Posted on July 26, 2023June 10, 2025 by Dale Phillips In Memoriam: Jeanette Fernández In Memoriam: Jeanette Fernández November 26, 1944 – August 14, 2022 by Ronald Louis Fernández Originally published in American Lutherie #147, 2022 Jeanette Fernández, a lovely lass born Jeanette T. Wilson in Glasgow, Scotland, died in Anacortes, Washington, last summer. While not a luthier, Jeanette was heavily involved in the international guitar trade for three decades. And she was a big fan of the Guild. Jeanette left school at age fifteen when her father died. She worked in banks in Glasgow and London for six years, then got a loan and immigrated by herself to Montreal for the 1967 World’s Fair, Expo 67. She was hired by the anthropology department at McGill University and ran the office for almost ten years under three different professors. I was a Ph.D. student there when we met, and we were married in 1973. In the early 1990s, Jeanette became an essential part of my Spanish-guitar import business, Fernández Music. Jeanette handled the accounting, packing, and a lot of customer relations. She accompanied me on visits to stores and suppliers in the U.S. and Europe. She got to know “all the usual suspects” in our industry. Jeanette Fernández at the 2011 GAL Convention in Tacoma. Photo by Cyndy Burton. At the 2011 GAL Convention in Tacoma (l to r): Ron Fernández, Jeanette Fernández, John Park. Photo by Mónica Esparza. Part of our business involved being the American representatives at the Anaheim National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM) Show for Esteve Guitar and Juan Hernández Workshop from Valencia Spain. At NAMM, Jeanette got to know many of the international suppliers and customers located in Japan, Germany, Argentina, Mexico, France, Canada, Australia, Britain, Spain, and Portugal. She dealt with everyone in her Scottish-accented English, but also on occasion in French, Spanish, and Portuguese. We frequently traveled together to do business with guitar makers in Valencia, Madrid, and Portugal. She had a special relationship with Spanish guitar maker Felix Manzanero and his wife Soli in Madrid, and with Luis and Graça Penedo, who were involved in the Portuguese guitar world. While the giant NAMM Show in Anaheim with 90,000 attendees was a part of doing business, the Guild Convention, in contrast, was a great pleasure for Jeanette. She loved meeting old friends, attending the concerts, living in the old dorms, eating in the Commons, and the nights at the local bars, ice cream shop, and restaurants. She especially looked forward to the auction on the last night. When we would get a new issue of American Lutherie, she would go through it to see the people she knew. She felt very comfortable with all the characters of the luthier brotherhood. She was also the camera person on our French Polish for Guitarmakers DVD. She always refined my writings. She had an innate insight into the English language. Any success of our guitar business I fully share with Jeanette. And she always made me a better person. — (We always loved seeing sweet Jeanette at the Conventions, and will miss her kindness and gifts of chocolate this summer. — The GAL Staff)
Posted on July 25, 2023May 12, 2025 by Dale Phillips In Memoriam: Chris Herbert Chris Herbert Nov. 22, 1955 - May 30, 2022 by The Herbert Family Published online by Guild of American Luthiers, July, 2023 Chris Herbert was probably Denver’s premier guitar repairman. He moved to Denver in 1980 from Columbus, Ohio, with excellent woodworking skills and a love of music. He was mentored at the now defunct Feretta’s Guitar Store where he learned his craft and began his career. He took to it very quickly and became the go-to luthier for almost every guitarist who played vintage instruments in Colorado. He worked on guitars for countless Colorado musicians, including the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Hot Rize, The Nacho Men, The Mother Folkers and many, many others. When touring musicians came to town, he was always the one they called — Jewel, Mason Williams, Andy Gibb, Duke Robillard, the Subdudes. When Mason Williams asked how much he owed, Chris said, “Just play me Classical Gas!” That was Chris. All photos courtesy of the Herbert Family except as noted. He worked mainly on S. Broadway, but in his later years, preferred to work out of his home. He built a few custom instruments in the early days, and his second custom guitar is now owned by Nick Beier of San Diego. He also collected Golden Era Martin and Gibson guitars which are now worth a fortune; many of these went into his friends’ collections. His favorite guitar was the Blackguard Telecaster. Everyone who knew Chris commented on his love of old instruments and the care that went into fixing their myriad problems that developed over the years. He was a perfectionist and it showed. For years, he was a certified Martin repair person and had an excellent relationship with Martin and their longtime employee and historian David Musselwhite. Chris called himself a humanist and felt a strong sense of compassion for displaced and oppressed people. He cherished his abundant friendships with local and nationally recognized musicians, good buddies, and neighbors, and his close ties to his siblings. Chris was a fan of other builders, including Denny Stevens. Denny also lived in Colorado, but tragically developed ALS and passed away in 2009. Chris owned a 1973 Denny Stevens guitar, which was the last guitar in Chris’ estate. The Herbert Family kindly donated it to the Guild of American Luthiers, in memory of master luthier Chris Herbert. It was sold in the Guild’s Benefit Auction in July 2023, the proceeds of which go to further the Guild’s mission of information sharing among luthiers like Chris. — At the 2023 GAL Convention Benefit Auction. Photo by Steve McElrath.
