Steve Lyons

Description of new work

“There are millions of cheap, crappily made instruments out there, and it’s not helping music,” says Ted Moniak, a jocular, fortyish man whose ursine demeanor reflects his business’s moniker: Laughing Bear Instruments. Ted, a double bass maker, is one of four luthiers practicing their art in Paonia, a small, rural town of roughly fifteen hundred souls, nestled up toward the West Elk Mountains in the North Fork Valley of Delta County, Colorado.

“A student says to me ‘I’m not a very good violinist.’ I say, ‘No, that’s not true: you’ve got an instrument that Pagganini couldn’t get a good sound out of.”

The other Paonia luthiers share Moniak’s dismay at the quality of many factory-built musical instruments: “I’ve made a good living from instrument repair,” says Hugh McFarland, a tall, wiry, dark-haired, pony-tailed man who recently purchased ten acres near town to set up an electric guitar making shop. “ People buy a pigs ear and want a silk purse out of it.” But he says that mass production does have one advantage: “You can go into a Guitar Center, they’ll have 30 instruments lined up, the same thing you want to buy. You just go down the line till you find the one that plays the way you like.”

Lou Hayes, an energetic man with a hearty laugh and a quick, elfish grin, moved to Paonia from Carbondale two years ago. As an acoustic guitar builder, he agrees with these observations. He also notes that during the 70s and 80s the factories that had the most prestigious names were coasting on their reputations. “ Years ago you’d either buy a Martin or a Gibson, you wouldn’t think of anything else,” he says. But as quality slid, top musicians took notice.

That gave a boost to luthiers, who found more artists seeking them out in the quest for the highest quality instruments. “ Hand builders set a bench mark that factories have to catch up to,” Lou says. “I’m sure we’ve been the flea on the elephant’s butt, but still we’ve been there.”

Lou adds that in the guitar world things have improved. The best guitar factories now use CNC (computer numerically controlled machines) and have found a formula that works well a high percentage of the time. “Every once in a while you’re gonna have a dog, that’s just the way it’s gonna be. But most of the time you can still get a good instrument.”

But with hand built instruments, each Paonia luthier agrees, you get vital attention that shows up as superior sound and feel. “Every piece of wood is unique. You can’t treat them as if they are all the same,” explains Ted Birk, Moniak’s business partner, a thin man with fine features, bright eyes and hair like Beethoven’s. “We select our wood carefully and we tap and vibrate each piece as we shape it.”

Hayes concurs:” The key to a good instrument is that all the wood has to be musical,” he says. “ If I’m building for a particular style of playing, whether it be a flat-picking style, or finger picking style, I can match all the wood in the guitar to maximize what that person is doing. The best musicians realize that the more versatile the instruments are, the more expressive they can be artistically.”

Moniak and Birk buy much of their wood locally. They use willow for their basses from a tree local elk rancher and bass player Willy Kistler had to cut down to put up a fence. Willow is not commercially available. They also buy from Chris Johnson and David Moore, local loggers who use a horse team to harvest their wood, and from Don Musser, a supplier in Cotopaxi. Lou uses western slope engleman spruce and wood from a California supplier. Hugh is still buying from his connections in Chicago, but is interested in buying locally as soon as he’s settled and has done more research.

You might think that people who hand build instruments received their skills from a mentor in the family, a tradition passed down through the generations from father to son. Not so for the Paonia foursome.

“When I was twelve, my science teacher brought this banjo to class and played it with this flashy, Dixieland style,” Ted Moniak says. “ I saw that and I wanted one. I grew up really poor, so I built one out of a half of a baseball bat and a tambourine. And, unbelievably, it worked. Then I made an oboe out of a newel post (so somewhere out there there’s a banister with a big gap in it). I hollowed it out and drilled holes in it. It was a snake-charmer thing. When I made a trombone out of several smashed up trombones and sold it, I realized I could fix instruments and make money.”

Later, Moniak apprenticed under Martin Sheridan at Abbey Strings in Chicago where he learned how to repair basses, and much about building them. After moving to Paonia, he teamed up with Ted Birk and built a Martin-style guitar from a kit for local musician Bill Powers, who plays with the band Sweet Sunny South. Bill wanted a left-handed model and was pleased with the results. Moniak and Birk’s next project was a custom, full-sized acoustic bass, an instrument that stands six feet high and thirty-three inches wide. The client wanted it built in an old style for it’s rich, deep sonority. “It needed all the air volume we could get,” Moniak says. “ So I drew up plans. I’d rebuild basses before but hadn’t built one from scratch. There were things I knew had to be done, but I didn’t know how to do them.”

That’s where Ted Birk’s expertise really paid off. Birk came to lutherie through his experience making lap-strake canoes, finishing boat interiors and cabinetry. “ Everything on a boat is curved,” he says. “There's a certain set up and way you fasten things to a boat that lends itself to stringed instruments.” By combining their complementary skills, Moniak and Birk produced an instrument with a fine tone.

Much of what Moniak and Birk have since learned about instrument making has come from the few books and journals devoted to their craft, and by searching out and talking to others who have mastered the art.

Lou Hayes says the roots of his craftsmanship go way back to his model airplane making days when, as a boy, he spent many hours constructing the balsa wood and tissue paper aircraft. He admits that most of his creations had flights of glory that ended in flaming explosions and the soft patter of tattered pieces falling to the ground. Cherry bombs work very well for that, thank you very much. But the last, a Nieuport, World War One era bi-plane, survives and hangs from the second story ceiling in his barn workshop, a reminder of humble beginnings.

