TAKE IT FrOM TO THE VINTAGE TONE SYSTEM THE TOP · to the vintage tone system laurence juber’s...

t h e j o u r n a l o f a c o u s t i c gu i tar s

VOLUME 4 | 2015

TIME IN ABOTTLE:FROM VINTAGE GLOSSTO THE VINTAGE TONE SYSTEM

LAurENcE JuBEr’s STRING THEORY

TAKE IT FrOM

THE TOPA WORD FROM CHRIS

WOrKINGWOMAN:A PROFILE OF VALERIE JUNE

SET LIST

8. TAKE IT FROM THE TOP A Word from Chris

10. LINER NOTES From the Community

12. TIME IN A BOTTLE: FROM VINTAgE gLOSS TO THE VINTAgE TONE SySTEM By Jonathan R. Walsh

26. LAuRENcE JuBER’S STRINg THEORy By Matt Blackett

32. NEW RELEASES

40. NORTH STREET ARcHIVE

42. WORKINg WOMAN: A PROFILE OF VALERIE JuNE By Melissa Faliveno

52. ROOTINg FOR THOMAS RHETT By Rebecca Bicks

58. THE 1833 SHOP®

60. IN MEMORIAM Stan Jay

M A RT I N G U I TA R .COM | 7

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the journal of acoustic guitars

PUBLISHER C. F. Martin & Co., Inc.

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Amani Duncan

DESIGN & PRODUCTION Lehigh Mining & Navigation

ART DIRECTOR Denis Aumiller

DESIGNER Laura Dubbs

ACCOUNT DIRECTOR Joe Iacovella

COPYWRITER Scott Byers

PRODUCTION ASSISTANT Pat Lundy

PRINTING Payne Printery

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Dick Boak, Jonathan R. Walsh,

Matt Blackett, Melissa Faliveno, Rebecca Bicks

PHOTOGRAPHY John Sterling Ruth, Mandee Taylor

MARTIN® | THE JOURNAL OF ACOUSTIC GUITARS

Business Office

C. F. Martin & Co., Inc.

P.O. Box 329, Nazareth, Pa. 18064

P. 610.759.2837

F. 610.759.5757

www.martinguitar.com

© 2015 C. F. Martin & Co., Inc., Nazareth, Pa.

All rights reserved.

8 | TAKE IT FROM THE TOP

TAKE IT FROM THE TOP

A W

OR

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IS

Dear Martin enthusiast,

I’ll be celebrating my 60th birthday at the

summer NAMM show this year. If you haven’t

been to Nashville, you should plan a visit.

The city is booming. It still is the home of

country music and some great food.

Speaking of turning 60, I’m in pretty good

company. Steve Earle, Jeff Daniels, Reba

McEntire, Sterling Ball and Dee Snider, all

artists whose work I enjoy, are also turning

60 this year.

Older, even than I am, by about a thousand

years, is a process called torrefaction. When

applied to wood, it results in a more dimensionally

stable product than traditional kiln- or air-drying

provides. The end result for us is guitar parts

that are remarkably similar to older pieces of

wood. We believe this allows us to approximate

the tone of a vintage guitar.

I’m proud to announce that Jackie Renner

has joined the company as President. She

has a great deal of experience managing

businesses that make and sell high-quality

consumer goods. She is eager to learn

about the musical instrument business and

meet the colorful characters who are part of

it. I have assured her that we will help her

try to understand the grand traditions and

specific language that we know and love.

I hope you enjoy reading about our favorite

artists in this issue of the Martin® Journal.

Sincerely,

C. F. Martin IV

Chairman & CEO

C. F. Martin & Co., Inc.

Whether writing legendary songs or becoming country music’s original outlaw,

Hank Williams always had a Martin by his side. Find yours at martinguitar.com.

Nashville thought Hank Williams was trouble.Here’s his partner in crime.

10 | LINER NOTES

LINER NOTES

FR

OM

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OM

Mu

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y

Dear Martin & Co.,

I cannot thank you all enough for making the great Little Martin guitar.

From the moment that our package arrived, everyone here in Afghanistan

was excited to get their hands on it. Your company has certainly brought

some joy to deployed personnel. Some of the guys said that when they

buy their next guitar, it will be a Martin. The fact that your guitars are

of the highest quality and sound amazing might also have a little bit of

influence on some of us! From the bottom of my heart and on behalf

of the men and women of the Combined Joint Special Operations Air

Component who will get to enjoy the guitar, thank you. You wouldn’t

bel ieve the smiles and laughter the guitar has brought already!

Sincerely,

SSgt. Marvin Rodriguez

Senior Weapons System Coordinator

United States Air Force

SSgt. Marvin Rodriguez

Senior Weapons System Coordinator

United States Air Force


Dear Friends at Martin,

I thought you might like to see my wife Debbie Baer’s

most recent acrylic painting, titled 1931, of my 00-18 12-fret

Martin Guitar made in that same year. The photo does not do

justice to the painting, but she has certainly captured the

vintage spirit of this special guitar, including a variety of

Pennsylvania products made during the same era. Of course I

am biased, both for my wife’s artwork and for Martin guitars!

Thanks again,

Barry Baer

Hunlock Creek, Pa.

Upon Goro Takahashi’s passing in 2013, Eric Clapton

wished to honor his friend with a special tribute guitar.

This 000-42K Edition was offered in January of 2014 as

a design collaboration between C. F. Martin & Co., Goro’s

family in Japan, and Eric Clapton. “Goro” is highly revered

both in Japan and throughout the world for his exquisitely

crafted gold and silver jewelry and his leather work in

the Southwestern Native American artistic style. Goro’s

daughter-in-law, Mito Yamamoto, helped coordinate the

000-42K Goro Custom Tribute Edition, and she joined Dick

Boak for its introduction at the 2015 Winter NAMM Show in

Anaheim, California. All 39 guitars in the edition sold to

dealers instantaneously.

TIME IN A

FROM VINTAGE GLOSS TOTHE VINTAGE TONE SYSTEM

BY JONATHAN R. WALSH

The goal was to catch time in a bottle. To reach back through years and uproot

all the uncertainty; to skip over every misstep; to know then what was known

now. To drop an acorn and command a mighty oak; to go to sleep one moment

and wake the next with a lifetime’s worth of wisdom. To best centuries of

alchemists and scientists and storytellers and be the one who came stumbling

out from the smoking, strobe-lit laboratory holding it: a Mason jar full of liquid

time. Once they’d done it, says Jeff Allen, Martin’s General Manager, Custom Shop,

the funny thing was: “If anyone would just sit down and really think about it for

15 minutes, they would figure all of this out for themselves.”

FIFTEEN MINUTES

OM-45 DE LUXE AUTHENTIC 1930

14 | TIME IN A BOTTLE

Fred Greene, Martin’s Chief Product Officer, has an office located deep in the heart of the

factory, nestled behind a pair of Packard-sized machines used for preparing guitar tops. It’s easy

to overlook on tours: from the outside it resembles a bunker, a stout rectangle made of cinder

blocks. Inside, though, it is a cross between a rehearsal space, a punky teenager’s bedroom, and

an artist’s studio. The walls are painted blood-red, warmly lit with lamplight and the glow of

a neon sign that appropriately reads “PUNK,” which gives it the feel of some of Brooklyn’s better

bars. In one corner sits an old Slingerland jazz kit; in another is a modern stand-up desk stacked

with books and papers. Guitars hang on every wall: a ’52 Fender Telecaster, a Gibson SG, more

than a few beloved Martins. A Clash poster hangs over the drum set, and from time to time the

throb of London Calling (or Sticky Fingers, or the James Gang Rides Again) can be heard as you

walk down the stretch of factory that leads from the Custom Shop to the finishing department.

Tying it all together is a 25-foot-high graphic of a crowd scene at a rock concert, hands in the air

defiantly. It is the dream of every kid who’s ever fallen in love with the guitar, what the most die-

hard music fan would do if a guitar factory was his playground.

