Interview with Geoff Luttrell

Owner and Master Tech of SF Guitarworks

Switching his professional focus from building bikes and restoring motorcycles to repairing guitars was a smart move for Geoff Luttrell and a fortunate one for Bay Area musicians. Just look up his Potrero Avenue repair and retail shop, SF Guitarworks, on Yelp: Honest, professional, reasonably priced, fast, thorough, accommodating, quality, above and beyond, highly recommended, massage parlor for guitars ... The praise the seven-year old business and its master tech have garnered is extensive and all the more meaningful considering it’s coming from musicians dealing with their most prized possessions. From emergency repairs to appointments to helpful case studies on his website and a 100% money-back guarantee on all his work (which he has yet to actually need to honor), Luttrell goes beyond five star ratings and Best Of awards from local weeklies, proving he’s mastered both the art of repair and customer service. Most importantly, he respects the responsibility inherent in the trade.

Q: What are the most common things that people come in for?

A: Set-ups and fret-levels are the two biggest jobs. A set-up basically covers most of the adjustments that a guitar needs to make it play in tune and with nice action. Sometimes the frets won’t be good enough to allow the guitar to play nice, so then we’ll do a fret-level. These solve a lot of the problems that people are typically having with playability issues.

Q: What sets you apart from other techs?

A: I think fretwork is our pride here. Also, when setting up intonation, I check it at several points up and down the neck to make sure that the guitar plays in tune all the way up the fret board, where a lot of techs just check it at the 12th fret. That works OK, but I find that sometimes it’s not as in tune up the neck and people do play past the 12th fret. Also, because I’m such a crappy guitar player, I don’t have an idea really of ‘this is the way a guitar should be.’ I mean, I know what a good guitar feels like and I know how to do that, but when someone comes in and tells me what they want, I actually listen instead of saying, ‘I know what’s best for you and your guitar.’

Q: Are there preventative measures one can take to avoid emergency repairs on the road?

A: Yeah, I would recommend to any band that’s going out – or recording – to get all their instruments set up by the same guy. Whether it’s me or somebody else, just get it done. If the tech is good, he or she is going to look at all the issues that’ll cause problems: Are the saddles rounded so that you don’t break strings? Is the nut cut correctly so that the guitar stays in tune? Going into the studio, it’s crucial too. Any band is basically wasting their time going into the studio with instruments that aren’t properly set up.

Q: What are some of the more unusual repairs you’ve done?

A: I do all kinds of weird stuff. I just converted a righty banjo to a lefty. Some lady brought in a shamisen, it’s a little Japanese snakeskin drumhead with a long stick and you bow it. I didn’t know anything about the instrument, but I told her I’d look it up and figure it out. Same thing with the sitar – I’d never worked on one of

those before, but I thought, you know, it’s got strings. So I looked it up, learned the tuning, learned how the fret positions go, and it was fine. I made no money on the job, but I learned about something new, so that’s always fun.

Q: What’s especially fulfilling about this trade?

A: I kind of like, on a philosophical level, what we do here because we’re keeping stuff from going to the junkyard. We keep stuff that’s already made working and also allow people to produce more and better art.

www.sfguitarworks.com

Thread Productions: Four Bands, Three Rules, Two Compilations, One Goal

Started in the fall of 2006 by Brian Gorman and Lynne Angel of Tartufi, Thread Productions is a collective of Bay Area musicians with the common goal of increasing exposure and three simple rules: 1) As best you can, go to every show of each band in the collective, 2) Mention every band in Thread any time you or your band is interviewed by the media and 3) Support one another and share resources. Their collective efforts worked instantly, and in addition to Tartufi, the core members of Thread – Low Red Land, Silian Rail and Birds & Batteries – have all experienced an increase in audience size and received positive attention from the local media.

Q: How did the idea for the collective unravel?

Gorman: As Tartufi grew in the local scene and began reaching out on a national level, it became clear to us that most bands are, on the business end of things, repeating the same work: establishing media contacts, locating the better venues nationwide, establishing connections with bookers, locating suppliers for merch and CD pressing, etc. So much of this endeavor involves accumulating information, we thought it would be

more beneficial to everyone if we collaborated and shared our resources. And we were right.

Q: What influenced your decision to join forces with these three other bands?

Gorman: Before any of them were our friends, they were musicians that we respected. Lynne booked Low Red Land a few years ago at El Rio. When they hit the stage, she was blown away and called me saying to get down there as fast as I could. Silian Rail was a no-brainer – they are another male/female rock duo, their songwriting is completely in line with what we do in Tartufi and their musical abilities are staggering. Birds & Batteries came in through their connection to Low Red Land, and they offered a great and entirely different sound and broadened our collective reach.

Q: Tell us more about your compilations.

Gorman: We have released two free compilations, Dragon Slayers I and II, with great Bay Area acts and with artwork by Jessica Cusik of Fecal Face Dot Gallery. We give them out by hand at shows all over the country, and have distributed 3,000discs nationwide in just under three months. On our last Tartufi tour, we had several new fans in the audience who heard about us through the comp that another Thread member had given them when they were on tour. They are the best promotional vehicle that we utilize.

Q: How can others get involved?

