Written and Photos By: Joerg Kliewe
Wolfgang Niedecken Signature Martin
Most Martin Guitar aficionados are familiar with Dick Boak, Director of Martin Guitar Artist and Limited Editions. Dick is the guy at Martin who works with top celebrity guitarists to design and build some of the most unique and finest instruments ever made.
Guitar International met with Boak in Nazareth, PA, the home of Martin Guitars, and he’s the kind of guy who immediately puts you at ease. But, as casual as his personality is, he’s also rich in intellect, creativity and good humor.
The Martin Signature guitars demand that Dick be not only a good listener, but also possesses a keen sense of collaboration that requires him to honor and protect the Martin brand and traditions, while at the same time reflecting the particular interests of some of the best musicians in the world into Signature model guitars.
Boak, the author of Martin Guitar Masterpieces
Joerg, our German correspondent, flew to the States to meet with Dick at the Martin Guitar Factory in Nazareth, Pennsylvania and discuss Boak’s role and the nuances of working with celebrity guitarists on the company’s Signature guitar models, with some emphasis on the models borne offshore in Europe and other countries.
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Joerg Kliewe: How did the Signature model side of Martin Guitars come about?
Dick Boak: Chris Martin visited the Autry museum and saw Gene Autry’s very first D-45. This is the number one D-45 ever made, back in 1933 and it was such a special guitar that Chris thought it would be terrific to replicate it, especially after seeing all the products in the Gene Autry store, lunchboxes and belt buckles and everything that says Gene Autry on it.
So, he made a proposal to the museum and they came back to him and said “As long as there is a royalty that comes to the museum,” which is a non-profit, a charity, that they would be interested in doing it. Gene Autry was still alive at that time.
Joerg: When was it?
Dick: This was 1993 when he first visited and we came out with that edition in ’94 and we made 66 guitars. They were very expensive Brazilian rosewood D-45s, $22,000 retail.
Dick Boak with a Martin Flattop Guitar
Joerg: I can imagine. Quite the price for those guitars.
Dick: Expensive at the time. We sold 66 of them and it was a success. It was so successful that one of them was even stolen from a FedEx shipment, but that happens from time to time. We got that guitar back.
The template had been established in that Chris Martin was okay with doing a Signature model as long as it was charitable in nature. That the royalties were going for a good cause. So when I started receiving phone calls from everybody about Eric Clapton, about what guitar he was playing on the MTV Unplugged show, I did a little bit of research and found out he was playing two special Martin guitars, plus a nylon string, and also a lap steel guitar.
My research showed he was playing two different 000 models (a 000-42 and a 000-28 modified to a 000-45) and after getting about 25 phone calls from different people, I asked permission from Chris Martin whether I could contact Eric and make a proposal to him to do a Signature edition.
He said as long as it’s charitable in nature, so I contacted Eric through his management at the time, Roger Forrester, and he was thrilled at this and immediately came back to us with a positive response. He decided that the charity for his project would go to children’s issues, like children’s safety, because of the tragedy that happened to his son, Conor.
The Clapton project was so successful we made 461 guitars and they sold out instantaneously at the NAMM show. This was in, I think this was 1995. Then my job changed and I was given the latitude to do this full-time as artist relations and collaborate with different musicians. Since then we’ve done almost 150 different projects.
Joerg: Quite the project.
Dick: Many of which are featured here in the Martin Museum. Everybody from Paul Simon, Willie Nelson, Mark Knopfler, John Mayer, Steve Miller, Tom Petty, and deceased artists like Johnny Cash, Lester Flatt, Hank Williams, Elvis Presley, on and on and on. There have been so many different projects that I can’t even remember them all without referring to a list.
But, you know, the interesting thing is that some projects really do well in a particular region of the United States. Some do well all through the United States or some will do well throughout the entire world. Some will do well in England, but not very well in Birmingham, Alabama. Some will do well in Germany or Japan, but not well in Chicago.
So, I started to realize the regional popularity of musicians and wasn’t really sure how to address that in the right way, and the way that we came up with is twofold. One is through custom artist editions. Custom editions are intended to sell a lesser quantity of guitars, but probably more in a particular region.
A good example of that would be the blues musician, Kenny Sultan. He has a tremendous following in the California area where he does a lot of concerts, but he’s lesser known in other regions, so we actually did very, very well with his custom artist edition, so well in fact that we ran out of the special wood we used on his guitars.