Greene isn’t a kid. Much like Martin, guitars have been the great constant in his life, and he’s

been working with them going on 40 years. His lungs no longer mind the sawdust, and he can

spot the great guitars hidden in a batch of good ones by instinct. Experience guides the way

Greene moves through the factory, focused but friendly; a cross between a sage and a softball

coach. He is tall and lithe, a sharp dresser with swarthy features that suggest somewhere in his

lineage some of southern France’s more mischievous sons. But his eyes are both tender and tense

with concern as they inspect an instrument. Reviewing the work of one of the many luthiers he

oversees, he speaks the language of bracing and dovetail joints before cracking a joke or plucking

a few bars of “Brown Sugar.” For all the responsibility, he seems not to have forgotten that wood

doesn’t make guitars, people do. Perhaps one of the most obvious signs of that was in his hiring

of Jeff Allen to run the Custom Shop two years ago, in 2013.

Like Greene, Allen worked at Gibson early in his career (the two overlapped for several years

back in the 1980s). And like Greene, since getting his start, Allen has devoted his days to making

guitars ever since. He worked his way up to General Manager at Gibson before moving on to become

Vice President of Manufacturing at Fender and ultimately landing at Martin’s Custom Shop. In

the intervening years between their time together at Gibson and now at Martin, both Allen and

Greene continued to grow into their tastes in their own ways. Both have spent decades developing

vision and a master’s palette for tonewoods—the rich, dark sound of rosewood or the spectral

shimmer of Alpine spruce, the snap of cocobolo and the bark of koa.

TWO YEARS


OM-28 AUTHENTIC 1931


“I know where Fred’s going,” Allen says with a laugh. “I know where he’s going

and what he’s getting ready to do.” It’s Saturday morning on one of January’s

more mercifully mild days, and I’ve been drinking coffee and reviewing notes,

trying to prepare for our talk about Martin’s newest innovations, the Vintage

Tone System (VTS) and Vintage Gloss finish. “Fred’s heading over to a

cigar bar about an hour’s drive from here, a really cool place where you can

sit and have your favorite scotch and smoke cigars. He asked me to go with

him, but I had too much to do today,” he says laughing. “I couldn’t do it. But

he’s gonna have some fun.”

Allen is having his own kind of fun, taking the day to work on one of the latest

projects that will give him the opportunity to connect his mind with his

hands: restoring a 1967 Ford Galaxie 500. “The car’s done except for the

engine, so I pulled that out about a month ago, and probably spent three or

four Saturdays—maybe a partial Sunday here or there—getting the motor

completely disassembled. Now that it’s all apart, the only thing I’ve done

to it so far is ported and polished the heads. I still need to take it and have

the block machined and crank jacked, all that stuff. I’m getting ready to start

putting it back together.” All in all, he says, “The car—the body, paint, interior—

all that took maybe a year so far. It’s been a lot of fun.”

This is Allen’s idea of a good time, and to hear him talk about it, there could

be no better way to spend a weekend—or weekday, or lifetime—than reaching

into the guts of a machine to figure out how it works, to understand it, to get

close enough to see how to make it better. It wasn’t long after he arrived at

Martin that the gears began turning for one of Allen’s first big projects at the

company, a cross between detective work, science, and art that would lead to

rediscovering Martin’s Vintage Gloss guitar finish.

The idea started forming as Allen was studying guitars from Martin’s golden

era: the 1930s. “I’d look at those instruments—visit other dealers like Fred

Oster down in Philly or George Gruhn in Nashville—and anytime they get those

guitars in, I’ll go by and photograph them, look at them, even take smell

samples of the inside of the guitar to try to get a vibe for those instruments.”

Just as spending enough time examining tree rings can reveal when a shift

occurred—this dark ring marks a forest fire, that fat one a flood—Allen started

to see a line running through the history of Martin guitars. Certain guitars, after

years of playing, developed a patina that seemed almost to glow. “I noticed

that instruments that were 42-style and above, even though they were old,

had more of a sheen to them than the

ones that were a 41-style or below.

And I couldn’t figure out why.”

Allen bought a microscope for

the purpose of examining vintage

Martin tops, and while this told him a

lot about old techniques, i t couldn’t

explain the finish. He needed to find

the recipe. While other manufacturers

kept roomfuls of documentation that

laid out every production change,

every step-by-step process, Martin’s

history as a family-run business meant

that those kinds of records were

never saved. With two or even three

generations of a family coming up

through the factory, techniques

passed directly from craftsman to

craftsman, which sometimes left a

hole in the written record. Working

with Dick Boak, Martin’s Director of

Museum and Archives, Allen began

sifting through thousands of pieces of

correspondence—written to dealers,

manufacturers, and customers, some

dating back over a century—until

he found what he was looking for :

“I started finding these things that

spoke about lacquer or varnish or

she l lac , and why they switched. I

spent weeks going through these

letters unti l I found the ones that

I was really hoping I would find,

which really specified the difference

between 41-style and below and

42-style and above.”

Eventually, Allen stumbled upon a letter to

a customer written in 1936 that gave an

overview of Martin’s finishing techniques.

Contained about halfway through was

a clear, step-by-step explanation of the

technique that gave certain guitars from

that era the special luster that went

on to age so well. It turned out to be a

multistep and labor-intensive process,

impossible to replicate by machines

or spray guns. “So I just set out to try

to figure out, following those directions,

how to do it myself. Because no one else

wanted to do it—I mean, it’s nasty, it’s

messy, and it’s not very rewarding unless

you’re just really into the guitars.” With

license from Greene to disappear for

days at a time inside the factory, Allen

got to work. Eventually, after a few

sticky weeks, says Allen, “We finally got it

looking like what we saw in the museum.

Something that, if we could go back

about 50 years, this would’ve been about

the way they would’ve left the factory

here. So we kinda stopped and said,

‘We think this is it.’” The Vintage Gloss

finish was reborn.

“so i just set out

to try to figure out,

following those

directions, how to

do it myself. because

no one else wanted to

do it – i mean, it’s nasty,

it’s messy, and it’s not

very rewarding unless

you’re just really

into the guitars.”

–jeff allen


CS-00041-15

“you put the wood under temperature, so the sugars are cooking and the

resins are cooking in there, and it [starts] browning it up—sort of like

taking sugar and making caramel out of it. so we were thinking around

that time: can we do this process, and can we get the top to be lighter?

and that’s the project that i really put tim to work on.”

–fred greene


Tim Teel’s workshop feels like it could be home to either a mad scientist or very avant-garde

woodsmith. As Manager of Instrument Design, he is both. Sawed-off guitar parts wait on shelves

to be used in some future project; wiring harnesses and soldering irons hang on hooks; a

dusty, trusty Peavey practice amp lies beneath a bench until it’s required to test the latest set of

electronics. Prototypes abound, and it’s likely that many of a Martin player’s favorite features

from the past 10 years were born here. It is also where Martin’s foray into the curing process

known as torrefaction likely got its start.

Torrefaction, for the uninitiated, is the process of heating wood in the absence of oxygen.

Depending on how you look at it, it dates back to anywhere from about the middle of last century

(as a way of creating fuel during the petroleum shortage that followed World War II) to 114 years

ago (as a patented technique for roasting coffee beans) and, among other things, can create a

piece of wood completely free of moisture. The resulting lumber has a condensed cell structure

that is both hydrophobic (a.k.a. water-resistant) and more stable. As wood ages, it continues to

dry, partially breaking down the sugars—cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin—in its cell walls. If

this happens at a different rate in one part of the wood than another—as can happen as a guitar

ages—the wood can bend (or, in the case of guitar tops, crack). Completely drying the wood at

an even rate means it won’t shift down the line, and because it’s hydrophobic, water won’t seep

in to warp it. This makes it ideal for certain types of construction—most torrefaction ovens are

industrial-sized—and a few years ago it naturally piqued the interest of guitar makers.

