On Wednesday, October 17, 2012, guitar fanatics from all around the Seattle area (and beyond) attended upon the Fretboard Journal‘s seventh annivesary party. Held at a secret space in Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood, guests enjoyed guitar-themed cocktails (the “Neck Reset” was a particularly good concotion), stellar music and a few surprises. It was wonderful to see so many friends of the FJ in one building. We can’t thank you enough for coming.
Onstage, we heard FJ favorite Bill Frisell plugging luthier Steve Andersen’s new double-top archtop guitar creation into an amp for the first time (they both, of course, sounded great). Shortly thereafter, guitarist Eric Skye (above) showed us another side of the jazz coin with his funky fingerstyle improvisations. Chris Ballew of the Presidents of the United States of America played a tune from the repertoire of his alter-ego, Caspar Babypants, for the kids in attendance. Ballew proved you didn’t need a fancy guitar (or even six-strings… his had three!) to have a good time. Local musician (and FJ contributor) Orville Johnson (below) was on-hand, too, playing slide his Rayco resonator.
Things heated up during the jaw-dropping set that Reignwolf played. The volume got loud and the place suddenly felt like a sweltering blues joint. When Ballew joined him on-stage for a jam (Reignwolf on electric mandolin, Ballew on that aforementioned three-stringed Harmony), the party was in full-swing. And the great musicians just kept on coming.
Beyond players, instrument builders and readers, we had some visual artists with a guitar-slant in attendence as well: the stellar cartoonist Drew Christie, Frank Young (the co-author and colorist for the new Carter Family graphic novel) and Shana Cleveland, who drew the “Obscure Giants of Acoustic Guitar” playing cards we gave out to the first 20 people in the door.
We ended the evening with the world premier of our new documentary on lutherie legend Michael Gurian. Despite a few audio snafus, it was great to watch the ten-minute movie with Gurian in attendance.
You’d think three hours of guitar talk and music would be enough, but at least one party attendee wrote us to say, “Great party the other night–the best by far. I think we could have gone another couple hours…” I guess that means we’ll have to schedule a follow-up soon.
Huge thanks to Union Tube & Transistor from Vancouver for donating a More pedal for us to giveaway. And congrats to the pedal’s winner, Pete H of West Seattle. If we had a “furthest travelled” award, we’d hand it to luthier and Larson Bros. expert Frankie Montuouro, who came all the way from Salt Lake City to attend.
To find out about future FJ events, like us on Facebook or subscribe and we’ll let you know when we’re in your area. We’ll be posting more photos soon, too.