Posted on August 12, 2021December 10, 2025 by Dale Phillips Remembering Harry LeBovit Remembering Harry LeBovit by Fred Calland Originally published in American Lutherie #10, 1987 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume One, 2000 Harry LeBovit’s company was always and unvaryingly a pleasure, and his companionship was never touched by shyness, aloofness, or anything boring like that. I can’t remember the first time I met him, and I know why I can’t; the man put me at ease on the spot, probably saying something like, “You must be very happy doing something so interesting so well.” Now add to that a sort of uneven smile and a warm welcoming expression, and you have a master of diplomacy, a man capable of aggressive friendship, and an irresistible companion in spirit. There were vast areas of Harry’s life that never came up in conversation with him. His wife Judy told me recently that he was born in 1915 in New Jersey; that he spent much of his time as a preadolescent stalking museums, drinking in paintings, particularly Baroque-Era angels or Saint Cecilias holding some sort of stringed instrument. For these instruments in general, and the violin in particular, were his first love, and to get a clumsy metaphor over before it even gets started, he remained true to this early love all his life. He became engrossed by the violin as only a young, intensely intelligent boy can become engrossed in such a wondrous thing: in its sound, in the performance of it, and in the building of it. It wouldn’t surprise me at all to learn that Harry never really considered this interest, this passion, this ability to search out all the great secrets of art and civilized existence through a single manifestation of this greatness (a sound-producing box made of maple and pine and sheep intestines and I shudder to think what else) to be unusual. I don’t imagine he was pleased, but he certainly wasn’t thrown by the fact that he was coming to manhood during the Depression, and that an occupation more likely to bring in money on a fairly regular basis was not only in order, but mandatory. So during his college years at Rutgers, studies of agricultural science and economics took up much of his immediate concern. The fiddle, however, was not to take a back seat. A side seat, maybe. Harry’s sort of intelligence was far more penetrating than the average man’s: more piercing, and more encompassing. He could talk at length about world political problems from an almost bewildering variety of viewpoints. Harry could, with a soft, warmly-inflected voice, take your mind out through these byways and let it find its way to a higher, more sensitive view of the world. And he did this with no deviousness whatsoever, and certainly no effort. Great compassion for humanity, for his wife, for his dogs, for his friends, probably for his enemies if he ever acknowledged any, weighed on him as lightly as a Mendelssohn Scherzo. When Judy told me that Harry was called by the State Department to serve as Agricultural Attaché to the American Embassy in Budapest from 1945 through 1949, at a time when diplomats and agricultural experts of the highest caliber were in demand, and that he served in a similar capacity in Denmark from 1949 to 1951, I wasn’t too much surprised. You know why? Harry mentioned to me that he knew about the fabulous Hungarian violinist and teacher, Jeno Hubay, at almost first hand, that he had studied in Budapest with Zathuretzky, the great Hungarian violinist and pedagogue, and that he could describe all the shortcomings and strengths of the Danish-Hungarian violinist Henry Temianka. When he perceived that I was genuinely impressed by these contacts, and would probably be less so with his diplomatic coups, we somehow became friends. And when Judy mentioned that Harry went out of his way to sponsor embassy concerts by starving Hungarian musicians immediately after the war, and said it as though she (and he) took such activities as a matter of course, I was impressed by this even more than I was to learn that John Kennedy summoned him to the White House to be Deputy Director of the Food For Peace program, and he was kept in that position by President Johnson. I was not terribly impressed with his next title: Director of Marketing and Technical Services for the National Stockpile Program of the General Services Administration. I must assume he made a go of it, for the reason for his departure from the position in 1974 was a heart attack, the first serious manifestation of the disease that would cause his death twelve years later. Judy, whom he met in Budapest in 1948 in the third year of his Hungarian assignment, joined with others in urging him to retire. Well, Harry knew many words in several different languages, but he apparently never caught the hang of “retirement.” Guess what stringed instrument was waiting to take over his attention! Both photos courtesy of Mrs. Judith Bretan LeBovit. In his home he had room for a workshop, and he had collected woods from all over the world and a vast understanding of the nature of the beast. At what point he became a violin maker is hard for me to say. At what point he became a master luthier, I’m sure it would have been impossible for him to say, for that is a rarified altitude, and granted that perfection is impossible to achieve, when such mastery is reached, there invariably sets in the not-at-all-unpleasant awareness of how much farther one has to travel. Harry’s status as a master builder is still being assessed in the world of music, but whatever it turns out eventually to be, he would surely demean it, for he never reached a point where he was completely satisfied. His constant, avid, and affectionate hunger to know and understand the nature of the work of art he held in his hands was the direct dynamic counterpart of his eagerness to understand what the larger world was about. One had to know him for some time to perceive that Harry was something of a warrior, because he approached warfare with calm, with devotion, and with a sense of pacing which symbolized the inner workings of his mind. One of his great campaigns involved the remarkable case of Judy’s father. As someone who had never heard of Nicolae Bretan, I was tempted to believe he would turn out to be a rather minor composer, for he was not celebrated openly in his own country or on the larger world scene. Harry’s part of Judy’s tireless fight to correct the wrongs of the regime of her native land against her father (who indeed proved to be a composer of world stature) was typical of the way he approached life: Become convinced in your own mind and soul that something should be done; set your goals; plan your strategy; and go about it with the same pace, devotion, and energies as the opposition. He became a top-rate sound engineer, and methodically taped every performance of Bretan’s music in Europe and in the U.S. The Advent Recording Company and The Musical Heritage Society used Harry’s recordings to put out three records of Bretan lieder. The results are a practically complete coverage of this composer’s output. It is sad to think that the victory that is appearing on the horizon will be shared mainly by Judy, but on second thought, Harry knew that if the victory were to be sweet, the battle would have to be long, deliberate, well-planned, and that patience would be vital. I don’t think there are many people who met him or talked with him for any length of time who won’t remark warmly on Harry’s openly expressed and gilt-edged fascination as to their work, their interests, and their victories. I still can’t quite grasp the inner motivation of a person who holds everyone he meets with such immediate concern and easy communicativeness. And, miracle of miracles, he asked more questions of his friends than he offered solutions. The game went something like this: “Did you see Menhuin on CBS last night?” And off we’d go with a rehashing of all we knew of the great Yehudi (Harry, who knew him personally, would always have the inside track on any such discussion) and a new synthesis would be created in both our minds. If I dwell at length on those subjects which I would eagerly toss at Harry LeBovit in the certain knowledge that they would be tossed back with the deftness of a skilled player playing around a less-skilled one, I know full well that he had sparring partners in the fields of gardening, landscaping, photography, architecture, sports, cars, dogs, politics, and what else? I will even treasure the poignant moments: When we had to say goodnight when we’d solved only a dozen or so of the world’s problems; a few moments in the hospital when an incessantly babbling young nurse’s aide kept mispronouncing his name and he simply sent a patient and rueful glance at me. It was tough seeing him weak and tired, but it was at the same time a deeply reassuring confirmation to see that despite pain, the insecurity of life, gambling with ever-decreasing chances of any lengthy cure, Harry was unimpressed by the specter of death. Concerned, yes, but not cowed. To see that the mind, body, and soul that he’d been given some three score and ten years earlier had been cared for, expanded, and treasured to the fullest. The sparkle of joy in his eyes burned a trifle lower at the end, but it warmed all the deeper. Harry was a man worthy of all our admiration and sorrow. ◆