It was back in 2013 that the first piece of torrefied wood appeared on Teel’s crowded workbench,

according to Greene. “Tim and I were talking about what to do with it, and we decided to go

ahead and try this new top on the 2014 Custom Shop model,” Martin’s annual concept piece.

Their first traditionally torrefied spruce top was used in what would ultimately become the Martin

CS-00S-14. It’s a notable guitar for many reasons: ornate cocobolo binding, a slotted headstock,

and a slope-shoulder 12-fret design. But two things stand out: first, the tone. The torrefied wood

provided a sparkle that Greene hadn’t heard on a fresh guitar before. To their surprise, the new

guitar had the natural projection of one that someone had spent decades breaking in, yet it

hadn’t worn its first set of strings for more than a few hours. Second was the color. Torrefaction

had given otherwise pale spruce a leathery tint that called to mind cappuccino or a baseball mitt.

“You put the wood under temperature,” says Greene, “so the sugars are cooking and the resins

are cooking in there, and it [starts] browning it up—sort of like taking sugar and making caramel

out of it. So we were thinking around that time: Can we do this process, and can we get the

top to be lighter? And that’s the project that I really put Tim to work on.”

Teel and Allen are office mates at the Martin factory, and you might say that seating arrangement

deserves credit for the leap from traditional torrefaction to what would become Martin’s Vintage

Tone System (VTS). “They sit right beside each other, so they constantly go back and forth with

each other on things,” says Greene. This is because Teel, Allen adds, “is one of those guys who

speaks my language—he gets harebrained ideas and will chase those down.” By the end of 2013,

both were chasing ideas: Allen was after Martin’s Vintage Gloss finish, and Teel was working to

crack the torrefaction problem.

114 YEARS


Shine a light through a new guitar top, and you’ll be able to see the light come through the other side. Put it

under a microscope and you’ll see why: Water in the wood’s cell walls transmits the light like a fiber optic cable

from one side to the other. Remove that water and other materials through torrefaction, and the properties that

allow light transmission are diminished. One day, Teel was working on torrefied wood and decided to show the

flashlight trick to Allen. “He was showing me that trick, and I kind of put it in the back of my mind. Then I walk

over to this microscope I was using to look at the old lacquer. I was looking at a top from a 1934 000 that had

been removed—one I had in my little library of parts. And I’m just looking at the lacquer till I flip the guitar top

over and I look at the inside, and I start to notice something in the cell structure. And I thought, Where have I

seen this cell structure before?” The pattern of spruce cells in the vintage top, it turns out, was a near-perfect

match to the torrefied piece of new wood over at Teel’s desk. “So I go back over and I pick up a piece of torrefied

wood, and I put it under the microscope and said, ‘Wait a minute, this is it.’”

It was then they realized that torrefaction didn’t just make the wood become dryer—in a way it mimics old wood

cell structure. “That kind of was the aha moment,” says Allen. “To say that the reason torrefaction makes the

guitar sound better straight out of the box, versus a green guitar, is because it replicates some of those properties

that make a properly aged old guitar sound so good.” But using traditional torrefaction on a guitar top can be a

bit like doing needlepoint with a shotgun: overkill, to put it lightly. They found that applying the same techniques

intended to treat support beams for homebuilding to guitar tops just a few millimeters thick had two notable results.

First, a darkening of the wood, as Greene observed back in 2013. More importantly, in terms of aging it, says

Allen, “The original torrefaction process created wood with the cell structure of a guitar that had naturally aged

for over 150 years”—older than almost every Martin in existence.

150 YEARS


Torrefaction is an intimidating word. It conjures images of flame-licked ovens, chemical treatments, beakers and

burners. The truth is more basic. “I am not a scientist, Fred is not a scientist, and Tim Teel is not a scientist,” says

Allen. “It’s very simple; what we’re doing, all of the guitar guys could do themselves. It’s just that we stumbled

on it accidentally, and then we said we’re not gonna let this go; we’re gonna chase this down and see if it goes

somewhere.” As they chased the torrefaction process, the team found they could hit the century-and-a-half mark

with increasing reliability. The challenge, then, became hitting the sweet spot: the 1930s. “I thought, If we’re going

to go after the ’30s, I wonder if we can play around with the process, or maybe include other processes before

or after torrefying that would help us get to the right cell structure,” says Allen. “We spent another year and a

half getting the process down to where we thought we really had it”—’it,’ in this case, being the Vintage Tone

System (VTS). They expanded the process to include bracing and bridge plates—both integral to how a guitar

top vibrates—and built their first prototypes. The result was a batch of guitars that not only replicated older

guitars—at the cellular level, they were essentially vintage instruments.

It was enough to fool the most expert ears on the planet when it comes to Martin guitars: the men and women of

the Martin factory. In blind listening tests, everyone agreed Martin’s newest instruments were unmatched by

anything else coming off the line. “The result was unanimous that these not only sounded the best—a lot of

the people thought that these were the old, original ’37s,” says Allen. Having hit their sweet spot, the Vintage

Tone System was ready to go public.

At the summer NAMM show, America’s largest sales show for instrument makers, the new guitars with the new

Vintage Tone System were a huge hit. “The new OM-28 Authentic was played all day, every day at our booth at

the 2015 Winter NAMM Trade Show in Anaheim, California,” says Allen, laughing. “It was never on the wall-hook

display.” According to Allen, Martin sold more of the new Authentics with VTS at that show than they had

in his previous two years at Martin combined.

“so i go back over and i pick up a piece of

torrefied wood, and i put it under the

microscope and said, ‘wait a minute, this is it.’”

–jeff allen


One of the most beautiful things about guitars is that they age; that, like us, the years change

them. For some, the years bend them; for others, the years even break them. For most, like us, life

is about finding a voice. Sometimes this takes years, sometimes decades. But the goal is to find

out who you are, to be forever in the act of becoming yourself. Some want to share that journey

with a new Martin by their side. Some are looking for a partner that’s already gotten there.

“These guitars are for people who are comfortable with what they want and what they like,” says

Greene. “These are not for people who are unsure—who aren’t sure what kind of music they want

to play, what kind of player they are, who don’t know where their standing is in the world yet, so

to speak—that’s not who these are for. These guitars generally have relatively big necks on ‘em

because they’re old school. They’re non-adjustable—sort of how we get as we get older. The way

we become less willing to change who we are and learn to accept the flaws that come with how

we’re built as people; guitars are sort of the same way. And so instead of worrying about what it’s

not, it’s way more proud of what it is. And what it is, is just a great sounding guitar. It’s a 1937

D-28, and it has a big neck on it, and it has a T-bar in there, and it’s got an Adirondack top. And

if you don’t want to play it this way, or you don’t want a guitar that sounds really big and huge

and loud, that’s okay. It’s not a guitar that’s trying to please everyone. It’s just saying, ‘This is

who I am.’ If you like it, and this is what you like, then you can believe this is the best example

of it in the world. And, honestly, that is the way we approached the VTS thing—we believed in

it. We’re trying to make guitars that we believe in.”

Adds Allen, “We’re doing the things that we believe, as guitar freaks ourselves, make the guitar

better, or we would not do it. The motivator was to get these guys a guitar that sounds closer

to an old ’37. If you can’t afford a vintage one—and I cannot—the closest you can do is try to

make one. And that really was the goal.”

At 181 years in, Martin is not unlike these VTS guitars: at once wise with the experience of a lifetime

and still young, ever restless. The company has survived the Civil War, the Great Depression, even

the 1980s. The awkward years, the teenage years, are over. Martin does not need to reach out blindly

to try to find out what it isn’t, and, because of that, it can focus on what it is. “We don’t get hung

up on things that are trivial, or don’t matter, or seem fleeting,” says Greene. “We’re able to pick

out paths that make sense for us going forward. We don’t waste time; we realize time is precious.

