On this week’s podcast, we talk to luthier Dana Bourgeois about a truly special one-off guitar he recently built to benefit Tony Rice. This is Dana’s first (and likely last) attempt at an enlarged soundhole D-28-style guitar, just like the famous Martin belonging to Rice and, formerly, Clarence White. Dana’s creation is a truly special instrument, with a Bourgeois Aged Tone top, Brazilian rosewood back and sides, a bound fretboard sans position markers and more. Dana will be holding a two week-long auction from his site starting December 1, 2014.
Michael Bashkin’s life took a unlikely turn when the former New Jersey resident enrolled as an Art major at the University of Montana. “Living in Western Montana, I quickly discovered the outdoors and developed a strong interest in natural resources and forest management,” Bashkin says in this 40-minute podcast interview. “I [then] switched my major to Forestry.”
Bashkin would go on to spend several years in laboratories and in the woods, researching trees and forest ecology. “It was during my master’s program that I got bitten by the guitar bug,” he says. “At some point, my thinking about the trees did shift.” Since 1998, he’s been bulding instruments full-time in Fort Collins, Colorado.