Like Ted, he made his first guitar from a kit. “ A musician in Aspen played it and liked it so well, he asked me to make him one. I said ‘Wow, I like making these and someone wants to pay me for it!’ That set my wheels and heart in motion. I’d put one together, sell it and have enough money to get the next kit.”

After four kits, Lou took two intensive guitar-making workshops with a master craftsman named Charles Fox. He now makes all his guitars from scratch. He also attends luthier conferences in California put on by the Luthiers Mercantile International where one hundred to one hundred and twenty-five hand-builders convene biannually to share new techniques in their evolving art.

Hugh McFarland took a different route. His parents gave him a guitar and lessons while he was in high school. He found he liked to collect and trade the instruments (by the time he graduated he owned 25). “I’d fix one up, make it worth more money, and then sell it so I could get this really cool guitar. That’s how I got into instrument repair,” he says. After graduation, he did stints with music stores as a repairman and worked for a company called Dean Guitars as “an assembly line human being.” When a major instrument repairman moved out of Chicago, Hugh got many of his clients.

But it was his years with Dean Guitars that taught him how to build them. In 1994 he started a guitar company with a friend named Dan Laken. They took the “Lake” from Dan’s name and the “land” from McFarland and created Lakeland Guitars. One of their models received twenty-four out of twenty-five stars in a Bass Player Magazine review.

Hugh is no longer with Lakeland. He’s now making his guitars under the brand name McFarland.

So why have all these craftsman landed in out-of-the-way Paonia? Wood changes size as humidity rises and falls, which results in warps and ill fitting finished pieces. Ted, Ted, Lou and Hugh all agree the North Fork’s low, stable humidity is ideal for their craft. But that’s not what drew them. The ideal conditions for organic farming drew Ted Birk. Lou moved over from Carbondale to escape the rising cost of living there. Ted Moniak decided to move while visiting a friend who lived in Paonia. “I’d just finished my apprenticeship with Abbey Strings in Chicago and I was having trouble with my landlord. The timing was right,” he says. Hugh decided to move after falling in love with the area while visiting Moniak.

They all credit the high number of musicians living in the North Fork Valley, and Paonia’s impressive variety of musical venues, with their decision to settle there. “Zach Mann at Pizza My Heart brings in bands regularly,” Moniak says. “As does Thomas Smith at the Blue Sage. They have it all; blue grass, jazz, Cajun, rock, folk. Michael McKenna, who is an incredible percussionist himself, brings in these fabulous African drummers and musicians. And the big-deal traveling bands always want to come back because they are treated so well.”

“ I get to more musical events here than I did in Chicago,” says McFarland. “New years day they had like thirty different acts going at the Blue Sage.”

The town even sports Valley West Recording Studio run by Thicker Than Thieves band members Rick Stockton and Helen Highwater. Many of the North Fork Valley’s musicians record CDs there.

Moniak notes that there are many classical music fans in the area, too. The Lamborn Valley School hosts the Valley Youth Orchestra, which has forty North Fork Valley students, and gives concerts at least twice a year. Tyme and Catie Mienka, who teach classical music in Paonia at the Colorado West School of Performing Arts, sponsor the Western Slope Chamber Music Series, which puts on six performances a year. Their programs run the gamut from baroque to contemporary and focus on Colorado artists from the Front Range and the local area.


What about making a living? Does following their passion put food on the table and keep the house warm in the winter? Not exactly. Each luthier, with the exception of McFarland, has another source of income. Moniak is a traveling musician with the group Buster Jiggs. Birk runs Stinky Blooms, an organic flower farm, with his wife Ashley. And Hayes teaches Bikram Yoga classes out of his house.

“Basses we’ve made sell for ten grand, and that’s cheap,” Moniak says. “But you can’t make a full-time living with it in this rural place. You need to be near a big city where there’s a concentration of bass players.” Most of Moniak and Birk’s work is commissioned. They can make an acoustic bass in about two months.

Hayes has made as many as fourteen guitars in a year, but says that creates a hectic pace. Ten to twelve is comfortable. “My biggest nightmare would be some crazy build list, and deadlines, and having to hire two helpers who I’m constantly watching over their shoulders, and pulling my hair out because of the success,” Hayes says. “Maybe I don’t want that.”

Hayes initially sold his guitars at the Carbondale Mountain Fair and through his connections at the Great Divide, a music store in Aspen. But his reputation is getting around and he now does mostly commissioned work. This will be his fifth year supplying the award guitar at the Planet Blue Grass Folks Festival in Lyons. His top-end model sells for $4,500.

McFarland, on the other hand, is focused on the production end of craft building. “I’m a factory guy,” he says. “ I get into jigs and fixtures.” Hugh wants to turn out a larger number of instruments than would be possible otherwise, while still giving each instrument his full attention. He intends to sell his electric basses, through his contacts in Chicago and over the Internet, for just under $2,000 each. “I’m making the working man’s instrument,” he says.

“We’re not going to make big bucks, or put factories out of business,” Moniak says with a laugh, expressing a sentiment all the Paonia luthiers share. “If we wanted that we’d become lawyers. We do this work because it’s challenging and we love it.”