The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Unknown attribution.

I have a friend down in Taos who was kind enough to send me a clipping about a musician who decided to become a guitar luthier. The guy embarks on this new career with the same gusto I did when I decided to try my hand at my own brand of wood butchery and immediately realizes, he is quoted, that this would be a 5 year project. Meaning, this would be a long, long learning curve to build little boxes that project sound. I knew exactly what he meant. The trouble was, I didn’t plan to make this a career and I don’t want to spend the waning years of my life in that learning curve to a cliff.

So okay, I built a couple of guitars last winter and spring. After the first one I told the mizzus and myself this was crazy, way beyond my meager abilities. So when I launched into the second, she shook her head but … it was nothing new to her, this quixotic tendency to obsession. After all, I’d built four banjos, not to sell, not to become a banjo luthier, just … well, just to … geez, I don’t actually know why. It’s not as if I expect to become a real luthier. The fiddler in our band makes violins and cellos, incredible things of beauty and sound. His shop is immaculate, his templates perfect, his tools razor sharp, his techniques honed from years of school and thousands of repairs and dozens of instruments he’s made. He is, in other words, a consummate craftsman.

I, on the other hand, am not. I am an errant fool when it comes to woodworking and a complete ignoramus when it comes to instrument construction. My shop is a mess, my tools are not luthier tools, my expertise is limited and my patience is non-existent. Needless to say, I don’t let this get in my way. I have no illusions that I will stumble into the Stradivarius of guitars by some quirk or accident. No, I just keep thinking one more try and maybe the next guitar will sound, I don’t know, more pleasing. Play easier. Be visually exciting.

Or, if nothing else, that guitar will be mine, built by me, warts and all. I recall a neighbor who was telling me he had built his house. I knew the guy who actually had built his house , the guy who had hammered the nails and sawed the boards and hung the doors and put on the roofing shingles. My neighbor had signed the checks and now he was telling me he’d built the damn house. I built my own house a long time ago. Sure, it’s a bit homemade, but I like that word, homemade. I’d rather have something I built myself than something I bought at the store or hired to have done for me. When I say I built this, I mean I built this.

So, I’m building another guitar. What can I tell you when I can’t really explain it myself. I told the mizzus this would be the last one. I think I said that twice before. She knows eventually I’ll lose interest and move on to something else I won’t get very proficient at. If nothing else, she assumes it keeps me out of trouble. Or at least out of her hair, anyway….

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