MF AV Team Trip Blog

In March a couple of us met up with Larry DiMarzio to shoot the May cover for Musician’s Friend down in San Francisco with Joe Satriani.

The weather was nice, a bit windy, and it didn’t take much at one point ot get us outside to take a few shots on some nearby railroad tracks.

Check out the snap shots from the shoot!

You can now see the video on Musician’s Friend, HERE!



Here are some snap shots of before and after the shoot! ENJOY!

November 13-16, 2007 – Bill and I ventured down to Anaheim. We weren’t there for Disneyland, we weren’t there for NAMM (that’s in January). We were there to visit SKB Cases, the finest molded case company there is! The innovation behind this company and the technology that goes into ensuring the finest quality is amazing! So amazing, even the military uses these cases on a regular basis!

We filmed the processes involved and instead of the wood smells and aromas we were used to with the several guitar factories we have visited this year, we had the aroma of plastic… nice hot plastic. The nice thing is the place was we vented, so it really wasn’t bad at all.

I encourage you to look through these pictures! The factory tour will be coming soon on the Musician’s Friend and Harmony Central websites!

October 22-25, Bill and I ventured back out to wonderful Tennessee to visit the 4th factory of our Gibson factory tours, in Memphis. The day we arrived it was moderately warm, and overcast, and we were right around the corner from famous Beale Street. As usual, when we travel most of the day, we were quite hungry and proceeded to eat our first barbecue meal. This was by far, not the last, either!

Gibson Custom Memphis was a spacious factory compared to the others we had seen. It was inside of a beautiful building in the heart of downtown. The same facility also had several ballrooms and meeting rooms, much like a small convention center, where they had many performances throughout the year. And of course, at the top corner of the block, was a Gibson Showcase restaurant/lounge where other great bands have played. This was a beautiful facility!

The second day rolled around and we walked outside to realize it was no longer warm, in fact, it was quite chilly, and it rained during the rest of our visit. Nonetheless, the hospitality was great, the city was wonderful, we didn’t get a chance to visit Graceland, but we drove by Sun Studios. Enjoy the pictures of the tour!

On October 10th we took over the stage at the Craterian Theater in our own town. Fortunately, Jeff Pevar lives close by and we had him join us to help show off the new Gibson 339, and as well as a new Rogue electric guitar, which he quite enjoys.

To give you some idea of who Jeff Pevar is, he has played with legends such as Ray Charles, Joe Cocker, Marc Cohn, Crosby & Nash, David Crosby, and is a part of CPR (Crosby, Pevar, & Raymond). The list goes on: CSN, Donald Fagen & NY Soul, Graham Nash Band, Rickie Lee Jones, and so many more you can see at www.pevar.com.

You will see in the photos how we were able to use lighting, and the openness of the stage to create a very comfortable environment for all of us! We hope to do many more shoots in this space, and this one has set a new bar for us!

September 25th and 26th Bill and I were in Bozeman, Montana, which, by the way now ranks at the top of our list of the most beautiful places we have visited yet! The weather was favorable, and allowed us to enjoy the wonderful scenery of surrounding mountains.

Of course, we weren’t there for the scenery. This was factory 3 of 4 of the Gibson factories we are working on. This particular one, was the wonderful factory of Gibson Acoustic guitars! We had the pleasure of being guided through the factory by the well known master luthier, Ren Ferguson.

This factory is a well organized and well ran operation that takes great pride in the extensive hands-on work, while still embracing opportunity to use modern technology to help maintain certain consistencies.

Enjoy the photos and stay tuned for the videos.

We had the opportunity to visit Eric Johnson in his studio and spend some great time with him! It was a great visit, with over an hour of straight footage captured per camera!

***SEE THE VIDEO HERE!*** (Under the Interview Section)

Below, the photo gallery, we added some more snap shots from the video. Keep watching this post! I will put a link to the video when it’s up! We believe it will be the best piece on Eric out there.

Tuesday the 18th Bill and I drove up Northeast from here to a beautiful area in Central Oregon, called Bend. Just outside of town is a small area called Tumalo, where Breedlove Guitars is located.

