From the smooth finish of the neck to the way its body curves to fit the musician’s arm, the guitar is a rock star’s weapon and must be perfectly crafted.
And there are few better at crafting these intricate instruments than Dan Erlewine.
Erlewine has made a mark for himself as a writer, repairman, crafter and musician as owner of Dan Erlewine’s Guitar Shop, which he runs out of the basement of his Athens home.
The master of all trades jump-started his career in 1984 as an early adopter of instructional videotapes. The Web series Dan Erlewine’s Guitar Hospital taught people how to fix guitars, and eventually guitar geeks latched onto the videos and spread the word about his skills.
“Even if it’s not necessarily a real extensive repair, if it’s a really valuable guitar, that’s the kind of work he gets his hands on,” said Frank McDermott, owner of the Uptown Athens guitar shop Blue Eagle, 40 N. Court St. “He’s very meticulous, he thinks things through for quite a while before he puts his hands on it and he’ll end up doing an incredible job where you could hardly tell that anything was ever amiss.”
McDermott said he sends his oldest, most valuable guitars to Erlewine for repair.
Along with the repair work, Erlewine has crafted guitars such as legendary blues artist Albert King’s signature “Flying V,” Lucy, and said he’s now in the process of making replicas of the famed instrument. His craft and popular instructional tapes eventually allowed him to work for well-known artists such as Carlos Santana.
“People know me in the underground, and (Santana) had a special guitar. … His guitar tech would have been a video student of mine and said, ‘Send that guitar to Dan,’” Erlewine said. “(Those videos) made me famous — a big fish in a small pond.”
Erlewine loves Chicago blues and used to play for The Prime Movers, a 1960s-era Michigan-based electric blues group that once opened for Cream. Erlewine said he didn’t get a chance to meet Eric Clapton, but he did have a fairly good relationship with The Prime Movers’ drummer James Osterberg, better known as Iggy Pop.
But Erlewine said he decided to leave the rock star life behind when he got married in 1969.
“The year I got married, I decided just to fix guitars and make them rather than think I could make it as a player,” Erlewine said.
But he said it wasn’t easy to get started as a repairman because he had to take out loans and grants to build his shop. He also began writing guitar repair columns for Guitar Player Magazine in the late 1980s, which he continued to pen for more than 20 years before signing on with Vintage Guitar.
He said people are afraid to make repairs to old guitars because they seem delicate. However, he no longer hesitates after more than 30 years of perfecting his craft.
“It helps me to be in Vintage Guitar because (readers) say, ‘Hey, I’ve got one like that, could you do mine?’ ” Erlewine said. “I won’t get rich on that, but I enjoy doing it, and I’m a show-off. It’s more that I love to share, and it’s fun to show people how you did something.”
Erlewine also works for Stewart-Macdonald’s Guitar Shop Supply, 21 N. Shafer St., a guitar repair parts and tools shop where he has designed tools that make luthiers’ jobs easier.
Through Stewart-Macdonald, Erlewine has brought his videos into the 21st century with the company’s Trade Secrets series. It gives tips on how to repair guitars and gets craftsman to reveal their secrets on an easily accessible YouTube channel.
“Before Dan came around, luthiers didn’t want to share how they were doing stuff … it was considered a guild, and that was their craft and they wanted to hide it,” said Mike Kornmiller, vice president of marketing at Stewart-MacDonald. “Dan was one of the first people to get guitar repair people to open up and share how they do what they do.”
Even though he can fix and build guitars, write, shoot video, teach and play a mean lick, Erlewine said at the heart of it all he’s a fix-it man.
“I enjoy doing all the challenges that come by,” Erlewine said. “The thing about guitar repair is that it’s never boring. Every day it’s different, and every guitar repair is something new.”
wh092010@ohiou.edu
@Wilbur_Hoffman