You know, we only have so much time here. And we’re really proud of where we’re at right now.”

181 YEARS


SS-GP42-15

“it’s not a guitar that’s trying to

please everyone. it’s just saying, ‘this

is who i am.’ if you like it, and this is

what you like, then you can believe

this is the best example of it in the

world. and, honestly, that is the way

we approached the vts thing—we

believed in it. we’re trying to make

guitars that we believe in.”

–fred greene

LAURENCE JUBER’S STRING THEORY

By

MA

TT

BL

Ac

KE

TT It’s pretty amazing when being in a band with a Beatle isn’t your biggest

claim to fame, but for Laurence Juber, that might just be true. Not that

his stint in Wings with Sir Paul McCartney doesn’t loom large on his

résumé—how could it not? But Juber has also done high-level session

work (both before and after Wings), tons of TV dates, movie soundtracks

(The Spy Who Loved Me anyone?), worked as guitarist and producer for Al

Stewart, and won a couple of Grammys. It’s his work as a solo fingerstyle

acoustic player, however, that will undoubtedly prove to be Juber’s

greatest accomplishment. From his first solo album, Standard Time, in

1982 to this year’s Fingerboard Road, he has firmly established himself

as a world-class guitarist who fearlessly tackles classic songs like “Let

It Be” and “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and has the guts to place his

own compositions right next to them. And whether it’s a timeless standard

or a brand new tune, Juber brings the same attention to detail, the same

touch, tone, and nuance that have defined his style. And he does it with

a dizzying array of multiple parts going on: Chords, melody, bass, lead

fills, and percussive elements all happen simultaneously—woven into an

astounding arrangement that seems almost impossible until you see him

pull it off live. Then it seems totally impossible.

Fingerboard Road not only documents the evolution of Juber’s musical

and interpretative style, it also marks a big change in his technical

journey, as it is the first album where this longtime Martin guitar player

has exclusively used Martin guitar strings. After trying the Martin Retro™

Monel strings, Juber worked with Martin to create a custom set to suit

his unique musical needs: Martin Retro™ LJ’s Choice. It’s interesting

how this state-of-the-art acoustic artist found new inspiration in Monel,

an almost-forgotten musical metal of the early 20th century. He spoke

about the process, the results, and why he never stops listening to and

searching for the sound in his head.

26 | LAURENCE JUBER’S STRING THEORY


You have your style and sound pretty well-established. Why change your strings at this

point in your career? Well, I’m constantly examining things. For example, even though I

have my stage rig kind of set, I’ll always take some time in the woodshed to double-check it,

and if some new piece of gear comes along, I’ll give that a go too, just to make sure I’m not

missing anything. I’m kind of a relentless experimenter. To be honest, though, I really had no

intention of changing guitar strings. Guitar strings are like razor blades. You find something

that works for you and you stick with it. I had been given a couple sets of the Martin Retro™

Tony Rice Monel strings, and initially I didn’t get it. The gauging was wrong for me. But

because I tend to be kind of persistent if I think there may be something to be learned,

I started a dialogue with the string department at Martin about getting some gauging that

would suit me. As I got familiar with the strings, I started to realize that they were actually

occupying a different sonic space. Once I got gauges that I was comfortable with, I found I

was really enjoying the sound that I was getting out of these strings.

And that’s when you made the switch? My criterion is, if I’m going to use something, I really

have to use it. It took well over a year for me to truly commit, but when I did, I said, “Okay,

I get it—this is working for me.” I was doing some recording with regular phosphor bronze

and then with the Monel strings, and I found that I was starting to like the sound better. I

was also very happy to find that they were lasting longer. In fact, after they had been on

for a while, I liked the tone even more.

You said that these Retro strings occupy a different sonic space. Describe what you mean

by that. For me, it’s really about the stronger fundamental that I hear with these strings.

There’s less harmonic activity, so you don’t get the same kind of sizzle that you get from a

phosphor bronze. When the strings go on, you might find that they’re actually a little bright,

but they tone down quickly and become really warm with a very robust note. And because

of the way that I express myself musically—there’s a lot of counterpoint, a lot of inner

voices—I felt that having that strong fundamental tone was making a difference.


How did you settle on the gauges, and what are the advantages for you? My set is .013,

.017, .024, .032, .042, .056. They’re basically the same gauges I had been using in phosphor

bronze. The advantage has to do with the fact that I tune in DADGAD a lot—it’s become a second

guitaristic home to me—and because the top two strings and the bottom string are tuned down

a whole-step, having a slightly fatter string in those gauges gives me a more evenly balanced

tension across all the strings. Going to standard tuning, there’s a little bit more meat, and

you especially notice it on the upper strings, because .013 is a medium gauge, as is a .017.

You’ll also play in C, G, D, G, A, D, dropping the low strings even further. Yes. It’s really about

keeping the integrity of the tone, and the .056 on the bottom does give me a nice, strong low C.

That’s the same note as the low string on a cello. And having the .042 on the fifth string works

fine to drop down to a G. I could go bigger than a .056 on the bottom, but it’s nice to be able to go

from lowered tunings back to standard tuning and still be able to do string bends and stuff like that.

Your latest record has a fair amount of string bending on it. Yes it does, and I find these

strings very articulate and very responsive to that kind of playing. They also seem to hold

the tuning very well. They can take a pretty aggressive attack and stay in tune. That’s helpful

because I find that the older I get, the more sensitive I become to pitch issues.

What other facets of string construction did you talk about? Part of the experimentation was

playing with the core of the strings, especially the G string. We made the G string with a .014

core, where ordinarily they would use a .013. But I found that I needed just a little bit more

articulation out of it—a cleaner articulation—and that slightly larger core did the job. The

ratio between the core and the wrap is important. Some strings have a thinner core and more

wrap, and others have a fatter core and less wrap. I seem to prefer a string with a slightly

bigger core in general. I’m not really sure about the physics of it, other than the fact that it

seems to give me the sound and the feel I’m looking for. Maybe that makes a difference

in the bendability of the string, but I can’t say for sure. You get to a point where it’s hard to

quantify exactly, but I do find that the bigger core seems to help.

“I wAS ALSO vERY HAPPY TO FINd THAT THEY wERE LASTING LONGER. IN FACT, AFTER THEY HAd BEEN ON FOR A wHILE, I LIKEd THE TONE EvEN MORE.”

- LAURENCE JUBER


It’s inspiring to see how you’re stil l searching, l istening, and

re f in ing , and these s t r ings seem to be ind ica t i ve of tha t .

I look at these things as incremental shi f ts. I don’t have the

expectation of quantum shifts in my self-expression. I always teach

people that you don’t experience a lot of huge improvements. You

make subtle improvements, and then one day you realize that you’re

at another level. I think these strings did that for me. They liberated

something. I found I could express myself a little more succinctly

because of that tonality. That’s why I see them as a game-changer.

Guitars themselves are almost erotic in their appeal. There’s just

something very sexy about them, and there always has been. Strings,

on the other hand, are decidedly unsexy. You don’t have the same

relationship with them as you do with instruments, and yet they’re the

interface. They’re the tactile part of it. The first level is the vibration of

the string itself. That’s why this experience has been something of

a revelation for me, because it made me realize that there’s another

dimension there. And the fact that that dimension harkens back to a

previous era sits very comfortably with me. I feel that what they’ve

done with these Retro strings is exactly what I look to in my Martin

guitars: 180 years of tradition, but brought into the modern era.

That, for me, is just a great space in which to make music.

“I FEEL THAT wHAT THEY’vE dONE wITH THESE RETRO STRINGS IS ExACTLY wHAT I LOOK TO IN MY MARTIN GUITARS: 180 YEARS OF TRAdITION, BUT BROUGHT INTO THE MOdERN ERA. THAT, FOR ME, IS JUST A GREAT SPACE IN wHICH TO MAKE MUSIC.”