Ornamented Martin Guitar
Joerg: How does a project like that get started in general? Are you approaching the artist or vice versa?
Dick: It could happen anyway. In Kenny’s case, I didn’t know anything about him. I was introduced to him at the NAMM show in Anaheim and he told me that he thought we could sell 100 guitars, and I said, “How?” and he said, “Trust me. I have a pretty big following.” He felt that sales just in his area would be 30 or 40. On a custom edition guitar, if we sell more than 30 guitars, it’s successful.
So, we took a chance on that and were very pleasantly surprised. We’ve done custom editions with lots of different artists at this point, some high profile names like John Mellencamp, Chris Hillman of the Byrds, Pat Donahue of Prairie Home Companion.
I’m working on a number of new ones, but these have not the type of expectation that we would have with an Eric Clapton project of selling 400 or 500 guitars, but rather selling 30, 40, 50 to 100 perhaps, very special, very specific targeted guitars to a particular community or region or a specific playing style, like finger-stylist Stefan Grossman. We did a project with him and that is selling very nicely.
So, it gave me a vehicle for working with a different stratum of artists on very specific or regional or specific genre types of guitars. Now there are also situations that come up in particular countries where we have distribution, like the U.K. or Germany or Japan. Those are our three biggest export markets. Then we have ancillary markets in Italy, France, Spain and Hong Kong.
Joerg: There may be a distributor of yours who will contact you about a certain project?
Dick: Yes, and because I’m so busy, I started to encourage not only distributors, but also those specific dealerships in the United States. I encouraged them to do their own deals so that I didn’t have to work overtime [Both chuckle].
A good example is in the U.K., our distributor came forth with proposals for Rory Gallagher, John Martyn and Davey Graham. All three of them, who are certainly bordering on legendary guitar players, but not necessarily with a huge following in the United States, to the extent that we could have a big success or even a custom edition in the United States.
So, I encouraged our distributor, WestSide, to proceed with an agreement between their company and the artist and if they secured that and met the terms of the agreement with the artist there, then we would make the guitars and in effect the guitars would only be available through that distributor.
Martin Guitars Ready for Final Assembly
Joerg: Interesting way of doing things.
Dick: We don’t use the word “exclusive” because 50 years from now we might enter into an agreement with the estate of Rory Gallagher or something of that nature, but in effect the guitars were only available through WestSide Distribution and that’s good for them. It gives them credibility and opens up many doors for them.
In Germany, our distributor for guitars is AMI in München (Munich) and they’ve done projects with Peter Bursch, Wolfgang Niedecken, Klaus Voorman and Kuddel (guitarist with Die Toten Hosen). AMI has realized, through our encouragement that they can have success with this approach. They’ve, in fact, done two Peter Bursch projects at this point, and the Klaus Voorman acoustic bass project for me was very special, because it has a Beatles connection and I’m a great admirer of Klaus.
In Japan we’ve had success. Japan is our biggest export market and early on in this process we did projects with Isato Nakagawa, who’s also popular in Germany. There’s a faction of guitar players, mostly finger-stylists, which are organized through Peter Finger’s a record company Acoustic Music.
He’s also a very good player. He has a booth at the MusikMesse in Frankfurt right across from Martin every year. Many of the German artists are on his record label. Two guitars and a bass. Three different projects.
Mark Knopfler, who is my favorite guitarist of all time. Martin Carthy, very significant guitar player from the U.K., George Martin, the fifth Beatle, recording genius behind The Beatles. That was a very special project for us.
Also Peter Frampton and Laurence Juber, who now lives in the United States, but was Paul McCartney’s guitarist in Wings. We’ve had many successful collaborations with Laurence, so we have quite a lot of activity in the international arena.
So in Japan, Isato Nakagawa, Chuey Yoshikawa, a band called Mister Children that has two very good guitarists named Sakarai and Tahara and then one with a Japanese artist called Kazuko. These are all famous, very accomplished guitar players in Japan and they had much success with these projects.
Beyond that, we’ve done projects the Belgian artist Jacques Stotzem and sold quite a few of his model guitars. The benefit for us is at the trade shows, Jacques in Frankfurt. Jacques is often there and representing us and does many concerts and he is a magnificent player.
