sgusers5的部落格

Source: Odessa American, TexasAug.新蒲崗迷你倉 25--The sawdust hits your nostrils with a bite that feels good and strange simultaneously, like a prickling of Novocain settling in.Michael Stevens' workshop is authentic to his needs and idiosyncrasies, "in pursuit of perfection," Stevens said on a recent summer morning. Some days he will work late into the night until it turns over into morning, but he makes sure to spend quality time with his love, Alice.The process starts with a solid block of wood. And Stevens, the cowboy craftsman of Alpine, renovates the raw form into a masterpiece of an electric guitar.The workshop is set against the sweeping, rolling hills of Alpine's vast landscape. His horse, Buddy Guy, wanders around the 40 acres where he and wife Alice live and play. The shop is all custom, just like his guitars, with doors found in the nooks and crannies leading, for example, to a painting room with ventilation or to a room with vintage pieces like electric banjos and ukeles hanging on the walls. It's about 2,000-square-feet of music-making materials."I wanted to add a fire pole," Stevens said. The message in his cornflower blue eyes matched a small smile. He's a striking cowboy: handsome, tall, strong.To those who know guitars, he's a living legend.Stevens might never tell you he's rubbed elbows with some of the greatest guitarists, musicians, producers and artists around."But that's just Michael," his friends say.From his admirers: He's a Texas gem. An American treasure. His mind comes up with pieces unlike any other -- anywhere. If a sample of Stevens' DNA was needed, look no further than his guitar workshop.FROM '60s BERKELEY to '90s ALPINEIn the height of the hippie movement of the late 1960s, Stevens was in the middle of it in the California Bay Area. Fate matched Larry Jameson up with Stevens in Berkeley, so the story goes."We were dating the same woman. He got the girl and I got a job," Stevens said.Jameson started a guitar repair shop in Oakland. The pair, both with art school backgrounds, opened up Guitar Resurrection. Jameson taught Stevens "what a guitar really was and I taught him how to do it faster with power tools and jigs." Stevens would later design his LJ model in Jameson's honor.He left the craft for a few years to try showing horses (another life love) only to return to Guitar Resurrection in Austin in 1978. There, Stevens created Christopher Cross' double neck guitar, along with work for Stevie Ray and Jimmie Vaughan, Albert King, Otis Rush, Hubert Sumlin, Lonnie Mack, Ray Benson of Asleep at the Wheel and George Thorogood. Junior Brown's double-neck slide "guit-steel" guitar has gained widespread fame.In 1986, Stevens' work got Fender's attention and they moved him to California as a founder and senior design engineer of Fender Custom Shop where Eric Clapton's model Strat, Robert Cray's guitar and Waylon Jennings' Tele were conceived. He was the first person in Fender's history to sign the guitar. He landed in Alpine in 1990 and opened up a workshop about a year later.Stevens showed off some of the wood varieties, from maples to rosewood to mahogany to ebony to Limba/Korina, a light natural wood. Each has a different weight and feel. Guitars are in every stage of production in his workshop. He shows off the curved cutout on the back of a polished blonde version."I was the first one to carve out the leg space so a guitarist can sit on a stool," Stevens said. "No one was doing it."To Stevens, it made so much sense, and for his collectors, it did, too.Where Stevens does most of his detail work, the humidity is between 42 and 45 percent to keep the wood moist. He doesn't carve from one solid piece, but does the body and a neck, which is always custom depending on the player, doing so "ensures it's pristine that way," Stevens said.Stevens digs the "Pinky" finish he's done over the years, he said while showing off one example of the pink polyester flake that he tried in his spray booth in the shop."It's a pretty outrageous rock n' roll machine," Stevens said.HIS GUITARS 'BRING OUT SONGS IN YOU'"Have you ever seen a Pablo Picasso line drawing up close?" customer and friend Matte Henderson said last week. He called from the Boston area -- Stevens has a far reach."You know a human being did that ... Point zero, zero one percent of human beings can do that. That's Michael," he said.Henderson, a musician who builds guitar tracks for a living, met Stevens around 1990. Stevens has built him 10 to 11 custom seven-string electric guitars during their two-decade long friendship.In the age of computers and building by CAD, where anyone can farm out designs, Henderson said, Stevens is constructing each one by hand."It's about the soil, the spirit, the sweat and love and brilliance," he said.Stevens, originally from Ohio (he recently attended his 50th high school reunion), sticks primarily to building electric guitars, basses and mandolins. He starts with the wood block and does every step from carving, sanding, painting, detailing and making sure the thing plays -- and plays well. His guitars, talked about oft on luthier online forums and at collector shows, are known for being easy to tune -- and they stay in tune, beyond their melodious sound and beauty.His models -- the LJ, Les Plank, Classic, Neo Classic, Fetish, Mandolin, Slant Guitar (several choices) and Guit-Steel -- start around $6,000 and can go up in price three times that, pretty easily depending on a collector or musician's specifications. He ships guitars all over the world.On the West Coast, a Hollywood producer and guitar collector Doug Forbes calls his guitars "functional art." He owns 37 now and splits time mini