Playing Tribute
Larrivée’s new Tommy Emmanuel tribute guitar is already sending out shockwaves across the acoustic world. We speak to Tommy and Jean Larrivée to find out more
As mentioned in the review of the C-03R-TE, Larrivée is quick to point out that this particular guitar is a tribute to Tommy Emmanuel’s original C-10 and definitely not a signature model in its own right. We were keen to dig a little deeper to find out the whole story behind the new instrument and who better to ask than the man himself? We caught up with Tommy as he was about to leave for a studio session in Nashville.
“Larrivée wanted to build me a tribute model because I already have signature models with Maton,” he tells us down the transatlantic line. “It’s based on my Larrivée that Jean Larrivée Sr gave me when Chet Atkins and I were playing together way back. He came to a show with his family. Chet brought me out on stage and I played a bit and then Chet and I played together and Jean Larrivée came backstage and we met.”
It was a while after that initial meeting that Tommy was to receive a very special delivery: “One day a taxi arrived at Chet’s place with this guitar and the guy was looking for me and he gave it to me. I opened the case and it was a 12-fretter with a cutaway and it was really fancy. It’s got ‘Scottish heather’ fingerboard markings and on the headstock it has a beautiful angel – it’s really ornate and a beautiful instrument. And what a tone: just unbelievable. It’s incredible.”
Jean Larrivée takes up the story: “To make a long story short we presented him with this guitar, I want to say, 20 to 25 years ago. He really liked the guitar and he did a lot of recording with it. You have to understand that he’s involved with Maton in Australia and I never tried to get him as an endorsee or anything like that because he was already endorsed by Maton. I’m sure you’ll have seen videos of him playing the guitar and a lot of his latest album was recorded on it, too.”
“We wanted to make the guitar affordable [while] using the same structure as the original” Jean Larrivée
This Is A Tribute
In order to avoid any potential conflict with Maton, Tommy made a friendly call to Australia. “I just rang my friends in Australia at Maton and said, ‘This is what Larrivée wants to do,’ and they said that’s absolutely fine – ‘We don’t have a problem with that, you play what you want,’ kind of thing. So that was nice of them. I’m still obviously playing Maton guitars at all of my shows and I record a lot with them.”
As Jean noted, the original Larrivée C-10 is to be heard on a few tracks on Tommy’s latest album, The Best Of Tommysongs.
“Yes, indeed. On the new album the Larrivée is on (The Man With The) Green Thumb, [and] it’s on Luttrell and The Wide Ocean. I’ve just restrung it today because I’m heading out to the studio now to work on a film that I’ve been writing the music for… I’ve got a Martin 000-28, I’ve got the Larrivée and I’ve got my Maton. Three different voices, y’know?”
Affordable Excellence
The C-03R-TE is essentially a strippeddown version of the original guitar that Jean Larrivée presented to Tommy. How did the idea for the tribute come about?
“First of all, the guitar that we made for him at that time was expensive,” says Jean Larrivée. “It would be a $5,000 guitar. My son John got involved about two years ago – he does all the artist relations – and he asked Tommy if we could make a Tommy Emmanuel guitar and Tommy said yes. It’s identical but it has some new features on it: tuners, fretwire and things that we’ve changed over the course of time.”
Tommy recalls the input he made to the construction of the C-03R-TE: “I said, ‘Just make it real plain and affordable but with the quality of the wood,’” he says. “The quality of the work has to be right up there with the best in the world, which it is. When John Larrivée Jr brought down the first prototype, which is the one I have, I was so impressed with it – it sounded vintage already and it was brand new. I don’t know how they do that but it does. I was playing the older one – the one I got from Jean Larrivée Sr – and the brand-new one sounded almost identical. All the same woods but it’s not all fancy because that makes the price skyrocket.”
Once again, we brought up the subject of the low action on this instrument.
“I don’t think it’s incredibly low,” Tommy considers. “I think it’s about right, don’t you? Most guitars coming from the factory – Gibsons, Martins – they all come with a higher action when you get them, but if it’s a tribute guitar the action has to be how I’d play it and that was a stipulation of mine. These guitars are beautifully made. The Indian rosewood is so beautifully matched and the guitar’s doing everything that blows your dress off, really.”
Jean agrees: “We know he’s a fast player and fast players need a low action.”
And how about the price point? It’s not unusual for an instrument that is somehow tied into a major player to carry a hefty premium, after all.
“That was the whole point,” Jean states. “We could have made C-10s or other models, but the point was to try to make the guitar as affordable as we possibly could using the exact same structure that the original one was. That was the point because not everybody has $5,000 to buy a guitar. We use really high-grade wood on all the guitars: the neck, the top, the back – only top-quality material. We wanted to make a guitar that a musician would be really proud to own, with the same features as a $5,000 guitar.”
Each of the new instruments has a label inside personally signed by Tommy, says Jean: “We gave Tommy 100 labels to sign so we could put them in the guitars and now we’ve ended up with 300 and we’ll continue for sure. They’re selling like hot cakes.”
“The first prototype was so impressive – it sounded vintage but it was brand new”
Tommy Emmanuel