Mark's Blog

Over a year ago, I was contacted via my YouTube channel by Stuart Capuano, asking if I could teach him the intro to the great anthem 'Flying For Me' by John Denver. I can send TAB but this particular song requires a little understanding of how the arrangement was played, as - typical John - the chord itself was picked quite differently in order to achieve that signature riff. 

'Flying For Me' had previously added some colour to my life in another way. Back in 2004, I had been the support artist for Mack Bailey, one of John's friends, and he liked what I did enough (especially my song 'Another Sunrise', written for my late father) to ask me if I would like to open for him at The Mountain Chalet in Aspen, Colorado, that October, where he would be playing with Chris Nole (John Denver's keyboard player) and the (very sadly) late, great Pete Huttlinger, John's lead 

guitarist. It was one of the honours of my life, an opportunity not to be missed, so of course, I said YES!!!

On the morning of that show, I was in rehearsal at the Mountain Chalet, meeting the sound technician, going through with Mack to learn what he wanted me to do, and catching up with another friend, Mark Cormican, who was also opening the show, just before my slot. Pete was down the valley at Carbondale, where he was meeting the owner of Steve's Guitars, to 

negotiate a gig there. I was lucky enough to play a gig at Steve's myself in 2007 - what a lovely man Steve is - great little shop, fantastic acoustic space. After catching up with Mark I got chatting to a young woman who was going to be Mack's backing singer. Mack was maybe seven or eight yards away, playing THAT intro from 'Flying For Me', and he wasn't quite nailing it. Chris was shaking his head at Mack, Mack was clearly trying different things but it wasn't quite there, and even though he had his back to me, I could feel his frustration. I had my guitar around my neck, so I played the intro - as loudly as I could - at which Chris popped his head up, smiling and nodding, and Mack turned around with the biggest grin on his face "How the....?" 

It was a moment I'll never forget, particularly seeing the penny drop for Mack, then he nailed it, with a really BIG smile!

Back to Stuart's story. He lives in sunny Melbourne, Australia - about as far away from Staffordshire, England, as one can get, so we set up a meeting using Microsoft Teams, and I showed Stuart how to play the intro, breaking the chords down into clear steps, in slow motion, then gradually increasing my speed to demonstrate how it sounds. He soon picked it up, and when we met again a couple of weeks later, he had it nailed down. 

*Useful Tip: If you're using Teams to play/learn music then remember to go into 'audio settings' and enable 'High Fidelity Music Mode' or the great noise reduction filter will cut out anything other than your voice!

During our second conversation, Stuart announced that he was building a guitar, which is something I once had designs on doing - see the article on my Brook Tavy, 'Autumn'. I found his passion for woods fascinating (I am a guitar woods nerd!), and his sense of humour really engaging, so very quickly we had a lot to talk about. Stuart was well on the way to producing his first self-made guitar, made from Sassafras and Alpine Spruce, but it's not quite as straightforward as that! The woods had been sourced by 'dumpster diving' (to use Stuart's own expression) - quite literally climbing into a large skip/dumpster - and 'harvesting' anything with potential, removing it from the waste process and giving it a new life. Tables, chairs, doors, panels - you name it - have all been rescued by Stuart and turned into useful things - a small table for his wife, for example, but now he had a different - guitar maker's - eye looking over these woods. The Spruce top actually comes from a German piano soundboard - that piano having been made circa 1900, and the wood itself being a great deal older. 

Many modern guitar manufacturers are now using a process of 'thermal curing' or 'torrefication' to artificially age the woods they use for guitar tops - aged wood having very much improved tonal qualities to those displayed by younger wood, but in Stuart's case, the majority of the wood he is using to build guitars is already very, very old indeed, and I can testify to the 

incredible tonal depth and clarity of his instruments. I had a wonderful book on guitar building, with highly detailed drawings and photos, along with plans for building different guitar body shapes, and I sent it to Stuart, as I knew he would get so much more out of it than I ever would, my guitar building days having ended before starting!

We spoke just the other day and his collection of woods is growing; he has acquired a significant quantity of Tasmanian and Australian Blackwood, some beautiful Myrtlewood, figured Mahogany, tight grained East Indian Rosewood, some striking Walnut, along with what appears to me to be Padauk, and a few woods as yet not identified. All of this wood was going to be thrown into landfill, so Stuart's 'hunter-gatherer' activities are helping the planet as well as filling up his workshop with piles of what starts out as scrap - often full of nails or screws - and ends up skillfully transformed into sets of quarter-sawn wood sheets or neck blanks.

Anyway, back to the story. Stuart completed his guitar, and played it for me. Now, one has to take into account that laptops and microphones over the internet aren't going to produce real high quality sound, but the tone of his Spruce-Sassafras 

guitar was simply stunning, and it looked a whole lot better than anything I could ever have created.

A couple of weeks later, despite being aware that I have way too many guitars and was actively trying to sell them, Stuart announced that he was making ME a guitar, again from the 'Hard Rubbish' dumpster woods. After I recovered from the 

surprise, we discussed his embryo 'cottage industry' and I suggested that - being made from 'Hard Rubbish' - we should name the guitar the HR-2, with his own becoming the HR-1. This new guitar was to be made from another piece of that same Alpine Spruce piano soundboard used for his first instrument, and the back and sides would be Tasmanian Blackwood - a sought after tonewood amongst contemporary luthiers.

Over the coming weeks and months, I was treated to watching Stuart's second creation turn from sheets and blocks into a viable guitar, and I have included some of the photos that Stuart sent me from the build process. We had many discussions about build techniques, wood combinations, the tools he was literally making on the go, so that he could add to his own learning journey and improve his techniques. We had such a laugh over the method he'd originally used to cut out the circle for the soundhole rosette! Stuart was improving and learning in quantum leaps, and I was - with Stuart's knowledge and full consent - sharing the progress and some of his methods and hand-made tool designs with my dear friend Roger Williams, retired master luthier. Roger was very interested in Stuart's journey, and the guitar he knew I would one day ask him to set up for me.

Several months passed, and eventually Stuart said "The HR-2 is ready, all strung up; do you want to hear it?". He produced this really clean looking instrument, which had a three-piece back and a very pale top, and began to play it. Even with such limited microphones - and over the internet - I could tell that the tone was something quite special - deep and resonant, yet each note had such clarity and separation. I was blown away...speechless...unusual for me! As Stuart played, I felt the guitar seemed to know his style, and suited him so well, and I did say he ought to keep it, but - generous man that he is - he wasn't having it; this would be my guitar, and its story would be mine to tell, which - as I write this blog later - due to my

website being under construction - I have already begun to do.