My journey to becoming a luthier began unexpectedly the day I went to help repair my friend Rob’s van that had broken down in luthier Joel Stehr’s driveway. While helping to troubleshoot some inaccessible starter motor bolts on the van and making small talk, I learned Joel built guitars. Being a woodworker and cabinet maker myself, I wanted to see his shop. I was so taken by Joel’s shop and the unbelievably beautiful guitars he was producing, that I decided right there that being a luthier was my dream job, and I’ve been apprenticing with him for about 6 years now. For the last 2 ½ years I’ve been working alongside Joel nearly full-time.

A year after I started working with Joel, my 13-year-old child was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukemia. Her intense cancer treatment required her to stay hospitalized for almost 6 months. My best coping mechanism during that time was to sneak out of the hospital once a week to work on guitars with Joel.

My child has been cancer free for 3 and a half years now, but during her last round of chemo, I decided that life was too short to be working at a desk job that I didn’t particularly like, and that included a 2-hour commute that I truly loathed. So, I built up my own shop and shortly thereafter quit my job of 10 years- unfortunately, that was January of 2020. I was now a new, full-time luthier in the midst of a global viral pandemic. Maybe not the best timing, but I’ve stayed the course.

I grew up with a grandfather and father that loved to build and fix things. I started young and took to working with the tools of a craftsman quickly. I’ve built all kinds of things, broken all kinds of things, and then turned around and fixed most of them again. I started repairing my own car as soon as my first car broke. Then I went on to fixing my friend’s and family’s cars. It’s the same with plumbing, carpentry, roofing, and concrete work… I’ve built treehouses and chess boards, motorcycles and hatchets, stuffed animals and drones.

But now I mostly build guitars. Unique, beautiful, innovative, comfortable, responsive guitars. I put great care and attention into the details and design of each guitar. I’ve read Ervin Somogyi’s Responsive Guitar books, cover to cover, multiple times, and apply what I’ve learned from him, and Joel, to the very best of my ability on every guitar I build.