Posted on January 18, 2010May 13, 2025 by Dale Phillips In Memoriam: José Luis Romanillos Vega In Memoriam: José Luis Romanillos Vega Madrid, June 17, 1932 — Sigüenza, February 12, 2022 by Don Federico Sheppard, Kevin Aram, Josep Melo I Valls, and Mónica Esparza Originally published in American Lutherie #146, 2022 The mortal essence of noted guitar maker, historian, and author José Luis Romanillos has passed from this earth. I was privileged to get to know him well over the last twelve years, first having been invited by him and his wife, Marian Harris Winspear, to their home to study the museum collection devoted to the workshop of Santos Hernández and other great Spanish makers of the 18th–20th centuries; and later to organize concerts and bring young guitarists to spend some time with the master, and to get autographed copies of his masterpiece dictionary of Spanish guitar makers. His invitation to sit at his right hand for the concert of Canadian guitarist Jeffrey McFadden, marking his 85th birthday, is one of the great honors of my life, and one I shall not soon forget. I am indebted to the GAL for inviting José to Tacoma in 1995 where I, along with many Guild members, were able to meet him, “up close and personal.” José at his shop in 2012, when students attending his last workshop visited one evening. He’s holding a quilted maple guitar called “La Culé,” owned by Josep Melo. Photo by Mónica Esparza. I came along a little too late to attend one of his guitar-making classes, but I have had the opportunity to present a few of my guitars to him. It is not often that you meet someone in their late eighties who has the enthusiasm of a sixteen-year-old, but that was José as I knew him, when seeing fresh new work. We share common friends in Geza and Tini Burghardt, and to be honest, when warmed by a fire in his living room, I can’t recall talking about guitars at all; our conversations instead revolved around historical figures, our common friends, and unsolved mysteries of guitar history. And then along came Filomena! For those of you who do not follow Spanish news closely, Filomena was a once-in-a-century snowstorm that buried the northern half of Spain in two feet of heavy snow. José and Marian’s boiler decided to quit just when it was needed most, and the tiny village where they live has no snow removal equipment. Panicked phone calls went out for help, but most of the country was literally frozen. It was only with the good luck of having a caring neighbor that wood was hauled to the living-room woodstove, saving the old master and Marian from freezing to death. The back-and-forth phone calls eventually calmed my nerves, but also brought me to the realization of the level of dedication that brought José back to Spain late in life to do some of his best work, documented in the recently published book by Josep Melo. He spent his last years living in “España Duro y Profundo” (Hard Core Spain). The last concert I was able to facilitate in Sigüenza featured Czech guitar master Pavel Steidl. Pavel’s guitar needed a small adjustment and José offered his workshop, located in another house in the village. José was feeling the weight of his years, and we navigated the rough streets very carefully. It was the last time I saw him in his workshop. As we walked back to the house, I saw the two masters deep in conversation and gave them a wide berth. When we returned to the house, Marian produced their 50th wedding anniversary guitar, a remarkable instrument with several distinct features, including a rosette with double arches, four-piece sides, and exquisite rosewood salvaged from wood originally cut for bandurrias. José began the finishing process with egg white, and so happy was he with the sound, that he halted further French polishing for fear of damaging the instrument’s sound. Pavel must have played that guitar for an hour. We all realized what a special moment this was, and not a word was spoken. Everyone in the room was drowning in tears. As I drove Pavel to the airport, I found the courage to ask him what he had discussed with the master, walking, with difficulty, back from the workshop. Pavel replied “He said, ‘I am going to fight all the way to the end.’” José’s flower-bedecked tomb on a mountain in Spain. Photo by Federico Sheppard. José’s ride up the mountain to his final resting place, overlooking the castle of Sigüenza, was attended by a select group of loved ones, including myself. I arrived with only one minute to spare. I suspected that, outside of the family, I would be the only English speaker there, and I was right. I promised to remember every detail. When the time came to place the casket in the tomb, it wouldn’t fit! One of the attendants shrugged his shoulders and produced a plane from the back of the hearse. He ever-so carefully shaved off just enough wood to allow the proper fitting of the master into his final resting place. A “fitting” end to the life of a master who not only tamed a foreign tongue, but who documented the evolution of the Spanish guitar with a series of books, which, frankly, are not likely to ever be surpassed. I was granted my wish to address the assembled guests in my famously bad Spanish, and all I could think of to say, on behalf of the members of the Guild, was to quote the Paraguayan guitarist Sila Godoy: “Death only takes the perishable man, and allows him to begin living in the eternity of his creations.” The next morning I was invited to an intimate gathering of the family in the Plaza Mayor of Sigüenza to see the flags lowered to half mast at the Town Hall. It was here, under the tall towers of the Cathedral, still riddled with hundreds of bullet holes, that José in years past shared with me his painful memories of the horrors of the Spanish Civil War. It certainly helped me to understand why he had abandoned Spain for the UK for a large part of his life. Marian relieved the tension with the story of José’s first guitar, sharing the fact that the first one sold for a mere fifteen pounds! Son Liam, who carries an incredible likeness to José, provided a stoic reminder of