50 FEET HIGH AND RISING
Left: A soggy, sagging acoustic is one of the many flood-damaged instruments that will never be played again. Right: One of the lucky few salvageable acoustics at Soundcheck being dried
out with an industrial fan. Photos by Mark Montgomery
Nashville. It’s something you don’t anticipate
or don’t believe would ever happen. Obviously
we were all wrong. And it did happen. And I
don’t know that I have ever been through a
tragedy like this and I hope I never am again.”
Jumper’s clients seemed to be satisfied and
even impressed with Soundcheck’s response
to the flood. He secured two large dry-out
facilities, and over three days company trucks
and roadies moved tons of gear to the spaces
where it could be spread out and dried at a
proper pace. Guitar techs set up a kind of field
hospital, where they disassembled the electrics,
soaked the electronic parts in WD- 40, and
bagged them for rebuilding later. Guitars were
laid out everywhere. Keith Urban’s guitars and
banjos dangled from a ceiling by their headstocks as if from some hideous hanging tree.
Glaser shuttled between several facilities,
working on guitars owned by Urban, Gill,
Jorgenson, and others. Sizing up the overall
damage on the Saturday of the recovery, he
said, “It’s like any disaster. There’s been a
lot of really pleasant surprises and a lot of
discouraging damage, which we expected
to see. The acoustics have fared worse
than the electrics, because any instrument
put together with water-soluble glues is
tending to come apart. The acoustics are
generally built out of boards that were bent
into shape, and these are straightening
out again. But there are some surprising
164 PREMIER GUI TAR JULY 2010
survivors, particularly in old and valuable
instruments. The irony is that, for the last 10
or so years, there’s been quite an industry in
making new guitars look like old guitars, and
this flood has done more of that than everybody’s careful expertise combined.”
9
John Jorgenson’s travel back from Europe was a nightmare in itself. Starting with the troublesome Icelandic volcano, a rash
of problems got him home more than a day
late. By then, we’d opened his guitars, emptied them of water, and put them in Glaser’s
care. Some we’d delivered to his home so he
could see them as soon as possible. None of
those prized instruments had been spared
damage, and some were complete wipeouts.
Two mandolins—a pre-war Gibson A style and
a custom-built John Monteleone—had more
or less exploded. A rare Höfner guitar in the
shape of Paul McCartney’s famous bass had
mold inside it. And one-of-a-kind presentation
pieces, including a custom Gibson Casino with
artwork based on the Beatles’ animated Yellow
Submarine film, had taken serious damage to
its bindings and its previously pristine finish.
“It was pretty horrifying,” Jorgenson says
about finally facing the instruments and vin-
tage amplifiers he’d collected and cared for
so assiduously over so many years. One par-
ticularly hard-to-take loss was a 1961 Gibson
Les Paul SG. “I bought that on time payments
when I was 15 years old, and I’ve had it my
whole life. It was really the first really good
guitar that I ever bought, and I played it forev-
er. It’s a great guitar. And I’ve had the original
case with it and I’ve taken care of it. Guitarists
will know those have the original PAF pickups,
which are super valuable now. And I’d never
done anything stupid like change them out!
And to see it cracked and with rusty pickups
just really kind of broke my heart.”
It’s a hurt that perhaps only guitar players
and lovers can fully understand. Jorgenson
and many others spoke of being caretakers
and curators for their instruments. They tech-
nically own them, but they said they felt more
like they were holding them in trust for future
players and the future of music. Pretty much
everyone spoke respectfully and emotionally
about the many lives and homes that had
been lost in the flood, but at the same time,
fine instruments have a life force of their own.
“I know they’re just objects. They’re tools,”
said Jorgenson two weeks after the flood. “But
when somebody put in the time that it took
and the energy and creativity to build those—
that’s someone’s energy in it. And then it had
a significance in the careers of other artists.
That’s kind of the overwhelming part. It felt like
my history was just being ripped away. I know
that’s not true, but that’s what it felt like.”
