The Fifth Course

Some of you mandophiles are probably aware of the Healdsburg Guitar Festival. Every two years Luthiers Merchantile International of Healdsburg CA puts on a convention and exhibition for guitar luthiers. A few hundred one-man (or very small shop) builders bring examples of their work hoping to sell or take orders from custom instruments. LMI also hosts discussion panels and luthiery lectures for builders. For players, they offer instrument demonstrations of the exhibiting builders' work, a cabaret that hosts half hour sets of some excellent guitar work by performers in attendance, and workshops for players.

As you might imagine, the dominant musical style for guitar here is Fingerstyle with Jazz compers in a distant second. Flatpickers, fingerpickers (ala Doc Watson), Blues sliders, electric players, and classical players are a distinct minority. Thus instruments other than some form of arch top or flat top guitar are a rarity.

But there were 7, count 'em, 7 mandolins in attendance at the 2009 Healdsburg Guitar Festival. (This excludes a wonderful 20" scale octave mandolin by Austin Clarke and a bouzouki by Lewis Santer.)

Austin Clark brought three examples of his mandolin work, an F, a 2 point, and and a A. Michael Lewis brought 3 examples of his work, two F's and a guitar shaped archie. The seventh mandolin was a kind of a double wide arch top guitar shaped affair labeled "LaFollette."

I had a great chat with Austin Clark. We talked about the various virtues and strengths of Englemann and Red spruce. And discussed the general, if slight, tonal differences between F style mandolins and A style mandolins. All three of his mandolins were great, as was his octave mandolin. [Confidentially, the OM was my favorite. It was deep, resonant, and easy to play. ]

Michael Lewis has been at the HGF before and has brought mandolins before as well. His work is second to none and commands commensurate prices.

A personal highlight for me during the festival was seeing a trio of Lewis instruments played in the demonstration auditorium. John Massey played an archtop 6 string, Thom Bently played a 7 string archtop, and Olen Dillingham played a guitars shaped mandolin. The three of them played Jazz standards, packing a lot of music into the 20 minute time limit. They made the place swing, and served to inadvertantly warm up the growing audience sitting down to see Todd Hallawell demonstrate for Ervin Somogyi.
Lewis's instruments sounded GREAT.

The seventh mandolin was an unusual piece based on the guitar shape, in much the same way that Michael Lewis builds some of his. But this instrument had a 5 piece back with a center strip that was 4" wide. It wouldn't be an exaggeration to call this a double-wide guitar shaped mando. It had a pleasing open sound with zero chop, kind of flat top sound. I guess that's because it is so wide.

Finally, I'd like to mention Lewis Santer. He's making Bouzoukis and octave mandolins in Oakland and working on some cool back bracing innovations that are designed to strengthen the arch in the back of the instrument with out adding too much weight. Great looking stuff, very creatively made. And you can hear him play them on the CD. He plays with a group of Celtic musicians in the East Bay.