the introspective nature of José. Son Ignacio shared the details of José’s life as a fourteen-year-old boy. For an entire year in his training as a furniture maker, all he was allowed to do in the workshop was sharpen tools, all day, every day. I imagined what a treat that would be were I to have a future master of José’s caliber sharpening my tools! As son José was unable to make the journey on short notice, I took his place at the table, which made me feel like the fourth Romanillos son. The conversation drifted to the future, and the concerts to be held in José’s honor, and while the family returned to the cemetery on the hill, I quietly drove back home through the land of castles, wheat, and wool, marveling at the wonder of it all. Why I have been so blessed, I can not begin to comprehend. The Guild is Great! The Guild is Good ! The Guild is Great and Good! Goodbye old friend. Your work on earth has only begun. — Don Federico Sheppard José in his Semley shop in England, 1990. Photo by Kevin Aram. I first went to visit José Romanillos at his workshop in Semley, England, in the early 1980s, and over a period of ten years I visited him there on a regular basis. I wanted to learn how to make a Spanish guitar, and he showed me. He was a mixture of a Spanish and an English gentleman. When I stayed for lunch it would often be pickled rabbit, but the conversation would be about the weather. It is difficult for me to explain the effect he had on me. He was very charismatic. When he was explaining some aspect of his work, he would draw me in, and I absorbed what he was telling me almost by osmosis. He had begun his research into Antonio de Torres for the book that would be published in 1987, and on each visit he would show me his latest findings. He gave me a copy of the plantilla for a Torres guitar that he had just measured and I still use this layout today. At the end of each visit, I would leave with a feeling of elation and this would feed into my work. After some time I would want to see him again and, like a drug addict needing a fix, I would return to learn more. After the GAL published my lecture on Julian Bream’s 1973 Romanillos guitar, he was very pleased and, together with his wife Marian, suggested that I might like to write a biography of José’s life. I agreed to do this, but at that time they were moving to Spain and communicating by fax and phone was very difficult. I lost my nerve to write the book and the project never happened. I know he was disappointed by this. Happily living in Spain, José continued to make his beautiful guitars and also to research and write about Spanish guitar making and history. He published a second volume of the Torres book and a number of other books and became the well-respected academic that he always wanted to be. This was something else about his character: He wanted to be more than a successful guitar maker, and attain a higher standing in society. At this time he started holding summer schools to teach his methods of making to a wider audience. They were hugely successful and he taught hundreds of people to make guitars in his way, which was the Spanish way. A wonderful man, he will be sadly missed by many people throughout the world. — Kevin Aram The beautiful cypress trees facing the tomb of José Romanillos. Photo by Josep Melo. To the Maestro: With your disappearance we have lost one of the last, if not the only defender and great fighter for the authentic sound of the Spanish guitar, the sound of Antonio de Torres and of Santos Hernández. To the friend: With your loss we feel a great nostalgia for the blood sausages, that with fried potatoes and red wine, would accompany our infinite and nocturnal talks around the mahogany kitchen table. And in your resting place, the magnificent and impressive cypresses, trees of welcome, trees of eternity, whose wood you loved so much, stand perpetual guard and remind us all of your open hands and the wisdom that you did not hide. And we feel a profound pain that only the sound of your guitars is capable of soothing. — Josep Melo I Valls (L to R): Marian and José with Mónica Esparza at José’s vihuela workshop in 2010. Photo courtesy of Mónica Esparza. The Madrid-born luthier, José Luis Romanillos, was more than a guitar maker. He was a researcher, writer, teacher, collector of historical instruments, and he loved being a poet. Very few people knew this side of José. In the Spanish-guitar, or classical-guitar world, he was considered the authority on the Antonio de Torres guitar. He spent most of his guitar-making career studying, pursuing, and creating what he knew and understood to be the Spanish sound. He based his studies and decades of work on the sound that the Torres guitars produced. He would add that the Santos Hernández guitars would be in the same category and both were considered the true representation of what is known as the Spanish sound. He always believed that the Torres guitar was the true essence of the Spanish guitar. He went on to say that the Spanish guitar not only encompassed an inner part of the maker, but it represented so much of the social and cultural value of its homeland. José was always in pursuit of knowledge of not only fine guitars, but he also researched and built historical instruments from such periods as the Renaissance and the Baroque. He