Official Luthiers Forum!

Are any of you planning to attend the 2017 LaConner Guitar Festival?
It's going to be right here in my backy yard, in the beautiful Skagit Valley, in Washington State.

http://laconnerguitarfestival.com/



https://www.facebook.com/LaConnerGuitarFestival/

From the images I've seen on Instagram and FB, it appears there is going to be a pretty incredible number of wonderfully talented luthiers represented at the festival.

It would be great to meet some of you in-person if you're coming out this way.

I've been following Brent's posting on FB and it's a pretty stellar line up of crafters for sure. It's just a hop over the border for me, I'm hoping to go on Saturday....

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My Facebook Guitar Page

"There's really no wrong way, as long as the results are what's desired." Charles Fox

"We have to constantly remind ourselves what we're doing....No Luthier is putting a man on the moon!" Harry Fleishman

"Generosity is always different in the eye of the person who didn't receive anything, but who wanted some." Waddy Thomson

Thanks for posting this. I wasn't aware of it and it's just up the highway from here. I'll definitely head on up there.

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Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right - Robert Hunter

It's only 22 miles as the crow flies. I'll be there!

It looks like a great gathering of talented people. Wish I could go.

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Joe Beaver
Maker of Sawdust

I'm planning on attending. Hopefully work won't get in the way.

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George :-)

WOW, had no idea! I'll try to go, thanks!

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Pat

I live minutes from here and I had no idea - for a couple days I thought I had dreamt the whole thing up.

Does anyone know if this is the first year, or had you heard about it previously?

I was wondering if this is the first time too. Never heard of it before.

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Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right - Robert Hunter

Pretty sure it's the first.

From what I've read Brent McElroy and Shirley Makela recently relocated to La Conner from their Seattle shop. Makela is the person who responded to my inquiry about the show.

I confirmed with Shirley that it is the first of what they plan to be an annual show - which is absolutely wonderful. La Conner is a beautiful little town here in Skagit County.

It would be great to meet some of you in person if you make it up, or down, this way.

I'm in!

If you should ever get over to Port Townsend, you are welcome to stop by the shop.

The final lineup up of luthiers and performers looks great.

I'll be at the door Friday (tomorrow) morning checking attendees in - stop by and say hi if any of you make it up to the show. I'm also planning attending Michael Gurian's talk Saturday morning if I can get back over there.

I'm still aiming for Saturday. My original plan was to stay overnight and go to the Sunday morning seminar on photographing instruments, but that's not going to work out for me. Really looking forward to seeing some fine guitars and hopefully a few OLF members.

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George :-)

What are the hours on Sunday?

The venue is real nice and well laid out, most of us set up yesterday and spent the afternoon visiting.

I had a bit of a shipping problem and I was not the only one. We all got our instruments except Greg German his guitars are on a Fedex truck heading back to Denver. They promised to get the boxes off the truck at it next stop and redirect back but if they are not here by closing today he will have an empty table.

Any of you who attend be sure to stop at my table for a visit.

Fred

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Fred Tellier
http://www.fetellierguitars.com
Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/pages/FE-Tellier-Guitars/163451547003866

Are the hours 11-6 on Sunday too?

I believe so.

There was great turnout today - and an incredible selection of guitars to view and play. Great to have met a few of the OLF crew there today - hope to meet more of you tomorrow.

What an enjoyable day!

My lovely wife, Karen, and my luthier buddies, James Curtis, Dick Tietjen and I headed over on the 9:30 boat from Port Townsend. We landed in La Conner at about 11:00am, found parking nearby, and headed to the show. The show was very well executed. There were sound-conditioned cubicles for auditioning instruments, which was genius. Every exhibitor was open and willing to share the fine details of their work.

It was nice to put faces to names of folks whose work I recognize from here on OLF, but wish we could have name tags to identify each other by our 'handles'! I imagine I might have walked right by a few of you and not known to say hi.

I also stopped off at my friend Bruce Creps' table (notablewoods.com) and selected a couple of nice Koa sets. Karen stuck around the show for a while, then enjoyed walking through La Conner's quaint little downtown - plenty to enjoy there if you're thinking of bringing your significant other and worried about them getting bored! ; )

I'm hoping to exibit at next year's show, assuming there's room (and I'm fortunate enough to be asked)!

Cheers, M

I plan to be there around 3:00ish today...

Oops...passport expired, so much for that plan:(

I drove up to La Conner on Saturday and spent a few of hours at the festival. There were fabulous instruments on display and I had nice conversations with several builders, including Paul Woolson and Fred Tellier. It was great to finally meet them after all this time. The exhibition room was quite crowded, which gave the event a definite sense of energy, but it made me nervous for those with their exquisite work perched precariously atop a table.

Several instruments had sold signs on them, which was nice to see. It appears that FedEx never did get Greg German's guitars to him, as he was sitting at an empty table, good-naturedly explaining that his guitars were so fantastic that folks didn't need to see, play or hear them before ordering. That's too bad and it was good of him to keep smiling on the outside.

Bruce (Notable Woods) had some lovely tonewoods for sale. However, that room was so cramped that I had a difficult time actually getting to his table and, once there, felt guilty blocking others from stepping up. I would have liked for that area to be given a bit more focus, but I understand that for a guitar festival to succeed it needs to attract, you know, people looking to buy an actual guitar. :-)

All in all, I had a very nice visit. The sun was shining and La Conner is a lovely little town which has embraced the artisan movement. I always enjoy visiting there and having world-class luthiers in town showing their work made it about as close to perfect as I can imagine.

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George :-)

It's great to hear that it was such a good show!

I made it up to the show early yesterday (Sunday) morning to attend a guitar photography workshop and then spent some time in the exhibit hall admiring a lot of beautiful instruments. Being as it was Mother's Day, it was less crowded and more laid back than the previous two days according to everyone I talked to. There were 39 exhibitors weighted toward high end guitars with a good mix of flat top steel string, archtop, and classical guitars. There were also a couple mandolins, a banjo, a bazouki, and a couple solid body electrics. The quality of the work on display was really impressive. At one point I was looking at one of the two guitars Bryan Galloup had on display and he asked me if I wanted to play it. I had noticed on the info card that the price was $18,000. I said I didn't know if I wanted to play an $18,000 guitar. He said "Why not?" and picked up off its stand, handed it to me, walked me to a room outside the main hall, handed me the guitar, and went back into the main hall and left me there to play it. I was kind of astonished by that. It was an absolutely amazing sounding and playing guitar and gorgeous to look at with a lot of cool design details. Way out of my league financially though. If I sold all my electrics, acoustics, and mandolins, I might be able to come up with that much. I'm sure there's a buyer for that guitar out there and they will be very lucky to be able to own it.

I talked with Brent and Shirley (the organizers) and a number of the builders and the consensus was that the show was a success so it looks like it will be back next year. As George mentioned above, there were some guitars with sold signs on them and several conversations at tables in the hall indicated that a few other sales were in progress so that's a good sign for the future of the show.

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Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right - Robert Hunter

The second annual La Conner Guitar Festival is coming up, next weekend, May 11-13th.

Hopefully I'll see some of you there.