The party goes on! This is the peghead of my third guitar, built in 1976 (or '77?). I called it "The Penguin". At the encouragement of my early mentor, Ken Riportella, I applied to exhibit it in a show of contemporary instrument builders at The Smithsonian Institution's Renwick Gallery ("The Harmonious Craft", 1978-80). I was asked to deliver it to The Renwick for final judging, and the timing worked out so that I was able to drop it off as I passed through Washington D.C. on a nationwide tour with Vermont's Bread and Puppet Theater and Word of Mouth Chorus (the "Ave Marie Stella" tour) in 1977. On the final leg of that tour, somewhere in the northern Mid-west, I got word from home that it had been accepted.  Here is the only picture I have of the finished instrument, taken by the Renwick Gallery:

It was a great show, and a great honor. The exhibit included all manner of musical instruments including an amazing dulcimer sculpture by my mentor Ken, bagpipes, a set of tuned crescent wrenches and much, much more.  Among the other guitar-builders included were Max Krimmel and Jeffrey Elliot.
My brother, Barney and I, along with Ken and another friend, made it to the opening. We had borrowed a "Garbage Man" puppet head from Bread and Puppet, and brought along a little "crankie show". Somehow the Gallery let us perform the show in an upstairs exhibition room. I gather we were pretty funny, as one woman in the audience was literally rolling on the floor in laughter. My puppet-headed alter-ego, Big Blue Harold, played his hit song, "I Used To Be A Hippie".....I'm sure that helped!! Ah...youth!!
The Penguin was sold to a man in Switzerland (my first international sale!) as a result of being in that show, for the now ridiculous-seeming price of $600. 

 

Penguin's Siblings

The "Penguin" guitar, which got exhibited in The Harmonious Craft show at the Smithsonian's Renwick Gallery, was the same basic design (body size and shape) as my first guitar, built at Charles Fox's school. I made two more steel-string guitars using that template (including the same basic bracing pattern for the top and back plates); this replicating of one design, although not what I ultimately wanted to do, felt like an important way to begin to understand the basics of guitar construction. I knew I needed to get more of that understanding before I started heading off into outer space, following my own creative intuition.

Guitars # 4 and #5 were both perfectly fine instruments, though neither had details that quite equaled the inspired head-stock carving of the Penguin. I did manage to sell both of them...not for much money, but enough that I could keep building more, which seemed like the point. I sold one of them to friend and wonderful local (Vermont) guitarist, Daniel Hecht, who I had taken some guitar lessons from. Daniel later got a 12-string guitar from me, which he used on his album on Windham Hill Records, "Willow" (more on that later); him buying this early 6-string from me was very exciting, as he was by anyone's standards a fine guitarist. He used that 6-string on a self-produced album, "Fire-heart/Fire-river"; as I recall he paid me partly in copies of that album (no one among my circle of friends in Plainfield, VT at that time had much money...barter was pretty common among us hippie-types!). I had a big stack of those albums lying around the shop...eventually I think the vinyl warped and I had to throw most of them out.

Daniel was really a brilliantly creative guy (probably still is...I haven't seen him in years), and often his creativity at that time related to music and instruments. He came up with an idea to mount a metal rod on the guitar, running parallel to the neck along the bass side of it, onto which he could attach specially designed capos. These capos could be operated by foot pedals, allowing him all sorts of interesting musical possibilities. I only heard him demonstrate it once, that I can recall...it was very cool. I don't know what happened to that idea...I do know that he eventually removed the device from that guitar, leaving a number of mounting holes in various spots on the instrument, and sold the guitar to someone else, at which point I lost track of it.

Guitars #4 and #5 were the last I made of that design, and that remains one of the few designs I ever replicated.