- LAURENCE JUBER


Laurence Juber | Fingerboard Roadwww.laurencejuber.com

Now available

32 | MARTIN™

HD-35 cFM IV 60TH

Martin’s 14-fret Dreadnought model celebrates our Chairman

& CEO Chris Martin IV’s 60th birthday. Limited to a quantity of

60, the HD-35 CFM IV 60th model is truly a unique instrument

with European spruce top with Martin’s torrefied Vintage Tone

System (VTS) and herringbone pearl inlay. The three-piece back

consists of siris wings with an East Indian rosewood wedge;

the fingerboard and bridge are beautifully inlaid with infinity

hexagon outlines. Chris Martin has personally signed each label

in these Limited Edition guitars.

www.martinguitar.com/new

NEW RELEASES

LIM

ITE

D E

DIT

ION

LIM

ITE

D E

DIT

ION

S D12-35 50TH ANNIVERSARy

We continue to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of our iconic

D-35 model with the introduction of the D12-35 50th Anniversary

Limited Edition. This celebratory edition is a 12-string, 12-fret

Dreadnought limited to a quantity of 183, the quantity of the

first 1965 production run. A solid headstock is used to facilitate

easier re-stringing. This modern interpretation of the original

model includes a European spruce top with Martin’s torrefied

Vintage Tone System (VTS) and three-piece East Indian rosewood

back and sides. Martin 12-fret rosewood Dreadnought 12-string

models (not quite rare) possess incredible power and warmth

of tone. Martin enthusiasts worldwide will want to add this

special instrument to their collection.


LE-cOWBOy-2015

William Matthews is widely known for his

beautiful watercolor portrayal of the working

cowboys from the great ranches of the American

West. Mr. Matthews created original artwork for

us that will debut at the 2015 Summer NAMM

Trade Show. The LE-Cowboy-2015 is a 000 12-fret

with a Sitka spruce top finished with Martin’s

torrefied Vintage Tone System (VTS). The top

is inlaid with a multicolor rope design, and the

back and sides are made of goncalo alves, a

tonewood used by C. F. Martin Sr. in Martin’s

earliest decades. This unique collector’s

guitar will only be sold in 2015.


36 | MARTIN™

cS-D41-15

The CS-D41-15 is a 14-fret, non-cutaway

Dreadnought featuring a Sitka spruce top

with Martin’s new torrefied Vintage Tone

System (VTS). The East Indian rosewood

back beautifully showcases a unique ribbon

inlay of cocobolo and flamed mahogany.

This enticing ribbon design is mirrored

on an elegant headplate, which is further

enhanced by a mother-of-pearl-bordered

rosewood logo. The ebony fingerboard

displays elegantly detai led mahogany

and pearl inlay patterns that follow the

ribbon theme. Flamed mahogany binding

visually completes the CS-D41-15, making

this Limited Edition model one that is both

visually beautiful and powerful in tone.

The edition is limited to no more than 115

special instruments.


LIM

ITE

D E

DIT

ION

SS-0041-15

The 2015 Summer NAMM Show Special

is a beautiful small-bodied model, with an

Adirondack spruce top with Martin’s torrefied

Vintage Tone System (VTS) and finished

with a gorgeous cinnamon teardrop burst.

The SS-0041-15 has Guatemalan rosewood

back and sides, featuring unique and ornate

inlay designs: an alternate torch on the

headstock and Martin’s tree of life pattern

on the fingerboard, both inlaid in a select

abalone pearl. Equipped with Fishman Aura

VT electronics, this Limited Edition stage

and studio guitar will be cherished for years

to come. Orders will only be accepted from

dealers in attendance at the 2015 Nashville

Summer NAMM Show.


2015 SuMMER NAMM SHOW SPEcIAL

38 | MARTIN™

RETRO SERIES

00-15E RETRO

The 00-15E Retro is the first short-scale 00 14-fret Grand Concert

instrument in the popular Retro Series product family. This acoustic-

electric, non-cutaway model features a solid mahogany top, back and

sides, and the top is finished with a visually distinctive 15-style burst.

Equipped with our popular SP Lifespan strings and Fishman F1 Aura+

electronics, the 00-15E Retro will appeal to players at all levels who

are seeking clean, brilliant, bluesy tone and easy playability.


40 | NORTH STREET ARCHIVE

MA

RT

IN A

Rc

HIV

ES

NORTH STREET ARCHIvE

ERNEST TuBB AND THE TExAS TROuBADOuRS | cIRcA 1946

Over the years, Ernest Tubb (center) and his Texas Troubadours featured

many different band members. We know that the bassist on the right is

Jack Drake. The others — we’re just not so sure—but the three Martins are

easy to identify: Ernest played Jimmie Rodgers’ original 12-fret 000-45 that

Jimmie’s widow, Carrie, loaned to him for many years. The other Martins are

a 000-45 14-fret (left, with an odd contraption near the soundhole) and a

000-28 herringbone (right). Not a bad collection!


gENTLEMEN WITH 2 ½-17 MARTIN | cIRcA 1888

The economical Style 17 Martin guitars were

first seen in the 1850s. They had spruce tops until

the changeover to mahogany tops in 1921. This

seated gentleman from the late 1880s has a

2˙-17, which, during the last half of this decade,

was Martin’s most popular model. We assume

the man standing is also a gentleman, perhaps

even a preacher with a Bible. A most exciting duo!

JuDy LyNN | 1950

The cowboy craze was alive and well in the 1950s

with western stars like Judy Lynn and her impressive

Stetson-hatted band. Originally a teenage star from

Boise, Idaho, Judy toured nationwide with a group

of Grand Ole Opry performers before becoming

a staple act on the Las Vegas strip. It looks like

a post-1946 000-28 (no herringbone) under her

fancy leather cover that certainly preceded Elvis

Presley’s. Perhaps she inspired him?

BASHFuL JOE | cIRcA 1939

This unlikely duo combined the comical

Bashful Joe (on the right) with his cowboy-clad

companion playing a lovely Martin 000-28

herringbone. WJR was a Detroit radio station

that began broadcasting in the early 1920s.

Working Woman: A Profile of Valerie June

By Melissa Faliveno

Valerie June

44 | WORKING WOMAN: A PROFILE OF VALERIE JUNE

a cold Friday night in mid-February, the lights of Carnegie Hall make the hard snow

packed along Seventh Avenue seem to sparkle. It’s late, and the city is quiet, most of

its eight million people hunkered down inside their homes, trying to keep warm. But

outside the hallowed concert venue in Midtown Manhattan, the energy is palpable—and

those waiting to get in don’t seem to mind the cold. The show, a late-night performance

by Martin Ambassador Valerie June—a singer-songwriter born and raised in Tennessee

who’s a little bit country, a little bit soul, a little bit rock ‘n’ roll, and who has created

a sound entirely her own—is sold out. Beyond this storied corner of New York City and

throughout the country, emerging musicians dream of booking a gig like this. And as the

doors open and the swell of people push in, it feels like we’re a long way from Memphis.

Inside the theater, the seats fill quickly. The lights go down, and on the darkened stage,

an acoustic Martin guitar and banjo wait. In a minute or two, Valerie June will take the

stage, harking back to her Southern roots, a voice recalling Bill Monroe’s high lonesome

sound, Dolly Parton’s swagger, and Billie Holiday’s soul, but with something altogether

new and unique. She will fingerpick her way through country ballads, rock songs,

and hard-driving blues. She’ll be Appalachian folk, gospel, Motown, and funk, Afrobeat,

indie, and Sixties pop. Her performance will still the crowd to silence, then send

them into a foot-stomping frenzy, erupting into whoops and hollers, her dreadlocks

flying wildly as she strums. Her father will dance his way to the stage, his hands in

the air like prayer, then give his daughter a kiss between songs. June will play the

breadth of her debut record, Pushin’ Against a Stone, and those of us listening will

feel, for at least a while, what it means to be a working woman in the music world—to

be a girl from small-town Tennessee who learned to sing in church, who taught herself

how to play guitar, who’s pushed past her share of struggle, and who’s trying to make

her way in the world by creating the thing she loves.

