It's been an amazing week out here in the little workshops in the woods, where orders are being taken and parts are being ordered and wood is being crafted into tools of creation. Sounds so simple, doesn’t it? That’s the way it’s supposed to be. It was like that for a long time; the past couple of years, not so much. Being caught up on builds for the first time since 2004 (deliberately by choice in our case), some new models using new parts, a weekly very progressive neatening and refinement of shop areas and processes, and though it’s been hotter than Satan’s nuts, by God it feels like springtime again!
Work is good; sweat is righteous. But every day a battle? No, that’s exhausting and life doesn’t have to be that way. Doors and windows open, John Scofield A Go-Go, Dave Brubeck Jazz Goes to College, and a few Bill Evans trio and quartet recordings have been the tunes to a new batch of new designs in a new dawn. Jazz is the music for “becoming” in here, coming in as planks and becoming bass bodies-to-be. Aerosmith is for routing. But music with improvisation as its DNA is the soundtrack for this stage – meandering, flowing like a river. Long Grateful Dead jams, Miles Davis’ early ‘70s sonic explorations, those too. And Bill Evans… one of the biggest musical influences on me now, though I’m not a pianist and don’t play real jazz. His influence on me is harmonic, and that’s deep in the basis of everything any way it comes out. I like how this guy stacks his notes into chords and the notes he connects them with. It can sound very complex but there is a simplicity to it underneath, this note and… then… that. Delicious.
“The Bean” guitar was not my first build, but it was the first I designed off of a blank page, 25 years ago. Completed in June of 1998, it taught me more about what was to become my career than any other. An exercise in simplicity and versatility, how their extremes can work together, and - in that – a bit about life as well. Its influence can be seen in the lastest Birdsong bass, the Sport (models). With the Bean (originally referred to as the ”S1”), I wanted one simple line and an organic shape, like something that could have grown from the earth. One simple pickup that, with simple controls wired to be a bit more interactive with each other, could be versatile while not sounding like other common guitars. I needed twang, sing, and some cool and dark smokey tones – so I aimed for Garcia twang, Santana sing, and Stills “Wooden Ships”… and I got really close!
Once it was done, it looked like a bean. And I had a little music shop up in Massachusetts at that point with a helper who called me “Scott Bean,” so the name stuck. To the guitar, not me, except when I hear from Alan G. Long before Birdsong, this was the first model I made and sold more than one of, so it taught me about templates and process. I used it live, taught a bazillion lessons on it, used it in the studio. It sat in well because it sounded different, having its own voice that wasn’t a Strat or Tele or a Les Paul. This shape grew a tiny upper point for the ”S2” which never happened – a big move, short scale bass ideas, and Birdsong DID.
Having recently turned an original S2 body into the Sport bass prototype, I missed my old friend and took it out of its dusty, musty bag for a photo shoot. It felt so good in the hands again; this is a stage in my life where I am craving the simplicity of life I’ve known at times, times with less and much less concern… but trying to balance that with what life has become and the blessings that came. Certainly not overly big or complex, just filled with more than I dreamed of or ever really planned for from the back of a van out on the highway with one key. And that young guy is still very much alive in me and sticks his head in the door when things become more difficult than they should be. “You lookin’ for me, bub?” I’d say no, but he’s the guy who draws the lines and writes the words. So yeah, man, come in.
The Bean reminds me of a lot – about that time and about who I am, and about the essence of anything I craft, whether words and music or wood and wire, or the life that gets lived and arranged around these. I’m amazed to be here 30 years later, in a garden partly formed by those dreams, as followed and chased though at times just which is unclear. I sit in the rebuilt workshop of a mentor now moved and mine for many years. There is a screen in front of me where, if I filter out all the trash, I can see video posts from Neal Schon, one of the sounds that woke me up to music over 40 years ago, doing his daily jams to keep his chops up. People can comment, ask a question. He answers. Unprecedented access and connection. I can reach YOU in a dozen ways wherever you are; we can talk, share, do business. This is an amazing age we live in, with incredible tools. They simplify and complicate at the same time, and I just have to try not to do that. Years ago I reached the limit of the technology I can reasonably work, and I’m watching that grow obsolete by the day.
But there is a liberating feeling that comes with loss, and we do the best of what we’ve held a disservice by not embracing that too. Because life is amazing and there is more to it than what’s next on a list. Its magic is often to be discovered where you just follow the calling and show up like some missing piece of a magic moment. That’s what it feels like to have a great song fall through your head or a design that really works come out of your hands. Those take time and space left open, and room in life for the quest, to be wandering but not lost, for me at least. That’s when they come. That field is the playground of the muse. And the muse likes me to be distracted from the distractions. Nothing full to the point of diminishing returns. Staying rooted to what really works. Making the basics the most important, and bringing my highest and the absolute best of all this life and time has to offer TOWARD THAT.
This little guitar may only mean a lot because of what happened after it, but it represents even more to me now than it did when it was the greatest thing I’d ever done. I’ve always wanted to get back to them and make more, and maybe there will come a time that happens. When, after having come so far, maybe it’s time to go back. For now, onward! T.S. Eliot: “…and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”
