Meet the Maker: Federico Sheppard

by Roger Alan Skipper

Originally published in American Lutherie #106, 2011

I’ve studied your website and other Internet articles about you. You’ve led quite an interesting life: you were born in Mexico City; you mentioned that one guitar stayed with you through “five different moves” and “three careers.” You’re a chiropractor, and have been a cab driver, sod cutter, lead Hawaiian guitarist for a Polynesian dance band, a consultant for the National Museums of Paraguay and El Salvador, and have ridden a bicycle around the world. I’ve even stumbled across a rumor that you traveled with a circus. Could you share some of that life with me, and tell me how you got started in lutherie?

Everything you read about me on the Internet may not be accurate. I was tempted to join a Mexican midget circus I came across on a bike trip in France, but I didn’t meet the height requirements. And that is God’s own truth.