os-
cillaiions interfere with the sound waves
themselves. "If changing a guitar s nut is
like using pink nail polish," Parker said'
"then ma'king the neck stiffer is like los-
ine forty-five pounds." Most guitar
,r.iLt "t.
made of a heavy hardwood-
rock maple or mahogany-reinforced
with a steel rod, like the sPine in a
human neck. The FIY was built more
like an insect, with an exoskeleton' It
was so light and stiffyet resonant that it
could sound almost like an acoustic gui-
tar when played with the piezoelectricpickups that Fishman designed for it'
br, *i,.n played with its magnetic pick-
ups, it could sound like an electric gui-
tar with er<cePtional sustain.
Parker uttd Fith*".t shopped their
protot''pe around in the late eighties and
qo, *;.tp funding from Korg, a maker
6fkeyboards and synthesizers' In 1990,
Parker moved to Boston, set uP a iac-
torv. and tried to retool his perfectionist
*"thodt for mass production' It &dnt
work The Fly's innovations made it eas-
ier to play but harder to build---carbon
fibre was fractious stuff-and Parker,
after decades ofrepairing factory guitars'
couldrit compromise on quality' After
thirteen years ofproduction delays and
budget dlficits, personnel problems and
hundred-hour week-"Never went out'
Never took a vacation. Always a knot in
mystomach over somethingLthe com-
p"r,y*"t still in debt.'The whole equa-
iion *"t off" Parker said. 'TVe were
building ten-thousand-dollar guitars for
twentv--five hundred. I thought that
people would naturally gravitate toward
ih"* b..urrte they played really, really
well. But thatwasn't the case. The fact is
most players dont need something.spe-
cial. They need something Proven"'When Washbum Guitars bought the
company, in 2003, it moved the factory
to lllinois, added more traditional guitars
to the Parker line, and had some made in
Asia. The line is nowmodesdyprofitable,
I was told. But the Fly is still too icono-
clastic for mass appeal' "People said,
lMhy does it have io look so wacky?"'
Parker told me that afternoon in his
shop. "And I said,'l cant possiblydesign
something that looks as wacky as the
Telecastei and Stratocaster did in the
nineteen-fifties' People were in flames
about them!"'He reachedup and rubbed
his eyes. Just talking about those years
save him a headache, he said' Then he
iook the Fly from my lap and put it back
in its case. "I'm still proud of this," he
said. "And when I look at it I never think
of that stuff. Yeah, sure, I could have
made something that looked like a Strat'
But. for better or worse' that's just not
me. lm not going to change something
a litde bit."
T t has been thirty years since Parker
I hrt d.*rot.d himseHto archtoPs, and
the market for them hasn't much im-
oroved. "Ids flat as a fuckin pancake,"
Matt Uma.tov told me, as we were driv-
ing along the Hudson one morning'
Uianov is fifty-nine now, with gqnth-
white hair that hangs nearly to his shoul-
ders and an excitable Brooklp accent'
. He loves archtops, but says they have
limited appeal.'You can pickup a good
fattop for fine thousand dollars and pre-
tendio be a cowboY-PlaY'Freight
Train' and impress yourself' But you
can t pick up an archtop and pr-etend to
be a jazzPlaYer. Can t be done"'
Non.bf thit seems to worry Parker'
His new guitar takes much longer to build
(on,n
than amuchvdollars-violins,guitars.have toto outpbe morrr you
John GBranchrecord lfurtherknew tGuths
B y 1an imp:virtuosblond lofthe lhis 194sidemaandJacthe Olia stunrmade ffifty thhad evtan S.Uof his rlitde stframessmall vto himbe thresummi
Theone enhung fstands,rack olmentsary lin,one enlin thesculptethe Flyth.g*a half 1more shid a tloffigurand inrthat prcomp0nothinthe D',
Evcfi.rl sou
"There's gotta be an easier usa! to 7et candyfrom a baby"'
than a flattop, requires three times asmuch wood, and sells for thirty thousanddollars-less than the cost ofthe best newviolins, but a fortune compared with mostguitars. To succeed, as parker says, it willhave to do eveq,thing better. It will haveto outperform the best old archtops andbe more versatile than the finest flattops."Ifyou're really brave," a guitarist .ru-.d
*hr 9?m told him, .you'll
