More Than A Maker
Reflecting on the experience of lockdown, Alex Bishop muses on the difficulties of ‘making it’ as a luthier in 2020
The time has come, at long last. Musician friends in my social media feeds this week are announcing their first real outdoor gigs since March, welcome news for us all who have been otherwise confined to our laptops and tablets for live-stream videos and awkward socially distanced music videos. The slow reemergence of the music industry has had me reflecting on my position in it as a guitar maker and the unique challenges facing us musical creatives in these peculiar times.
For the most part, independent guitar making is a pretty resilient business by virtue of the fact that many of us work in relative solitude. Daily life as a guitar maker demands that you find your own company preferable to the office politics and banter that accompanies most workspaces, so the early part of lockdown actually had minimal impact. If anything, much like my fellow musicians it allowed me to delve a bit deeper into the creative side of my work, finishing side projects and learning new skills.
During the lockdown I built an experimental soprano Gypsy jazz guitar based on my tenor ukulele, and finished the reclaimed wood guitar project built for the ill-fated Holy Grail Guitar Show 2020. I’m sure, too, that there are many guitarists out there who have been revisiting unfinished compositions or learning new techniques that had until now been sidelined in favour of more pressing – but perhaps mundane – priorities.
Just as jobbing musicians might spread themselves between session work and gigging, many luthiers do more than exclusively building guitars. Guitar making after all is so much more than just woodwork and it encompasses a whole range of skills including fretting, setting up, finishing techniques and possessing a modicum of musical ability. As a result, many end up with sidelines in playing music, repair work or teaching. It is on these that restrictions due to the Coronavirus pandemic have had a direct impact. For me, group guitar making courses had to be cancelled and for weeks it was impossible to see clients for repair work to their instruments. I perform in various bands, so like every other musician in the world I also saw my gigs calendar wiped clean.
Community Support
Here I am reminded that working as a luthier draws on your ability to create a business that will sustain your family and see you through hard times. It seems to me that the single, rather dry ingredient separating the professional guitar maker from the hobbyist is a sense of fiscal responsibility. Professional musicians know well the hardship that comes from working in the ‘gig economy’, and lutherie is pretty similar. Commissioning an instrument will provide some limited longterm security to a maker, but it is the regularity of small repair jobs and teaching that see many of us through.
I am fortunate enough to have my dad (a retired accountant) helping to run some of the administrative duties at the workshop, and he has started making regular appearances again this month now that the lockdown restrictions are easing. For those considering a career as a guitar maker, the support and encouragement of others is immeasurable. When I set up my workshop in London in 2011, it was only made possible with funding from Cockpit Arts, an organisation that runs workspaces supporting craftworkers and designer-makers. In the same way that grassroots music is cultivated by crucial financial support, the early career stages of independent luthiers today very often depends on such funding.
As we pull ourselves out of the drama of 2020 and survey the damage wreaked by COVID-19 so far, I hope that there is room for continued support for the arts because we’ll need it more than ever. Much like playing music, guitar making is a living driven by passion for the subject. When weathering hard times, it provides nourishment for soul. I’m looking forward to experiencing live music soon, and we’ll all be sharing in it together again.
“Just as jobbing musicians spread themselves between session work and gigging, many luthiers do more than building guitars”