Our trip started early. In order to get up there by 9am, with just over a 3-hr drive, the day was like any other trip. The wonderful change with this was we drove. Instead of hopping on an airplane where you are not quite sure who you are going to be sitting next to, whether you will be comfortable or not, we drove. The vehicle we had told us the temperature outside. We knew it was going to be chilly, but as we were driving over the passes we saw the temperature hit the low 30′s!

The day warmed up nicely as we made it to Bend in good time, had a coffee, then drove out to the factory. This was a wonderful visit! The factory had a great warmth of people who really had a passion to be there.

Our guide for the video, Jayson Bowerman, a 12-year employee of Breedlove, confidently walked us through every process, even doing many of them himself.

Check out the pre-tour tour pictures below! Stay tuned for the factory video coming soon.

After our wonderful trip to beautiful New Brunswick, Canada, where everything is green, and the Sabian Factory positioned right on a river, Bill and I fly into NYC! What a change!

So, neither of us had been to NY before and we definitely were overwhelmed at first. We stayed at the Marriott Marquis right in the heart of Times Square! Talk about, right in the middle of it all! That was the 29th when we arrived from Canada, in the morning. We had the rest of the day to venture a little, until we found out our rooms weren’t even ready until late afternoon. So, we napped in the lobby.

Later that day, a new addition to our team arrived into town, Skyler. He is based out of our Salt Lake office. We all went to eat.

The 30th began the venture of Rock ‘n Roll Fantasy Camp, which turned out to be quite the adventure in and of itself! Bill and I had video cameras, and Skyler had the digital still camera and we went to town! We covered a little of the progress of each of the bands, and more importantly, we were able to get a nice handful of interviews with the camp counselors. Here is a list of the counselors at the Camp in NY:

Spike Edney
Corky Laing
Alan White
Mark Hudson
Sandy Gennaro
Glenn Hughes
Simon Kirke
Larry Oakes
Gary Burr
Jane Wiedlin

In addition, we had some guests pass though:

Paul Stanley
Leslie West
Mark Farner
Paul Shaffer
Max Weinberg
Scott Ian
Bruce Kulick
David Letterman Horn Section

This made for a great place to be last weekend! Shuffling between 3 practice studios, thankfully, all within walking distance, and lugging our gear around, we got a lot done.

On the last night we did a full 3-camera shoot with full audio of the final concert at BB Kings, where each band played 12-mintes, usually 3 songs. At the end, the counselors all got up and played through a nice set of tunes! That video will be available soon!

In the meantime, enjoy the photo colliage of the camp! There are 6 galleryies posted here! Go through them! Enjoy them! You can click on the gallery to take you to the photo site where you can see them all a little easier, if you wish.

We should thank David Fishof, Producer of the event, and the lovely Camp Host, Elizabeth Vargas.

Enjoy the rest of the blog!

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DAY 1

DAY 2

DAY 3

DAY 4

DAY 5

DAY 6 (our day off in NY)

Thursday the 23rd we flew into LA. Friday the 24th we spent most of the day documenting a photo shoot on film and with stills. This session was with Steve Vai as the subject for Musician’s Friend. Photographer and music icon, Larry DiMarzio was a joy to work with! In addition to him and his crew, our very own Director of Creative Services, Ken Sager was there to help direct the shooting making this a real success! When the session was a wrap, we had Larry and Steve sit down and interview each other for 20-minutes. This allowed us to capture their story behind their long professional relationship.

SEE THE VIDEOS HERE! 

As a side note, Larry took a couple of snap shots of Bill and I, and now those pictures are going to be our profile shots for our bio.

Our main reason for the trip to Nashville, TN was to visit the Gibson USA and Custom Factories. This was a great experience! It was a bit of a drool factor to see the hundreds of SG’s and Les Paul’s, V’s, and the new Reverse V’s, just to mention a few.

In this slide show there are 291 images from these 2 factories! Enjoy them!

We will be putting together individual videos for each factory, then after we cover the Gibson Bozeman and Memphis factories we will be looking at a definitive project to show the family of plants.