But for now, the stage is still dark, and the Martin leans against its stand, waiting.


Valerie June didn’t grow up playing guitar. Her grandfather gave

her an old imported acoustic when she was 15, but she wouldn’t

learn how to play until she was 22. June grew up in a small town

between Humboldt and Jackson, Tennessee, about equidistant from

Nashville and Memphis. Her music education began in church, where

she sang gospel songs and Southern spirituals, keeping her ears finely

tuned to the different kinds of voices around her. Not everyone was a

good singer, she says, but everyone had their own unique sound. There

was no choir, just that congregation, and the only instruments were those

voices—hundreds of them, singing together three times a week—and

June became fluent. “I had one art teacher who played acoustic guitar,

and I loved hearing him play,” she tells me. “So I knew that if I ever did

play an instrument, I wanted to play an acoustic guitar.”

Growing up at the intersection of the country’s two most storied musical

epicenters, June learned about more than just gospel. “My parents

would take us to Nashville, and we would hear country music,” she says.

“That was the country music capital, and everybody, from the time you’re

born, you know that’s what Nashville is. And then in Memphis, it’s rock ‘n’

roll and soul and blues.” Living down the street from Carl Perkins, the King of

Rockabilly, didn’t hurt, either. “Where I was raised, we had so many different

genres of music coming down that interstate, I was influenced by all of it.”

After high school June left home and moved to Memphis, got married

at 19, and started singing in a band with her husband, who wrote the

duo’s music and played guitar. When the band—and the marriage—

broke up, June found herself without a musical outlet and nowhere to

play. She realized that to make it on her own as a musician, she needed

to learn how to write songs and play guitar. So she listened to a lot

of music. “I knew that it was going to take me a very long time,” she

says, laughing. “I had terrible rhythm. I was just really terrible at keeping

time. I was also terrible at being able to distinguish what instrument I

was hearing, whether it was a bass or a trumpet or anything,” she says,

laughing again. There’s an easy air about Valerie June, a sense that while

she takes her job as a musician seriously, she doesn’t sweat the small

things. But one also gets the sense that it’s taken some hard work to

get here: that she’s faced enough challenges in her young life that now,

in her early thirties, she knows how to meet them. “So I had to just

listen to a lot of music and teach myself—like okay, that’s the bass.”

Valerie June

She fell in love with old-time country

of the 1920s and 30s, citing Mississippi

John Hurt, Elizabeth Cotten, and The Carter

Family as influences—not least because,

in the case of Hurt and Cotten, they weren’t

discovered until later in life. “I was like,

‘Well, I’m probably gonna be 80 before I

learn how to play one song,’” she says.

“But at least I did it, right?” It took some

time, but she eventually taught herself

not just guitar, but also banjo and ukulele.

“I was in it for the long run.”

With a few songs under her belt, June

started playing gigs around Memphis,

in coffee shops and libraries and bars.

While she played, she worked—odd jobs,

mostly, and a lot of them—trying to make

enough money to live on while playing

music. It was a hustle, she says, and it

was hard, but she made it work. Soon she

was playing gigs throughout the South.

She released two homemade records to

sell at shows, and after opening for Old

Crow Medicine Show, she was invited

by the band to Nashville to record an EP,

Valerie June and the Tennessee Express.

After about 10 years in Memphis, June

packed up her guitar, along with her

banjo and ukulele—her babies, she

calls them—and headed to New York.

Around the same time, she started getting

interest from labels, but was reticent to

give up artistic control. So in 2010 she

launched a Kickstarter campaign to make

a full-length record of what she called her

“little ol’ sound,” and her fans helped her

raise nearly $16,000. She teamed up with

co-producers Kevin Augunas—known

for his work with Sinéad O’Connor and

The Lumineers—and The Black Keys’

Dan Auerbach; she and Auerbach sat

down for two songwriting sessions,

and a partnership was formed almost

immediately. The result, Pushin’ Against

a Stone, recorded in part at Auerbach’s

Easy Eye Sound studio in Nashville, was

released in August 2013.

Watching Valerie June perform, one gets

the feeling that she’s bringing something

not just unique, but also very real and

very human, to the stage. Part of that may

be that while her fingerpicking is nearly

flawless, perfection was never part of her

plan. She admits to making mistakes, and

those mistakes have helped shape her

philosophy as a musician. “Even now I

can’t play a song all the way through,”

she says, laughing. “I mess up all the

time. But I push through it, because I’m

a living being and that’s what we do—we

make mistakes, and it’s not about that;

it’s about the process of creating, and

that’s a magic thing that needs to happen

in people’s lives. It makes me sad that

creativity gets pushed aside, that it doesn’t

get the light that it needs. And you have

to struggle so hard, if you’re creating

something, to get it out in the world.”

That’s where the record’s name comes

from. “I think about creativity as being

a small seed,” June says. “When you’re

little, you have this vision, you have this

hope; you have this thing you want to do.

That little creative seed starts to grow

when you’re young, but as you get older

and you have to balance real life, it can

slowly begin to die. And so just to be able

to be a creative being and have that last

your entire lifetime, whatever it is that

you’re passionate about, that you hope

to do, that, right there, is beautiful. And

that’s pushing against a stone.”

For June, that kind of tenacity meant

working multiple jobs in Memphis,

uprooting her life and leaving her family

to move to New York, and, once she got

there, being diagnosed with diabetes, a

disease that not only sapped her energy

but forced her to restructure her life.

Through it all, though, she has pressed

on, putting her music—what she now

considers her only work—first. “You’ve

just got to say, ‘I’m going to create this. I

don’t know where it’s going; I don’t know

what it’s going to do, but it’s something I

enjoy doing, and I want to keep that beauty,

and that magic, in my life because I need

to,’” she says. “I keep this little seed of

creativity in my life, and allow it to grow

and nurture it in my own way, for myself.

That side of ourselves gets pushed

away, gets beaten out, and to be creative

you need to just believe in it, and

water that seed regularly, and give it

the strength to grow.”

June plays a 000-15M, a utilitarian acoustic stripped of

any bells and whistles. It’s a sturdy guitar without a lot of

flair—no binding, a single-ring rosette, a satin finish that

gives the wood a feeling of rawness; just a strong, beautiful,

and hardworking instrument that gets the job done—much

like June herself. On stage, she and her guitar seem not

just a good fit; they seem to be part of one another. And

that connection, it turns out, wasn’t an accident.

June didn’t always play a Martin. Her first working guitar, a

Gibson L-style modeled after blues legend Robert Johnson’s,

was destroyed on a flight from New York to Tennessee. “I had

two gigs on the calendar,” she says, “and that was how I was

eating at the time. I was suddenly out of work. And I thought,

Oh my god, what am I going to do? I’m out of work! I have to

find another guitar.” She had a small budget coming from

the airline, so she went to Auerbach for advice. He told her

to get a Martin. “But Martin’s the best company there is!”

she said, certain she wouldn’t be able to afford it. But she

went to Nashville’s famed Gruhn Guitars anyway and tried

out a 000. “I played it and walked away,” she says. She went

home and visited her family, and on her way to fly out the

next day, she decided to go back to the shop. “I was just

going to buy the guitar,” she recalls. “I didn’t feel too much

passion about it.” But she had a flight to catch and shows

on the books and needed a new guitar. “The guy who was

selling it said, ‘Oh, you’re back. I see you like that guitar,’ and

I said, ‘Yeah, just give it to me. I’m gonna get it.’ And he

said, ‘Sorry, I can’t sell it to you.’ And I was like, ‘Why not?