Gorman: We are always happy to help out other bands and musicians when we can. We are not adding members to the core of the group right now, but we will be releasing a new comp soon [Dragon Slayers III is due out this September] and will be reaching out to local bands for that. Also, we regularly do information trades with touring acts – they help us with their hometown area and we help with Bay Area information. Most importantly, other local bands can get involved by starting their own collectives and then working with Thread in a collective alliance. We would gladly share our model with those interested.

www.myspace.com/threadproductions

Bay Rising Recognizes Bay Area Artists and Community With Month of Events

Bay Rising, Yonas Media’s second annual Battle of the Bands, will culminate this month with the semifinals on August 4 at Café du Nord in San Francisco and August 5 at The Uptown in Oakland, followed by the finals at The Great American Music Hall on August 27. Of the 10 bands that perform at the semifinals, five will advance to the finals to compete for over $10,000 in prizes. The Grand Prize includes a five-day recording package at Yonas Media’s new Oakland studio, one day of mixing/mastering by award-winning engineer Charles Stella, manufacturing of 1,000 CDs by Copy Cats Media and two months artist development from Fuze Management. Runners- up will also receive prizes ranging from microphones to production/recording software to online promotion. Last year, San Francisco hip-hop ensemble Felonious won the Grand Prize, with SambaDá and Forrest Day as runners-up.

In addition to the concerts, Yonas Media is inviting local musicians and all music-related businesses and

organizations in the Bay Area to participate in a free pre-concert networking/community-building event on August 27 at ArtHouse (1360 Mission Street, Suite 200) from 5:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. There will be an industry panel portion as well as prize giveaways. Companies interested in participating can email bayrising@yonasmedia.com.

www.yonasmedia.com

In the News

After their July California tour with Portland’s The Builders and the Butchers, Port O ’Brien will hit the road again this month with L.A.’s Bodies of Water. Kicking off on August 6 in Madison, Wis., the two-week tour will take the nautically- named bands around the Midwest, East Coast and into Canada before wrapping up in Indianapolis, Ind. on August 19.

www.myspace.com/

portobrien

On August 5, Tricycle Records will release the new album from San Francisco’s The Union Trade. Titled Everyday Including, the 11-song album is the band’s debut full length, the followup to last year’s Now the Swell EP. The Union Trade will celebrate the CD release at Bottom of the Hill on August 13. Sharing the bill will be new labelmate One Becomes One Hundred, celebrating their new Tricycle release, They Do If You Know. Then on August 18, Tricycle will release the debut EP from another recent signee, The Red Verse, titled No Chance for Romance.

www.tricycle-records.com

The Inaugural Outside Lands Music & Arts Festival will debut in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park on August 22 –24. Radiohead, Tom Petty and Jack Johnson are scheduled to headline the three day event, which will feature performances from Beck, Bon Iver, Wilco, Ben Harper, Regina Spektor, Primus, The Black Keys, Broken Social Scene, Manu Chao, Devendra Banhart and local and regional artists like Two Gallants, Howlin Rain, Rogue Wave, Lyrics Born, Sean Hayes, M. Ward, The Mother Hips and Everest. With five main performance stages, this will be the first annual large-scale, multi-stage, ticketed event in the Park’s history, and a percentage of the proceeds will go directly to benefit the San Francisco Recreation & Park Department.

www.sfoutside

lands.com

Take Root Records has signed L.A. trio The Ettes to the label, with plans to release their sophomore album next month. Titled Look at Life Again, the album is the follow-up to 2006’s Shake the Dust, released by Sympathy for the Record Industry. The band recently returned from a European tour supporting The Black Keys. At press time, a West Coast tour was in the works for the fall.

www.takeroot

records.com

On August 14, Xiu Xiu will embark on a month-long national tour in support of their January release on Kill Rock Stars, Women as Lovers. Joining them on the road will be Carla Bozulich’s Evangelista, Prurient and Common Eider, King Eider. The tour will begin in Southern California and return to the West Coast next month, where it will wrap on September 13 at Bottom of the Hill in San Francisco.

www.xiuxiu.org

Tippy Canoe & the Paddlemen recently released their debut full-length album, Parasols and Pekingese. The album’s 11 tracks are filled with Michele Kappel’s signature ukelele and the trio’s classic jazz/’50s pop sound.

www.tippycanoe.net

August will see the release of Opio’s Vulture’s Wisdom, Volume One, the first chapter of a forthcoming trilogy of albums to be released over the next year on Hiero Imperium Records. Featuring 14 songs and no skits, this album marks the follow-up to the Souls of Mischief emcee’s debut solo album, 2005’s Triangulation Station, and was produced by Oakland’s The Architect.

www.hieroglyphics.com

Last month, Talking House Records released Canister, the new album from recent signee Elephone. The band embarked on a West Coast tour to support it. The album features the addition of keyboardist Sierra Frost on vocals and was recorded on analog tape with producer Mark Wiebel.

www.threcords.com/

elephone

Sacramento hardcore-/thrash band Trash Talk recently released its debut full length on its own imprint, TrashTalk Collective. This is the band’s sixth release to date. The 12-track album was recorded in just under two days at Chicago’s Electrical Audio with Steve Albini. In support of the new LP, Trash Talk embarked on a European tour with The Mongoloids in June, followed by a U.S. tour with Cold World and Iron Age last month.

www.trashtalkhc.com

San Francisco husband-wife duo Juanita and the Rabbit turn out an energetic lo-fi sound on their self- released debut, feeling the love-/AMPLIFIED!!, out earlier this summer. The band, which features Brett Cline on six-string bass and vocals and Elizabeth Cline on drums and vocals, embarked on a coast-to-coast tour last month, which will continue through August.

www.juanitaandthe

rabbit.com

Songbird Sing, the second collaboration in the Nat Kendall Presents series, will see an August 5 release on Rock Shock It! Records. The project involved nearly two years of cross-continent production between Kendall and soul singer Paige Rasmussen. The duo has a tour slated for late summer.

www.songbirdsing.com