storageetween Los Angeles and Nashville. With a handmade guitar like his Stevens model, it's an emotional connection."You feel it when you pick up a guitar and know it's well-made. It brings out songs in you," Forbes said."There's something in that guitar that's going to play. It resides in the instrument; it's well-crafted and well-made by a true artisan, there's something special there. You play notes you didn't know you knew how to play. I don't mean to get sort of spiritual, but it's true," he said.With Stevens' popularity coupled with his meticulousness, making guitars doesn't come cheap, and he doesn't work on a quick turnaround.Sten Juhl's friendship with Stevens dates back to the 1970s. Stevens built Juhl an "SJ" model about 15 years ago. He told him, "What do you want it to be? What do you have running around in your head? Do whatever you want to do," Juhl said from Dallas about the "Sten Juhl" model.Stevens built him a beauty."He's an exquisite builder. No one will deny that," Juhl said. And he's a big deal in Japan, especially the Stevens' basses, Juhl said."It's the name you want. Like for women's clothing, there are names that really stand out, that are really high-end pieces. The high-end piece of guitars -- Michael is that name," Juhl said.Nobody ever remembers a late delivery, but they remember a bad one, Henderson quoted from the movie "How to Get Ahead in Advertising." His last order was on a three-year timeline. Back orders are more than 25 guitars deep. But to Henderson, it's easily forgivable."You know what happens when you get that box and open up that case? Your mind is blown. You can't believe a human being made this," Henderson said."This dude is out of control," he added.KIND HEART, STRAIGHT SHOOTERKeeping Stevens' friends happy takes several dozen eggs."I love making omelets for everyone," he said.Stevens takes the "handmade" to other aspects of his life; he and friends constructed his two-story workshop. He reciprocated with his omelet tradition. Each person picks out their ingredients that are diced and sliced. Stevens makes each omelet -- seemingly for hours -- one by one. Meticulous. Scrupulous. With precision.They camped out on his 40 acres in tents and teepees to help it come together, then pause to eat and play some music. Each year Stevens plays at the annual Cowboy Poetry Gathering at Sul Ross State University. Stevens plays his dirges and was the president for 10 years and vice president, too, to reach 16 years on the committee."He's like John Wayne. He's a truly unique character. One of my favorite people in the world," Forbes said, describing him as an honest, straightforward, modest and "really damn good."He and Alice have been together some 40 years. She runs a nursery in Alpine, but is also a photographer and former location manager for screen productions. He and Alice don't have children of their own but have witnessed the births of the Perkins family, their dear neighbors. Stevens told the tender story of older brother Sam at about 5 years old hanging out with Stevens while little sister Natalie was keeping their mom in labor for a while."He asked me to make his new baby sister a birthday cake. He goes, 'It's her birthday, right?' Thinking the first day of life is her birthday. So we did it. We made her a cake," Stevens said, laughing about the memory.Luthiers who invest in a Stevens Guitar know his word to be his bond, Forbes said. The cowboy way of life, "that's a real value thing for him. He's a real man," Stevens said. He fits in at the Four Seasons in New York City or working on the land in Alpine. Stevens is a sophisticated fellow, Forbes said. "He is one of the geniuses in the wilderness."Henderson's comparison typified descriptions by others."Even if Michael was a bus driver, he would be the absolute best bus driver ever," he said.LIVING LEGEND KEEPS ON ROLLINGFor Junior Brown's slide guitar it all came out on a piece of paper to begin with, Stevens said."I have a lot of fun inventing mechanisms," he said. "The initial concept is always fun. There's a lot of labor getting to the end. I like that part of it."Forbes says his guitars are museum worthy."They're far beyond compare," he said.Just last week he stood in a Los Angeles guitar shop, requesting a repair on his Stevens Guitar."The guy knew Michael right away and kind of freaked. 'I better do a good job.' He's definitely a legend among luthiers and guitarists," Forbes said. That reaction is all too-common.For all the work Stevens does, he could hire a bunch of little elves."Then I'd have to deal with little elf wives and elf families and all of their problems. Instead it's just me and the ground," he said recently by phone.At his shop in June, Stevens, who likes to tell stories, kept it terse for a change."There's always work to do until I'm dead."Henderson, on the East Coast, said the large, diverse crew of guitar players he hangs out with all have the same feelings."They're blown by what he does," he said. "The attention to detail, the quality transcends genres musically."Hunter S. Thompson wrote in "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," that "There he is. One of God's own prototypes. Some kind of high powered mutant never even considered for mass production," Henderson said, inserting another quote from pop culture."Michael is one of a kind, not intended for mass production," he said.Perhaps, also, he's too rare to die.--Contact Lindsay Weaver on twitter at @OAschools, on Facebook at OA Lindsay Weaver or call 432-333-7781.Copyright: ___ (c)2013 the Odessa American (Odessa, Texas) Visit the Odessa American (Odessa, Texas) at .oaoa.com Distributed by MCT Information Servicesself storage