put the OliveDranch rn a room with a D'Aneelico andrecord them both." So parkerwint a stepfurther. He invited the best players h'eknew. to bring their favorite guiturc toG{h r studio, for a daylongpl{,off
By the time Umanou u"a i arrived.an impromptu trio had formed. Theiazzvirfuoso Charlie Hunter was playing ablond D'Angelico from D+O;ioe SeIy,of the Klezmer Mountain noyr, *u, o'nhis 1947 Gibson L-5; and Joh n Hart, artd:Tr: for iazz greats like Clark TerryandJackMcDuff, was playing rhlthm onthe Olive Branch. Um",ror, f,ad b.orrght
comes from a hollow log or a digital key_board..As the_players p'"sr.d ,ti gui,-,around, some basic differences emirged.The archtops projected their voice"s_they threw them across the room likeBroadway singers-while the flattopsenveloped you in them. The throa!bark ofthe old Gibson -.htop w"s p.r'_fect for a standard like ,,S#eet
Sue.,,But nothing could match Thompson'sflattop on a Civil War ballad like ,,So1_diers Joy'-its ringing sustain seemedto suspend you in the air. parkels zui_tar was like a hybrid of the two. It"wasthe loudest guitar in the room, despitebeing the lightest, and its solo lir,., ongout more clearly than any others. DeIpending on where itwas picked, close tothe fingerboard or downby the bridse.it could play chiming chords, p.r.rir_r1u. rlIhT.r, or quick_footed arpeg_gios. "It 's l ike an endless processionof Bu,1!1 Berkeley girls, disguised asnotes, Umanov said. It was an instru_a stunning archtop that DAquisto riad ment that neve....-.J ro lose its voice,made for him in 1989, worth more rhan thai played .".;t-;;
""J do*., th.fifty thousand dollars. T. J. Thompson
"..r.-u guirar in agreement with itse*had even driven down from concord in an..fi,".4 i;;.ilffi1he playersan S'U'v. firll ofprewarMartins and one stool around ln Gutts-ki;h..r, ..ti'gof his new guitars. He looked ,rou.rd,
" *irrlnrrr
rd .gg sarad. They tord sto-litde stunned, eyes brinking behind wire .i.r lu*t Duk'hilingt""'.;a Djangoframes. "Ken doesn't do anything in a R.i'hurJi, dr. jd-'""ffi;by (Brue)small way," he said. 'lAlhen i ntrt iuru.a grand, "ro,rt
giil Mor,rollr,r'g i.rroto him about this, I thought it wourd just rur i^, bager (,,Dangl This is the worstbe three of us. Now idssummit-an archtop o,r|."'/-po"u*, " ff:fiU:.l ffi*i":ll|);n.,,:T*The srudio was a coiverte d. galage at ft,fibil;;.'xd"rt."i roffi."rio" i,one end of Guth's ranch houselGu]tars no recipe for success, they knew, andhung from the wans and leaned against -.rirri'r, -;;t";;riiri or*o.a.stands, an arm's reach from
" btildi'g ;iao"t have a rove
"fia;#; I #?l'jtrack of preamplifiers. As more instrul p.t Torr,rh.;J,;;;i.:i ao,',pot_ments came our of cases, an evolution- ish it after every p;;;;. r pray theary lineup seemed ro form: flattops on fucking thing.,,' '
one end, bully as Neanderthars; ,t.htop, B.{r.e hl g^u. up his workshop onin the middle, thinner and_more finiy Long Island ?" nJ'ri"."ti.., purk.,sculpted; and then the olive Branch. Like ,riJ,'n. brought hislast guitar to Jimmy*t
oI: it w€ighed about hdf as much as ocq,ri.to, aJe had the?rst. DAquistothe guitars that came before it-three and looked "t
ir fb; ;loii'ir-..'u. rurneda half pounds-but its refinements were ii "r"""a
i" hi, h;;?;,-oir*.tting utmore seamless, subcutaneous. The neck its ingenuities-the adjustable tailpiece,hidathinlayerofcarbonbeneatravenee-rr. u'ry--.rrical top, the unorthodox:llX:1 5:l
wood; so did the pick guard br*i.,g_tr,.n gave it back to parker. ,Aand inner lining' The post' barely ui"sibt., ,rr. ao.rn , exist for this guitar,,, he tordthatpropped up the neckwas made of a hi-. 'c;;.;;;#ilb.
inventedcomposite covered in sold leaf There was for it.,", .Thirry y;";;;;;i;ker said,
i"t:g flashy aboutit, yer ir made even h. ,titt wasn,t sure whether he shouldthe DAquisto lookoutdated h"*'f.f, .rr.o*ug.J'or'ior.*"rn.a.Evolution can be overrated. A beauti- DAqui.to', urrr.".i .n* rrt .ry, *ourafi.rl sound is a beautifirl sound, whetherit n*i..n ,.Both.,, I
Tastier than chocolate, longer_lastingthan a bouquet of flowers, andguaranteed to be just her srze.
B00t( 0F M[)MS$24.95
THE NEV YORKER, MAY 14,2OO7