Meet the Builder

“Don’t touch grandpa’s guitars,”Mom said every time as she was dropping me off at grandpa and grandma's house (the farm).

“You can only keep it if you learn a song by tomorrow morning,” Grandpa Jerry said to me after I got my first guitar on Christmas eve. One finger G singing twinkle twinkle little star at breakfast and the guitar was mine. I was 7 years old.

I used to wonder why I am obsessed with guitars. I think it all locked in for me with the two phrases above. Grandpa said his line just once. My mom said hers all the time. What permanently locked them together was staying at the farm. Each morning my grandfather would pull his guitar out from his room and lean it up against his bedroom door, just off the kitchen.

So every morning, while pouring my bowl of cereal, I would look over and see his 1960 Gibson J-45 waiting for me.

Kismet seems to be a regular occurrence in my life. At age 11 I was forced into my first job. My mom made me clean her insurance agency. That meant 2 hours of vacuuming, moping, and scrubbing every Saturday morning - 9-11 am. She would check my work and make me redo rooms that didn't measure up.

By the time I graduated high school I was cleaning the store, delivering pianos, teaching guitar lessons, stocked and set up all the guitars, basses, and drums that were store stock and was the repair tech for the guitars and basses. Senior year I was offered a store instead of going to college. The store was opening a new location and they needed a store manager. I said no.

I went to St. Olaf College as a guitar performance major instead. Halfway through my freshman year, I took over the concert chair position booking bands on campus because the senior (JMatty) who was the chair had a band that was recording an album.

That concert job got me “in” with Local Minneapolis (MPLS) Bands (Sensational Joint Chiefs, Atmosphere, Love-Cars, & Billy McLaughlin). I used the connections I gained to talk my way into being their show and setup tech. I would take classes during the day and if I wasn’t working a show I booked on campus at night I would drive up to MPLS and work a show at the greatest venues in the world: First Avenue, The 400 Bar, The Uptown, The Dinky Towner, The Caboose, The Triple Rock Social Club, The Turf Club, The Nomad, and the Cedar Cultural Center.

With a steady roll of show and setup clients I built out a shop and started building instruments of my own. The first few were real bad, but I kept building. Burn the bad and build new ones. I would go to Jim Olson and Charlie Hoffman’s shops to see (ask constant questions on) how to make things better. I built electrics because they were fast and I could sell them while I logged skill hours to be able to build acoustics.

That was the dream. Build acoustics as good as the Minnesota makers that constantly inspired me to play “brilliant guitars.” Jim and Charlie were forced mentors. Brian Applegate and Michael Keller were my next forced friends.

In 2006 I started writing for the Fretboard Journal. A high end quarterly magazine based out of Seattle Washington. I interviewed my heroes and started showing my guitars at trade shows. Wrote a story on Bryan Galloup and Sam Guidry that continues to shape my guitar building.

When I turned 13 I talked my way into working at Carlson Music (CM) in Alexandria MN using that first “job.”

TL: I want to work here.

CM: Sorry, we don’t hire kids

TL: Well, you need me. There’s full garbage bins under your desks and in your bathrooms. The floors need vacuuming. The guitars hanging on the wall are covered in dust and I can write my name on the grand piano in the front window. I can clean your bathrooms, empty your garbage, vacuum your floors AND crush and take out the cardboard that’s piled up against your elevator in the back. I’m sure if you need to move a piano from upstairs down here to the main floor to deliver, it will take you an hour.

School gets out at 3:15, I’ll be here by 3:30 pm. My mom works 2 blocks down the street and she gets done with work at 5:30 pm. I’ll come after school and clean for 2 hours and I can walk to my moms office after.

CM: (Silence, then) Well, that might work. Come in starting after the new year.

I taught a guitar making course at Woodcraft in Bloomington, MN in 2009 while I had time between tours and apprentices. I helped Jim in his shop for a few days in 2010. I toured with Bon Iver for the second album cycle and had Drew Heinonen as a second builder in my shop from 2011-12.

The standard acoustic guitar on Bon Iver’s Holocene is a guitar I built. It pops up in movies sometimes. It’s crazy.

2015 my family moved to Georgia and while I was there I helped cut down some of President Carters trees to make guitars. It was a whole thing and I was honored to be able have some friends, and makers I admired participate in the project. I was able to play a private concert for the Carters as well.

In 2022 my family moved back to MN where I set up shop in Stillwater, MN. It’s a great space in a beautiful part of the state. I’m happy to be back where the seasons change and I can be amongst the music and build traditions I love so much.

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