I’m ready; I don’t have a lot of time. What do you mean you

can’t sell me this guitar?’ And he said, ‘I want you to really

feel connected to whatever instrument you buy, and I

don’t feel like you’re madly in love with this.’”

So he went upstairs and dug out two more 000s. “He put

them each in my hands and made me play them,” she says.

“So I played each one, and one of them—the 15M—I felt very

connected to.” She played each one again and again, just to

be sure, but she had found her guitar. “‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘This is

the one.’ And he said, ‘You see what I mean? Don’t you feel

connected to it? If you don’t have that connection from the

start with whatever instrument you buy, then you probably

don’t need to be getting it.’”

But the story doesn’t end there. As the man prepared the

sale, he asked June to read the serial number to him so he

could write out the receipt. She read the numbers aloud, but

stopped short when she got to the end: The last four digits

of the serial number matched the last four digits of her cell

phone number. “And I was like, ‘Oh my god. This is mine,’”

she says, the disbelief still apparent in her voice. For June, it

seems, fate is something you listen to when it calls. “It was

like it had my name on it. So that’s how I got my Martin.

And I feel very connected to it. I love that guitar.”

June calls her music “Organic Moonshine Roots,” a name

that suits her singular sound, which can’t otherwise

be easily classified. Her songs tell a story, and Pushin’

Against a Stone is no different. “I’m really into stories,”

she says. “I always want to know what the story is.” The

record’s story is a familiar one: that of a woman trying

to find her way, leaving her family and heading out into the

world on her own; a woman who’s drifting, who’s trying to

make something she believes in, despite the world often

suggesting she can’t. At the heart of it, it’s a story about a

hardworking woman who’s following a dream, and who’s

looking for her home in the world.

Valerie June

Valerie June

Rolling Stone ranked Pushin’ Against a Stone

No. 44 on their 50 Best Albums of 2013, and American

Songwriter ranked the album at No. 21 on their

American Songwriter’s Top 50 Albums of the same

year. In 2014, the record was nominated for a Blues

Music Award in the Best New Artist Debut category.

But June isn’t one to linger in the glow of awards

and accolades. Since the Carnegie Hall show—

arguably one of her most high-profile shows to date—

she’s back at work in Brooklyn, writing new songs.

A second album is in the works, but June doesn’t talk

too much about it. For now, it’s all about the work.

“We just have to keep pushing,” she says, recalling

the record’s title like a mantra, reminding herself as

much as anyone who’s listening that it’s not about

the end product, but the work that goes into it. “We

just have to keep doing the thing we love, and keep

believing and creating amazing work and sharing

it with each other in the circles that we have, no

matter what the world might want us to do.”

“No matter what,” she says, “as a creator, that

talent is given to me for a reason, and I need to do

it. I just need to do it.”

June says the record’s narrative wasn’t planned,

but that it grew out of the songs organically. The

album’s first track—and June’s first single—“Workin’

Woman Blues,” is a country-blues anthem, whose

hard-driving rhythm recalls June’s early days of

piecing together paychecks in Memphis, working long

hours, and playing gigs at dive bars in between: “I

ain’t fit to be no mother,” she sings, “I ain’t fit to be

no wife yet / I been workin’ like a man, y’all / I been

workin’ all my life yeah.” From there the record moves to

the mournful, ghostlike wails of “Twined and Twisted”;

the slow Sixties funk of “Wanna Be on Your Mind”; the

Appalachian acoustic ballad “Tennessee Time,” a love

song to her home state; to the distorted electric guitars,

staccato organ, and Motown-style backing vocals of

the title track; the soaring fiddles and plucky ukulele

of “Somebody to Love”; and finally “On My Way,” a

quiet little hymn that both laments the past and looks

with hope toward the future—a song that feels like a

fitting end to a story, and only just the beginning.

Since the record’s release, June has performed

throughout the U.S., U.K., and Europe, including a spot

on Austin City Limits, and has been featured on NPR,

PBS, and in the New York Times and the Washington Post.


50 | WORKING WOMAN: A PROFILE OF VALERIE JUNE

Back at Carnegie Hall, June stops between songs and sets down her Martin. She looks

back at her band with awe, and asks the audience to give them a round of applause.

For a moment then she looks out into the crowd and shakes her head, smiling, the

wonder and gratitude of the moment visible on her face. She seems as surprised to be

here, making this music for a packed house in New York, as the crowd is moved by

her performance. Her voice soft, she says that people often ask where she gets ideas for

her music. “You know,” she says, her gold dress glittering in the blue lights of the stage,

a stray dreadlock hanging in her eye, “these songs come in dreams.”

When she talks, as when she sings, Valerie June feels somehow otherworldly: like

she’s here among us, but exists on a slightly different plane; that she’s propelled by a

higher purpose, and she’s got big places to go. But for now, it seems, she’s happy with

where she’s come, and what she’s made so far—and that whether she’s in New York or

Tennessee, she’s found a place for herself in the music she creates. “This world is not

my home, y’all,” she says to the crowd, smiling. “I’m just passing through.”

Valerie June plays a 000-15M and uses

Martin Acoustic SP Phosphor Bronze Extra Light strings.

Valerie June | Pushin’ Against a Stonewww.valeriejune.comNow available

52 | FACTORY STANDARD

The thing about roots is that, though you can’t see them, they’re as broad and

complex as the trees they anchor. Roots are a tree’s life source, its nourishers,

and what feeds the roots ultimately feeds the soul of the maple, the oak,

the sycamore. It’s no surprise, then, looking at the roots of newly-

minted Martin Ambassador Thomas Rhett, that, at only 25 years

old, this country singer-songwriter is quickly on the way to

becoming one of this era’s biggest country music stars.

M2CE

07S

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ROOT i N G FOR

54 | ROOTING FOR THOMAS RHETT

It was a few years into college,

though, when Thomas Rhett started

to feel his country music roots start

to tug at him. Unsure of what he

wanted to do academically, he began

playing in a band, until one day they

were asked to open at a showcase in

downtown Nashville. The show would

ultimately change everything for him. He

remembers: “I was opening for this guy,

and I was in some really horrible cover

band singing a bunch of Tracy Chapman

and Jason Aldean songs—the most

random mix on the planet. But there

were a bunch of publishers there that

night, and there was a guy there named

Ben Vaughn, who’d signed my dad to

a publishing deal a few years ago, and

he walked up to me after the concert and

said, ‘Dude, do you want to write songs?’”

Thomas Rhett jumped at the opportunity.

Soon he was commuting into downtown

Nashville from school three days a week

to write songs for other artists. Thomas

Rhett says he was “terrified at first,”

but deep down he “felt like I knew how

to write a hit song.” Eventually, he says,

“Big artists started putting my songs

on their albums and singing them at

their concerts.” Those artists included

the likes of Jason Aldean, Lee Brice,

and Florida Georgia Line, all of whom

released hit singles penned by Rhett.

Rhett’s deepest roots lie in Valdosta, Georgia. A small, swampy, Southern

town known mostly for a historic Main Street and humidity, it is where

he was born to mother Paige Braswell and father Rhett Akins—a country

star in his own right. Thomas Rhett’s family lived in Valdosta until

he was a toddler, when they eventually moved somewhere strikingly

cosmopolitan in contrast: Nashville, where his father could further

pursue his burgeoning music career. There, the elder Akins would sign

with Decca Records (home for a time to the likes of Kitty Wells and a young

Roy Rogers), release a string of successful country hits, and eventually

become one of the era’s most prolific country songwriters.

Growing up in Nashville as the son of a working artist, Thomas Rhett was

steeped in the world of country music. He describes it as the focal point

of his early years, making for what he calls “definitely not your normal,

ideal childhood.” According to Rhett, his unique upbringing had both

drawbacks and perks. “When a lot of kids’ parents were taking them to

Disney World, we were going to some county fair in the middle of Kansas.

