Old Gibson Smokestack

[Petrus]

Geez. You probably could've bought the place for a few grand and turned it into yuppie lofts.

[Timbofood]

http://www.mlive.com/news/kalamazoo/...incart_gallery
Here's the link (if I made the link correctly)

[journeybear]

Here's the link to the facebook page. The page has been up since April 9, 2011. That's the day they drove old Dixie down, BTW & FWIW. Close to 2200 likes - climbing more quickly, now we know about it. There is a plethora of pics there - Gibsons and owners of all sorts - mostly guitars, though. A really amazing collection, actually.

It's estimated to cost $800,000 to repair it, so don't get your hopes up.

[Rush Burkhardt]

My friend, Brian Aldridge, dragged his band (The Dry Branch Fire Squad) 30 miles off their course, to take this picture! Fittingly, and I know you'll ask, that mandolin he's holding is unsigned Loar, 81250, which was owned by Charlie Derrington and played by Mr. Monroe while his was being repaired. Thanks for the photo, Brian!

[Timbofood]

Thanks JB, interesting that this goes back to 2013 and none of the people who work there never said boo to me about saving the thing.

[journeybear]

Well, 2011, but still ... yeah.

[Timbofood]

I only went back to 2013, I'm a lazy slug JB! Some people.

[journeybear]

Oh, I dunno. I had some time on my hands, and was intrigued by all the photos I saw posted as I kept scrolling. But you could have just gone by the date I posted!

That's really beside the point, though. It sounds like you're not exactly a stranger to the musicians community there, and it's reasonable to assume this would have come up in conversation sometime between some people during the last 3 1/2 years!

[Timbofood]

That and the fact that I have known the woman who is the "historical society" liaison since I was in Junior highschool,she knows I play string music. The local acoustic music FM radio show (as far as I know) has not done anything either, I could be wrong but over the time span, I really would have expected more media, musician community, folk scene, blues scene people to have at least made an attempt to do something but, this is Kalamazoo where things just get lost sometimes.

[journeybear]

[Timbofood]

Ed Zackery!

[journeybear]

Well, then, tear it down! No one seems to care.



Too bad about the video quality, but this is the only live Gil & Dave version I could find. Why is that? Why?

[Timbofood]

Such an insight! Thanks JB.

[Rob Zamites]

Such an insight! Thanks JB.

Timbofood, if the teardown is scheduled on one of my days off, I might be able to drive down there (I'm just south of Lansing), and we could team up and see if we could snag some of those bricks....

[Pete Jenner]

I've never see a worse case of curvature of the spine. Do they call you the hunchback of Kalamazoo Timothy? I'm only in Quasi serious mode(o) of course.

[Timbofood]

The tear down is in limbo as of this writing, and the realty company has said that they will re purpose the bricks for a futurer project.
When the dismantling starts, I hope a buddy at Heritage let's me know and I will try to go down and document some of it.
My brother suffers from a terrible case of scoliosis Pete, I think we've (or told) almost any curvature joke known.

[Pete Jenner]

Did he take the photos?

[Timbofood]

Nope, he was loafing at home in his couch, I froze my butt that day!

[Timbofood]

Ok, just sent an email to the woman who is involved in the historical society, she should be able to tell me what the latest is on the stack, stay tuned.