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Long trip to Poet's Grove; Stevens loves the Texas heritage
In 1967, yep, the summer of love, he was headed out to San Francisco, following the girl he eventually talked into marrying him. He grew up on a quarter-horse ranch in Ohio - yes, Ohio - and wishes fervently he'd been raised in Texas. He was a college art major who drifted into hand-producing guitars, a talent for which is known throughout the nation. And despite the accident of his birth (that Ohio thing), he's a Texan now, has been for some time. Oh, and in between his stops in Berkeley, Hollywood, Santa Fe and Alpine, he's done quite a bit of time cowboyin' and rodeoin'. And, yes, as I'm discovering, he's just your normal, average resident of Alpine. Michael Stevens and his wife, Alice, live on a beautiful place a few miles south of Alpine that features more critters than you can shake the proverbial stick at. Right in the middle of his place is a big ole quonset hut/workshop where he produces 20 or 30 guitars a year, priced at $4,000 to $10,000. He'll go even higher, depending on your needs. In addition to all that, Stevens is one of the small group of people who make the Texas Cowboy Poetry Gathering work. He talks fondly of his first encounter with the Gathering, in '92, he thinks. "I'd just arrived in Alpine (probably following Alice again) and I went down to see Buck (Ramsey) at Poets Corner," he said. "And we just started a pickin' party that probably lasted from about 10 to 4 a.m." "Then Bill Brooks (one of the original Gathering organizers) came up to me and said, 'I'll need some singers, so why don't you just go play.'" So he got more and more involved, while also building his guitar-repair business (originally over in what became the Sixth Street Bakery). By 1995, though, he was building guitars. "I think one of the first ones I built was for Junior Brown," he said. Stevens has an obvious soft spot in his heart for Brown. "I remember one year I was asked to get a group together to play for Hallie Stillwell's 95th birthday," he said. "I think they gave me $380 - a strange number - to put a band together." "So I got some friends to come down from Austin, including Junior, to play basically for nothing. "We played out at the Post and had a great time. And it took forever for anyone to recognize Junior because he was just playing as a sideman, just having fun. Best of all, he said, "Hallie said it was the best country music she'd ever heard." Man, it's hard to top stories like that. Stevens says he first came to Texas when he was about 20, needing money. He worked for awhile cowboying on the Scarborough Ranch. "I remember thinking, 'These guys (his fellow cowboys) are really lucky because they were born here, they were born to this." "I guess I got into this guitar business because I just loved wood shop in high school," he said. "In fact, I was even teaching wood shop while still in high school. "Well, after high school, I headed off to Ohio State," which apparently didn't work out that well. "Then they tried to draft me but I was 4-F. So I transferred to TCU. At that time, they'd take just about anyone," Stevens said. "I was making either A's or D's, no in-between. "That got me to Texas," he said, "and I never left," at least spiritually, although there were a few times his body traveled to other places - like that "chasing a girl" thing he mentioned earlier. "I did go out to San Francisco in '67," Stevens said, "and had a chance to watch all those wild things happening. I never really got involved in most of that stuff. I agree with a lot of what the kids were saying but I didn't want to get involved in the violence." At the time, Stevens was a "hard-core George Jones, Merle Haggard" kind of performer. Probably every great musician that came out of the '60s spent time in San Francisco during those years, and Stevens got to be around with - even play with most - of them. I asked him about one of my cult favorites from that time - Gram Parsons - and Stevens' eyes lighted up and he said, "Oh yeah, he was awesome." Stevens is one of the world's finest builders of electric stringed instruments. His skills have been refined to a remarkable level over years of hands-on work and study in his craft. Primarily building electric guitars, basses and mandolins, Michael makes sure his instruments share traits such as perfect balance in playing position, a comfortable neck, and body contours that encourage a comfortable playing angle. The superb craftsmanship is clear to the eye but is revealed in more subtle ways. Great truss rod implementation and solid neck joints give all Stevens instruments superb tone as well as superior "tune-ability" - the characteristic of not only being easy to tune but staying in tune. Michael's career as a luthier began in the Bay area in 1967 when he teamed up with Larry Jameson at the first location of Guitar Resurrection in Oakland. Jameson knew guitars and how to