alright! my new ep out today. self titled my friend. designed by carrie sweet.

i noticed that my neck was a little back bowed as i was pouring hours into taking off the binding. so i went and tried to adjust the truss rod. the allen wrench just spun, and i knew then the bolt was stripped. the internet said that we could do massive surgery or most likely, just buy a new neck.

at first i hated this neck. maple on a les paul? mr. paul would be flipping in his grave. but now i feel that this neck is destined for greatness. i will not give up on you, neck. so i took a chance and busted out the chisel. my new favorite tool. i started the slow process of removing the fretboard.

i can't believe this worked. and deep within the hard exterior of this neck we find the soft fleshy fruit of the truss rod.

i took this thing out side and beat it with a wrench until the parts came apart. here's what we got.

now it's on. i have to find a replacement part, but first we have to find out how wide this nut is and the thread count or what ever they call it. pain in my ass.

just wanted to show where i was at.

deets #2 is one i'm building for myself. not for sale, my friend. labor of love.

so i'm going on tour with stellaluna next week, and for that tour, i am making a very super special tour e.p. and on that cd, there will be a song called 'hollow notes' that was included in a compilation cd my label 'hush records' put out called 'deca'.

so i was checking out those frets on this neck and they are so wack! it's time to get em out of here! so i grabbed a pair of small pliers and took the head to a grinding stone. you got to grind it so hard. sparks flying. got to get em flat so they can grab those nasty old frets. check it.

some guys like to tell you that you need to heat up frets with a soldering iron before you can pull em to avoid chip out. but i say use that IF you get chip out. don't waste my time with all that paranoia. i've just got too much on my mind right now to worry about heating frets.

so let's try a couple pulls. start on one end and move it all down the fret and then repeat. '2 live crew' calls this move "the train."

looking good with no chip out. let's run a "train" on the rest of this. two frets left and i'm looking good.

with the frets off, i noticed that the fretboard looks nasty and it would be pointless to save the old finish, so i took a sander up to it and we're starting from scratch. total make-over. and here it is, exposed for the first time in 30 + years. what a moment.

guitar #4 will be a les paul with a maple neck. this is some pretty fashion forward stuff. right now it's an embarrassment. but i'm going to tell you what's going to happen here. i've decided to try and discover how to install new binding. i have no clue what's going on.

first step is to sand through the lacquer and get to the binding. then i took a box cutter to this piece and scored a line along the bottom of the binding. then use whatever you can to get this crap off. i used the box cutter and a chisel and it was a big pain in the ass, so i'm sure there's a tool that would work much better. slowly, i sat and whittled this binding off and watched 6th grade jeopardy and wheel of fortune and then that spilled over to the bachelorette.

i just hope she finds love this time. you know that asshole really screwed her over last season. these new guys seem o.k. though. she eliminated all the losers that she liked just because they were cute and now things are getting real. although you never know!

so here's the whole thing stripped. as you can see, some asshole tried to engrave some kind of 'coat of arms' foolishness into the headstock.

i don't know who that guy is, but he's in for a rude awakening. that thing is so out of here!

it's that time again. deets #3 is the new guitar i'm working on. here's what i got. i went to the folk shop and they hooked me up with a box of broken acoustic guitars! two bodies and like seven necks.

i picked a body and neck that i thought might work well together. it looks like all these parts have been chiseled apart. like i said before, i'm not a real man so i don't know about woodworking.

so i called ian dixon up and he agreed to give me woodworking lessons in exchange for my company and being able tell people that i hang out with him once in a while. so i brought this mess over to him.


he asked me if i wanted to drink something and he gave me some kind of wine cooler that tasted like gas and that set the tone for the night.

he said i needed to become a real man and that by the time he was done with me, i would know how to make a dovetail joint and maybe work my way up to a zima.

he said i needed to buy a japanese pull saw and some chisels, so i went and did that. he said i need to wipe the ass of whoever was trying to fix this guitar before me and clean up that neck joint with the saw. he also told me not to screw it up.

so here's a picture of my work so far. i have no idea what i'm doing but i have to say i'm proud of myself for using a saw.

just mixing some songs for a young band hot off the detroit scene. they are hard to please and very demanding. at least one of them is. introducing......

the five alives.

their album drops next month.

i finally got the courage to attach the body to the neck a few days ago. there was something too final about that action, but it had to be done. you might not know this, but i also did a complete re-fret on the neck and i was nervous about it. but i followed instructions. remove, bend, install, glue, file, level and crown. and i can't believe it worked out! here's a picture for all of you haters out there.

a few months ago, my best friend "paul k" aka/ "the gold state", invited me to his house for a unforgettable night of recording. we were young and full of life, the night felt special. he let me play drums and guitar solos for his new smash single "the golden ache". 

the rolling stones get served.