This Ergo Blanc grand concert has quilted-sapele back and
sides and snakewood bridge and bindings.
When did you build your first
guitar, and what drove you to
get into lutherie?
I built my first guitar in the
mid 1960s. Today’s thriving
artisan guitar-making
scene didn’t exist, and North
American guitars were still virtually
all factory-made. In the
mid '60s, though, the guitar
was emerging as the magical
Excalibur-like counterculture
power object that inspired the
post-war youth generation to
break free and boogie. The
music, the drugs, the dramatic
social changes, and our shared
belief in a brilliant future . . .
it was all incredibly empowering,
and anyone with a new
idea, insight, or dream felt more
free than ever before to just go
ahead and do it. So that was the
zeitgeist when a number of us
independently took it into our
heads to build our own guitar.
This Ergo Blanc features a grand-concert body with Brazilian
rosewood back and sides, a Honduran mahogany neck, and a Gabon
ebony fretboard. |
I was in my 20s then, with
a master of fine arts degree,
painting and teaching art in
Chicago and studying flamenco
guitar at the Sherry-Brener
guitar shop—at that time, the
US distributor for Ramírez
and other handmade Spanish
guitars. Like so many other
soon-to-be-luthiers, I wanted
a guitar that I couldn’t afford.
Buying a Spanish, handmade
flamenco instrument was out of
the question on my budget, and
no economically priced student
flamencos were available. But
the real things were there in the
store for me to examine, and by
chance there were some guitar-making
materials for sale there,
as well—though I’m not sure
why. I’m sure I wouldn’t be a
luthier today without that serendipitous
combination of frustrated
desire, available examples
and materials, and being still
young and cocky enough to
decide to just build my own
damn guitar. Thus, a life began.
You’ve influenced or taught
or supported the early efforts
of a lot of other builders, and
with the American School of
Lutherie, you’re working with
more builders all the time.
Was teaching always part of
your mission?
I was a teacher before I was a
guitar maker. Education has
always been important to me.
I founded the first school for
guitar makers in North America
in Vermont in 1973 during a
leave of absence from my position
as head of the high-school
art department in Hanover,
New Hampshire. Since then,
I’ve introduced the craft to
many hundreds of individuals
and taken experienced builders
further on their path. Along
the way, I developed the basic
learning model and teaching
formats used by other guitar-making
classes and schools, of
which there are so many today
in North America. Since closing
a demanding full-time version
of my school in California
in 2002 and downsizing to
my Portland, Oregon, home
workshop, I specialize in intensive,
short-term, full-immersion
classes designed for busy working
adults—beginners and experienced
guitar makers for whom
long-term study isn’t an option.
I enjoy the high energy and
focus of working this way, and
one- and two-week classes are
easier to schedule into the rest
of my guitar-making life.
How did you establish the
American School of Lutherie?
Charles shaping a back-and-rim assembly’s two-piece linings in
his Portland, Oregon, workshop. |
The current version of the
school that I began so long ago
dates from 1993, when I moved
to Healdsburg, California. It
grew into a full-time program
of short- and long-term classes,
a teaching staff, and a roster
of guest instructors like John
Monteleone, Jeff Traugott,
Frank Ford, Don MacRostie,
Jeff Elliott, Dana Bourgeois,
Rick Turner, and others. But
running the business was all
consuming and eventually left
no time for my own guitar
making. In 2002, my wife and
business partner, Denise, and
I relocated to Portland and
downsized ASL to a program
of small, intimate classes taught
by myself here in my home
workshop. I still work full-time,
but the current mix of teaching
and building my own guitars
is more balanced—and it feels
almost like retirement to me.
You have several classes for a
multitude of experience levels,
right? Can you tell us a little
about your Hands-On Acoustic
Guitar Making course?
It’s a short-term, intensive
workshop in which you’ll work
long hours every day building a
no-compromise, performance-quality
guitar. You’ll build an
acoustic steel-string or classical
instrument in two weeks, and
a solidbody electric guitar in
seven days. These are not kit-assembly
classes. Every step is
explained and demonstrated as
you work from the raw materials,
learning every step of the
guitar-making process—from
parts making to final setup. On
the last day of class, you’ll be
playing your new guitar. The
class is designed to be the best
possible foundation for continued
self-learning.