We’ve also done official Martin signature editions with international artists like Steve Howe of Asia and Yes. Eric Clapton, Lonnie Donegan, Sting of The Police, also Andy Summers of The Police.
Heel Being Attached
Joerg: I once happened to meet Roger McGuinn when he was presenting his 7-string guitar and he did that at a workshop in a guitar store. Some guy from the audience asked him, because the limited edition had been sold out at that time already, “Will there be a 7-string guitar available as a regular model?”
Dick: Well, Roger is a very good friend of mine and he comes with his wife, Camilla. He comes here for lunch. We eat across the street and one time we were discussing how difficult it is for Roger, especially as he’s getting older, to carry a Rickenbacker, a Martin 6-string and a Martin 12-string on the airplane and lug them around the terminal, it’s just very difficult. So, what he wanted to do was come out with a guitar that did all three. He called it a “Swiss Army Knife” of guitars and he wanted it to be a 7-string.
We talked about it over lunch and we drew diagrams on a napkin. We came over here and I said, “I will make one and we’ll see how it comes out.” I didn’t know how good it would be. It might be a silly idea. We took an HD-28 with a 1 ¾ neck and simply made a special bridge that could accommodate seven strings and laid out a plan for four tuners on one side and three tuners on the other and that was very workable.
It turns out that when the guitar was completed, I strummed it and I couldn’t believe it. I thought it was so good and Leon Redbone was visiting. He’s another friend that is fairly close to us, lives about 40 miles away, and he was visiting that day and he played it. He thought it was fantastic. As a matter of fact, in the background right now, the fella in Martin’s Player’s Room is banging on the Roger McGuinn 7-string. It’s just a magnificent guitar.
Everybody agreed it was so good that it deserved to be made, so we immediately designed an edition. Of course, it took several months for us to work out all the details. In the meantime Roger was playing in England and around different venues and showing it off. Since then we’ve done the first 7-string edition, which was the herringbone HD-7, then a second edition called the D-7, which is a less expensive version, and both of them are remarkable guitars.
Joerg: I would like to go back to the projects you did in Germany. You said those were brought to you by your distributor. Did you have contact with the artist in person?
Dick: With Peter Bursch, he had traveled to the United States. I had met him many times in Frankfurt at the trade show with his wife, and also in Anaheim and Nashville. He is an author, as you know, and trying to work out book arrangements for his books in the United States.
Martin Factory Floor
Joerg: All of Germany learned playing guitar by his books, yeah.
Dick: All of Germany, yes. So he is very good at book promotion and he saw the value in this collaboration with Martin, certainly. I had much contact with him, working on the artwork for the headstock inlay, his little cartoon.
I did the digitizing and design to figure out how to make that inlay and I worked directly with Peter, more so than probably any of the artists. Once AMI got used to how the process worked, they started to put their own people to work on having artist relations, contacts with specific artists. I didn’t have any involvement with Klaus Voorman except to receive the drawings, produce the soundhole label and I wrote the article for the project.
Joerg: He told me that there were a couple of samples made because his first idea had been to do some drawing on top of the bass.
Dick: Right. Not real easy to do and we loved his idea, his idea for the little illustrated disc inlaid into the headstock. It was really very clever, and each guitar was unique. The same thing with Kuddel. There was a situation where they had some type of skull and crossbones logo.
Joerg: Yeah, it’s their brand logo.
Dick: It was a complicated and difficult inlay that was worked out with very little involvement from me. It was worked out between a woman named Katerina that was working for AMI in the design department.
She’s left AMI since then, but she was really a good PR and design person and very aggressive, and went out and established this relationship. I think she was a fan of Küdel.
Also Wolfgang Niedecken, who is more of a folk and rock musician. I met him at the Frankfurt trade show after the fact, after doing the project and he was really nice and I thought very talented.
Joerg: Yeah, he’s big in Germany, his band is playing at stadiums.
Dick: Right.
Doing Heel Work on a Martin Acoustic
Joerg: It proves what you just said: that some projects may go well in one part of the world and in another part of the world people wouldn’t even have heard of the artist.
Dick: Yeah, people in the United States don’t know Wolfgang Niedecken, you know? And he’s very, very talented.
Joerg: He and his band have been around forever now.
