Hurricane Sandy, which devastated the Mid-Atlantic US in October 2012, claimed much in its damage toll. Amongst the wreckage was a vintage Gibson Hummingbird acoustic guitar belonging to Blitzen Trapper's Eric Earley.
Yet, despite coming out the other end “warped and screwed up,” the acoustic showed its strength and was brought back to life by his luthier. Today, it’s still going strong as his main live guitar.
Speaking in the latest issue of Guitar Player, the guitarist detailed some of his most beloved six-strings, with the seemingly invincible Hummingbird right at the top of the list.
“Somewhere around 2008 I walked into a good guitar shop in Eugene, Oregon and picked up a Hummingbird, and I’ve been playing that guitar ever since,” he says of the love story's beginnings.
“It’s mostly my live guitar. I will track with it now and again, but I don’t mess with it too much when I’m not on the road.” It's wise, considering the guitar is lucky to even still be playable. “That guitar has been through so much,” he adds.
“One time when we were on tour with Brandi Carlile in 2012, the Hummingbird got flooded along with the whole bus during what I’m thinking might have been Hurricane Sandy. We had the bus parked in New Jersey while we were in New York City, and it flooded all night. When we arrived at the venue the next day I pulled the guitar out and it was soaked and warped and just screwed up.”
For one, Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour – who says his forthcoming solo LP is the best thing he’s written since The Dark Side Of The Moon – said recently that he believes vintage guitars will always sound better. Especially so with acoustics, he specified, saying that their different pieces of wood “gradually become in harmony with each other over years of playing.”
Earley, then, can throw a resistance to storms among the list of plus points when it comes to vintage craftsmanship. After the tour, a visit to his luthier, Hummingbird in hand, underlined the guitar's staying power.
“My luthier back home said, ‘Well, let’s clamp it up, dry it out and see what happens.’” Earley details. “Insurance paid me out for the claim, and then two months later the guitar was right back in shape. It was like a freebie.
“I was like, ‘Holy crap, I’m going to tour with this guitar some more!‘ Those old Gibsons are so tough, it’s crazy.”
A mahogany build, Earley has attributed the wood’s ruggedness for the Hummingbird's resurrection.
“I’ve toured with an all-mahogany SG for years, and that thing is also indestructible,” he says. “I think that one went through the flood too, but nothing happened. It just dried out.”
Similarly, Black Crowes guitarist Rich Robinson lost “scores of vintage guitars” at the hands of Hurricane Sandy, but another steely Gibson, a ‘68 Goldtop, was able to pull off a similarly miraculous feat.
“I lost around 70 guitars,” he told Total Guitar. “My 1964 ES-335 got destroyed. I sent it to get fixed because it was delaminating and they tried but it was never the same. It sounded horrible to me and didn’t play well.
“But,” he continues, “there was a 1968 Goldtop that got damaged and actually came back better after getting fixed.”
Before the turnaround, the guitar’s condition looked bleak. Robinson’s expectations were low.
“It was so destroyed you could take the paint off with your hands,” he recalls, with the guitar’s legacy now expanding onto his pedalboard.
“They mixed [the old paint] back together to refinish the guitar,” Robinson says. “Then used the leftovers for a pedal which had a mahogany back, just like the Goldtop!”
When it comes to storm-battered Gibson guitars, then, it turns out there’s life in the old dogs yet.
To read the full interview with Earley, pick up a copy of the new issue of Guitar Player at Magazines Direct.
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