fix them, but many things he did the slow way - by hand. Stevens brought to the team a knowledge of tools and an understanding of mechanical drawing. Soon, they were turning out first-rate repairs and meticulous customizing at a competitive price. In 1974, Stevens decided to leave Guitar Resurrection to pursue a career in his first passion, horses. He trained Arabian show horses for four years, spending those years on the road before burning out and reuniting with Jameson in 1978 at the new Guitar Resurrection in Austin. Soon after, Stevens opened his own shop in Austin. His first big job was Christopher Cross' well-known Strat shaped double-neck guitar, as well as the Paul Glasse electric mandolin and the Roscoe Beck - Spencer Starnes six string basses. Repair and custom work for guitar greats such as Stevie Ray and Jimmie Vaughan, Eric Johnson, Albert King, Otis Rush, Hubert Sumlin, Lonnie Mack, Ray Benson, George Thoroughgood, to mention a handful, kept Stevens busy. During this period, he built the Guit-steel for Junior Brown, known as the "Wild Man of Country." By 1986, his work had attracted the attention of Fender; when they finally made him an offer that was too good to turn down, Stevens moved to California to become the founder and senior design engineer of the Fender Custom Shop along with design engineer John Page. While there, they designed and built many of the instruments that Fender's endorsement artists have played including the Eric Clapton model Strat, Danny Gatton Tele, Robert Cray Strat and the Waylon Jennings Tele. Stevens became the first person in Fender's history to sign the instruments of his creation, namely the Stevens LJ, which was available in the designer series. Moving to Alpine in 1990, Stevens once again opened a shop and since has been producing top-quality instruments. Stevens' fame has spread worldwide and has satisfied owners are as far abroad as Europe, Japan and Australia. Stevens is known in particular for two guitars, the LJ and the Classic. The LJ is his tip to Jameson, who helped him become a guitar maker. "He was a refugee from an art school like myself, fate threw us together some-time in the late '60s in Berkeley, California," Stevens said. "We were dating the same woman. "Larry was starting a guitar repair shop in the Tenderloin area of Oakland. It was near Leo's Music and up above an amp shop called Magic Music Machines. Synopsis: He got the girl, I got a job." Less than six months later, Stevens says, they moved to an old meat market at the corner of Rose and Grove in Berkeley and the real Guitar Resurrection was born. "Larry taught me what a guitar really was and I taught him how to do it faster with power tools and jigs," he said. "We were a perfect team. Mr. Larry, as he was called then, was my best friend and guru of flea markets. He really loved single cutaway guitars, Danelectros especially. And for that reason, I named this guitar in his honor, the LJ." The Classic was borne out of a quest to fulfill a need. Players always talk about how much they love Gibson ES335s but they sure would like to have a small one, he said. In the early '80s, Stevens said, "The Japanese brought out smaller copies of the ES335 and even Gibson tried to do it, but the proportions were never handled right when they started shrinking down the guitar. None of them looked right to me." The first Classic was built with a Korina body and neck, with a maple top. It became the main squeeze of Randy Cobb, who played with James Taylor at the time. Stevens' second Classic was built with Honduras mahogany. Many combinations have followed these early prototypes and some examples can be seen in the Classic gallery. "The Classic has great sustain," he said, "which I attribute to the fitting of the parts. "That counts more than having a neck through the body or using a lot of heavy maple - which doesn't get it, as far as I am concerned. I mean, they sustain, but I don't like the tone." There are fewer glue joints in a Michael Stevens Classic than an ES335 and this results in more structural integrity. mikeperry@alpineavalanche.com Long trip to Poet's Grove; Stevens loves the Texas heritage mikeperry@alpineavalanche.com Sale is critical to museum; Trappings and auction so vital mikeperry@alpineavalanche.com O'Bryant is leaving AHS principal post Avalanche staff Analysis: Hey, guys, it's time to take down those signs Editor's Note: This presentation by Marfa's John Wotowicz was made at the La Entrada al Pacifico public meeting in Alpine Tuesday night. The Avalanche believes it is the best summation we've read of the needlessly long-running issue. Schroeder named Sul Ross head football coach Wayne Schroeder has been named the 16th head football coach at Sul Ross State University, according to an announcement Monday morning by Sul Ross director of athletics Kay Whitley. What: Trappings of Texas What: 22nd Texas Cowboy Poetry Gathering |
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