Dick: It’s great for us to see these different artists and sometimes we’re inspired by particular artist’s ideas. I’m thinking about Paul Simon and the unusual taper that he wanted on his model.
The notion of being able to change the taper for different types of playing style is an idea that was inspired by Paul. It’s not always a famous musician. It can be somebody who’s not very famous that has really good ideas.
Joerg: You’ve worked with Jorma Kaukonen too.
Dick: Well, I’ve worked on a project with Jorma Kaukonen of Jefferson Airplane and, probably more appropriately Hot Tuna and the Fur Peace Ranch. I don’t know if you know about Jorma’s ranch for guitar playing?
Joerg: Yeah, you can spend some kind of holiday and play guitar and take clinics?
Dick: Yeah, very much like the National Guitar Summer Workshop, Jorma has a guitar instructional camp which is fantastic. He brings his friends like Kenny Sultan, Geoff Muldaur, Laurence Juber, lots of really accomplished players to come teach alongside with him and to do concerts.
I think that Jorma is a very important acoustic guitar player. He’s playing Martin guitars now. He had played Gibson’s for a good part of his career, but when he discovered the David Bromberg Martin guitar, he just completely flipped and set aside the Gibson’s and he’s playing the David Bromberg model together with some custom guitars that we made.
I worked on his Signature model, which is based on an M-size studio model. We’re really excited about working with Jorma. I’ve had contact with Van Morrison and we worked out specifications, that could be considered pretty significant.
He’s been playing Martins, acoustic Martins, for most of his career. He plays other instruments, saxophone and keyboards as well, but he loves his Martin guitars. As early as Saint Dominic’s Preview and Tupelo Honey, you see Martin guitars on the actual album art. Now he’s playing an Eric Clapton Bellezza Bianca, a white Martin guitar, and it just seems to go with his concert tours right now.
I’ve worked with John Renbourn on some ideas and I worked with Steve Miller on our third project, a beautiful burgundy acoustic-electric performance guitar with an Adirondack spruce top. We worked again with Jimmy Buffett, who has a tremendous audience in most of the United States and this would be the fourth collaboration that we’ve done with him. It’s aimed at a broader market and is one of the LX Little Martin guitars, with some really nice Jimmy Buffet-inspired graphics on the top.
So those are some of the projects that I’m working on or have worked on. Also, Nick Reynolds of The Kingston Trio. Nick was The Kingston Trio member who played the four-string tenor guitar.
Martin Heels Ready to Go
Joerg: You’re keeping busy.
Dick: And there’s been quite a demand for a serious tenor guitar. Recently, Nick passed away, so we’ve worked on a custom artist edition, which is kind of a commemorative tribute to Nick Reynolds and his contribution to The Kingston Trio.
I also have a Laurence Juber project that I worked on, which is probably the fifth or sixth edition with Laurence. For this one, Laurence had asked us to prototype a maple guitar. He had a feeling that maple might be the key to performance guitars, that it would have the right projection, all the right dynamics for playing, not only into his sound system, but also into microphones. And we prototyped one with flamed maple and Adirondack spruce that he just loves. He loves it more than his Brazilian rosewood model, more than his Indian rosewood model.
By the way, he refers to his different models as “wines.” So the Brazilian rosewood is Cabernet. The Indian rosewood is Merlot. The mahogany is Chardonnay. This maple one, I think, goes without any definition or alcohol attached and he just feels that it has exactly the right dynamics that he needs for a performance model. So, that one is called the OMC-LJ Pro and it was a very exciting project for us.
Joerg: Wow, a lot of projects, seems like it never ends.
Dick: I’m trying to scale back on the number of projects that I have. It turns out that almost every musician in the world would like to have a Signature model guitar, [Both Laughing] and sometimes we get individuals who aren’t well known professionals at all that will go through the custom shop and have their signature as part of their custom order, kind of like their own one-of-a-kind signature edition. As a matter of fact, I started the whole Last Fret signature thing on one of my guitars back in 1979, before any of these other projects, so I think it’s a fun thing to do.
I’d just like to close by saying there’s nothing more special for me than to put a guitar, a tool, into an artist’s hands who can use it to make fantastic music. The best email that I ever received was from Mark Knopfler who, after delivering his Signature model, sent me an email and he said that an entire album’s worth of music was buried inside the guitar and all he had to do was release the songs from the guitar.
