Kate Wolf's Guitar

A few months ago Nina Gerber came in for a photo shoot. She had this guitar with her and, while she doesn't travel or perform much with it, she had an amazing story to tell about it. Nina played with Kate Wolf and when Kate died, Nina was given the guitar shown above. When the guitar case was opened in the photo studio, I got an immediate sense of a spirit in the room. I hadn't been told the story, nor had I ever heard of Kate Wolf, but the feeling of this woman was still in the guitar. I shot this photo and you can see how well used it is. It was made by David Matlin. The guitar will be featured in the April 2013 issue of Acoustic Guitar on the "Great Acoustics" page.

Garrin Benfield

Garrin Benfield shot in the Acoustic Guitar photo studio in September 2012. This is for an upcoming feature on musician's stage set-ups.

Michael Summer, Tenor Sax

Michael graduated this past June from the Berklee School of Music in Boston and immediately formed the Michael Summer Trio. They appear weekly at a hotel in downtown Boston. 

This shot was taken a year ago before he started his band.

Orville Johnson, Blues Guitarist

Orville Johnson was in the office to shoot video for the Acoustic Guitar Blues Basics video series. I'm a bit of a stickler for pressing shirts if you're going to be in a video or photo shoot. Don't even get me started on shoes and haircuts. I've seen soles with holes, and bad hair, come on guys!

Orville was gracious enough to come back the second day of shooting with his shirt ironed and I took photos that day. All these guitar players are very nice people, but getting them to smile is difficult (it's the blues, baby).

Buddy Holly Guitar

This guitar had the best personality of all the guitars I've shot, and I've shot a lot of them. This reproduction Buddy Holly guitar was built by Rick Turner with the original guitar as a model. Eighteen guitar reproductions were made and one was purchased by Jackson Browne to record a Buddy Holly song on one of Browne's recent CDs.

I shot the guitar without the hand-tooled and stitched leathercase, but for the cover it had to wear it's leather coat.