had built lutes and vihuelas aside from guitars. In 2010, I was honored with José’s invitation to the grand opening of the guitar museum, Casa del Doncel, in Sigüenza. He had insisted and advocated for so many frustrating years to convince his nearby town of Guadalajara, and the University of Alcalá, to help him create a museum that could proudly display a huge part of Spanish history embodied in a collection of guitars and vihuelas. It now also stores a great part of the Romanillos-Harris instrument collection. He was one of few (or maybe even the only) Spanish guitar builder who was such a huge advocate of the guitar in his country, and perhaps the world. He was always so willing to share his knowledge and hands-on experience in making guitars with all of us inquisitive minds, who would go to him and participate in his summer workshops. In his workshops I not only built a guitar under his day-to-day guidance, but he would share with us his interests, findings, and other explorations of all his curiosities relating to these stringed instruments. He oozed the passion for the guitar and strongly lamented his country’s lack of interest in preserving the historical treasures Spain had to offer. Every visit to José’s would be filled with overwhelming new knowledge of jigs, fixtures, and the construction of the guitar. He would always be filled with enthusiasm and smiles. He loved to joke and got great pleasure and fulfillment in helping all of us who gathered around him and were hungry for answers and inspiration. He gave us his hard-earned experience, and taught us what a marvelous instrument the Spanish guitar is and will always continue to be. He made us feel welcomed and gladly opened the doors to his personal shop and home. José tuning a vihuela at his 2010 workshop. Photo by Mónica Esparza. He was a man with many curiosities, talents, and loves. I considered him to be a kind, gentle, and very giving, wonderful friend. As José so eloquently ended his poem that he wrote for the guitar-makers’ workshop of 1995 titled, “El Guitarrero” (The Guitar Maker), he writes: Deja tu banco quieto. Vete en paz por tu senda Y escucha tus pisadas que van marcando el son Y las maderas nobles que usaste en tu empeño Repetirán: “Has hecho una cancion!” Leave your bench still. Go in peace along your path And listen to your footsteps that are marking the sound And the noble woods that you used in your endeavor They will repeat: “You have made a song!” José’s favorite wood was a fine cypress, along with a highly figured bearclawed Swiss spruce. It is no surprise that his grave is now mournfully facing the most spectacular cypress trees. José, I am forever grateful to have been your student and loyal friend. You will be immensely missed, and may you rest in endless peace. — Mónica Esparza
Posted on January 18, 2010May 13, 2025 by Dale Phillips In Memoriam: L.M. “Buzz” Vineyard In Memoriam: L.M. “Buzz” Vineyard 1950 — 2021 by Rick Rubin and Michael Elwell Originally published in American Lutherie #145, 2022 I met Buzz sometime in the later 1980s, having first met him indirectly through his instruments while doing setups and other repairs for customers in the Spokane area who owned his work. Buzz was a unique character, as many of us in this craft can be, with an ingratiating and expressive way of communicating, usually with a hand-rolled cigarette dangling from his lips, and a very idiosyncratic approach to instrument making. His models varied from parlor to jumbo sized, flat tops, carved tops, carved tops with flat backs, mandolins, and mandolas. Some of them were stunning, all were interesting. My bandmate Don Thomsen who knew Buzz much better than I has this to say. “I guess my favorite times with Buzz were when he would call me over to check out the latest instrument he’d finished. We would admire it and carefully play the first few tunes. He was a terrible businessman, so I helped him find homes for at least a dozen of them. My sons all own Vineyards.” He did all of that while living on the edge of squalor. He’d had a nice clean home until a fire damaged it badly. But his workshop was different; his focus and love were inside those shop walls. Many of us would donate materials to him so he could keep building instruments. All the cigarettes and other environmental exposures caught up with him and he received a diagnosis of COPD. The last few years were hard. Spokane has lost a colorful character and fine craftsman. — Rick Rubin Buzz Vineyard at the 1980 GAL Convention in San Francisco. Photo by Dale Korsmo. I live in Idaho an hour or so from Spokane, Washington, where Buzz Vinyard lived. We spent some fun time together on a trip to a GAL Convention and would cross paths at luthier-group meetings in Spokane. Occasionally we would visit each other at our home/shops. Buzz was colorful and charismatic and I enjoyed his company. Getting to know him and sharing a love of lutherie, I found him to be intelligent, curious, and creative. His work showed his own artistic flair. Buzz accumulated a lifetime’s knowledge of, and appreciation for, wood. Once he gave me some western red cedar that he had obtained decades ago in the county where I live. He wanted to share with me the unique and pleasant fragrance of this particular tree. He is missed. May he rest in peace. — Michael Elwell