It was just a different life,” he explains. But “getting to be a kid on a tour

bus, traveling with your dad and watching him sing was a really cool

way to grow up. I feel like I got to be really cultured at a young age.”

For Thomas Rhett, though, an early start in Nashville did not mean a

straight path to country stardom. Rather, his route more closely resembled

a branch of Georgia’s state tree, the Southern live oak, which twists and

turns on a meandering course from trunk to sky until finally bursting

into a brilliant spray of green leaves at its end. Growing up, he thought

he wanted to become anything but a musician. In high school, he was

a serious athlete; he played football and was considering a college

soccer career until he was permanently sidelined by an ACL injury. After

graduating, he chose to go to Lipscomb University, and struggled to

find a career trajectory that felt right for him, though nothing seemed

to stick. “I really just went to college because all my fr iends did, not

really having a clue what I wanted to do,” Rhett says of his years at

Lipscomb. “I thought about doing something in physical therapy,

business, or even in medical sales.”

M7A6

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“GeTTiNG TO Be a kiD ON a TO UR BUs,

THOMAS RHETT

About a year and a half after Thomas Rhett began writing, Ben Vaughn

came to him, sat him down, and said, “I really think you could be

an artist.” It didn’t take much convincing for Rhett to say yes. “We got my

guitar, and I went around and visited about nine different record labels,

got a few offers, and ended up signing a deal with Big Machine Records.”

Since emerging from behind the scenes of country music to take

center stage, Thomas Rhett has released his first full studio album, It

Goes Like This, which reached the number two spot on the Top Country

Albums charts, and featured three number one singles: “It Goes Like

This,” “Get Me Some of That,” and “Make Me Wanna.” He’s gone on to tour

with country stars Jason Aldean, Miranda Lambert, and Florida Georgia

Line (with whom he is currently out on the road through October 2015).

Thomas Rhett’s roots come through in the music he writes, and

this, perhaps, has been one of the keys to his rapid and widespread

success. His songs are a little bit Valdosta, Georgia—with lots of

backcountry, salt-of-the-earth, Deep South references, like in the

upbeat “Front Porch Junkies”: “Swamp air comin’ through the screen

door, bare feet stompin’ on the wood floor. We’re just diggin’ it, finger

lickin’ pickin’ out in the country,” he sings. At the same time, though,

his music betrays a Nashville twang: a polished, more polite sound

and feel, like his most recent chart-topper, “Make Me Wanna,” which

features a catchy refrain, staccato drum, and what Rhett likes to call

a “Bee Gees” vibe. Influences from Thomas Rhett’s childhood also

appear in his work; while undoubtedly a country record, Rhett’s

album has strong hints of ’90s pop, alt-rock, even hip-hop—all of

which combine to reach an audience well beyond what charts call

“traditional” country fans. This broad appeal has helped him take

off quickly, garnering nominations for Country Music Association

New Artist of the Year and Academy of Country Music New Artist of

the Year, among others, all in the last year.

WiTH YO UR DaD aND WaTcHiNG Him

siNG Was a ReallY cOOl WaY TO

GROW Up. i Feel l ike i GOT TO Be

ReallY cUlTUReD aT a YO UNG aGe.”

THOMAS RHETT

Thomas Rhett | It Goes Like Thiswww.thomasrhett.com

Now available


56 | ROOTING FOR THOMAS RHETT

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2015, 7:00PMTHOMAS RHETT

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NOW, i DON’T

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Was JUsT kiND OF alWaYs aT

OF mY HeaRT.


An even rarer accolade, and one Thomas Rhett says he is most excited about, was

becoming a Martin Ambassador in late 2014. Thomas Rhett says he’ll never forget the first

time he played a Martin guitar and became enamored with the company. “It was my first

time out with Miranda Lambert, and Martin Ambassador Dierks Bentley was opening for

her. I walked out on stage with my Taylor, and I remember Dierks had his Martin—the old one

that his dad had given him,” Rhett recollects. “He let me play it, and I just remember how

awesome it sounded, and I remember Dierks saying, ‘You need to get a Martin—Martin’s

the man’s guitar.’” After that, he got in touch with Martin and bought himself his first

Dreadnought, an HD-16R Adirondack, and then his second, because he “loved the first

one so much.” Recently, Rhett acquired his first custom Martin: a Custom Shop Koa HD-16R,

which has his name on it. “Being asked to become a Martin Ambassador was one of

the coolest things in the world,” says Thomas Rhett. “Martin’s a very homey, family

environment, which is cool, because once you’re in the family, you’re always in the family.”

Luckily, Thomas Rhett has another family to keep him grounded during his rapid ascent

to stardom: his wife, Lauren, and their dogs, Kona and Cash. These days, Lauren and their

dogs often hit the road with him, and help maintain a sense of normalcy. “We have a pretty

healthy balance, keeping everything normal on the road. We do things like eat McDonald’s

at two o’clock in the morning—the kind of fun stuff we would do at home.” On tour with

Florida Georgia Line, Rhett and Lauren have been able to expand their touring family,

becoming close with the band’s frontmen, Brian Kelley and Tyler Hubbard, as well as their

wives. “They’ve become really good friends of ours,” he explains. “We get to hang out, goof

off, and have fun all day, and then go play for 10,000 people every night. It’s just a very

cool thing to be able to share together.”

When asked about what’s next, Thomas Rhett exudes a sense of mystery and excitement.

He’s finishing up a second album, which will come out later this year. He’ll also finish up

his tour with Florida Georgia Line, after which he says he’ll focus more on his own music.

He adds, “There’s also some cool stuff on the horizon as far as headlining goes, maybe

getting out there with another big artist…but we’ll see.” Right now, though, Rhett says

he is trying hard to enjoy the moment he’s in, since it’s all happened so fast. He explains,

“Everything we’re doing right now is just a lot of fun. I’m in a tour bus touring with one of

the biggest bands in the country—it’s really just been a wild roller coaster.”

When he was growing up, Thomas Rhett may not have recognized the role that music was

playing—and would continue to play—in the roller coaster of his own life. But looking at things

today, he is not surprised to have ended up where he has. “At the end of the day, music was

just kind of always at the root of my heart,” he admits. “Looking back now, I don’t really

think I could have done anything different.”

Thomas Rhett plays a Koa Dreadnought Custom, CEO-7 Martin and uses SP Lifespan strings.

Thomas Rhett’s new smash single “Crash and Burn”

Now available

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60 | IN MEMORIAM

IN MEMORIAM

TH

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TT

AB

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STAN JAY 1943-2014

The entire music industry is saddened

by the passing of Stan Jay, founder and

proprietor of Staten Island’s landmark

music store, Mandolin Brothers, Ltd.

Mandolin Bros. was founded in 1971

as a partnership with Hap Kuffner, but

Jay bought out Kuffner’s share in 1983,

and ran the business successfully for the

next thirty-plus years with the help of his

wife, Bea, his daughter, Alison, his son,

Eric, and his extended professional staff.

Stan brought a rare passion to the

stringed instrument business. His regular

newsletters benefited from his writing

skills and his vast knowledge of guitars,

mandolins, and banjos, but he always

took it further, peppering his descriptions

of the instruments with his keen humor.

He catered to a remarkable clientele,

who often went considerably out of their

way to sample his inventory of high-end

and vintage instruments. His customers

included celebrity musicians like Bob Dylan,

Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, Joni

Mitchell, and Crosby, Stills and Nash, but

you didn’t need to be famous to receive

Stan’s courtesy and expertise.

He was an acknowledged expert and

advocate for Martin guitars, both past

and present. Though the store continues

his legacy, Stan will be missed by his

customers and his many friends at Martin.

imitation is the highest form of flattery

Martin D-35 turns 50

martinguitar.com

D-35 Brazilian 50th Anniversary Limited Edition

VOLuME 4 | 2015C. F. Martin & Co., Inc.

510 Sycamore St., Nazareth, PA 18064

www.martinguitar.com

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