PHOTOS BY SHEM ROOSE
2025-09-29
TRADITIONAL
ERIC HEYWOOD'S HASTY REPLACEMENT
Eric Heywood is very important to me! Back when I first started maing guitars as a hobby in my basement, I gave away or sold enough to friends [including some pro musicians] to think maybe I could someday quit my job and make instruments full-time. I got a real shot in the arm when Eric, whose fantastic playing I had admired ever since seeing him on stage with Son Volt and Freakwater in the final years of the last century, ordered a guitar from me. A stranger! A professional musician! Ordered a guitar from me! It was exciting then and remains exciting to this day. It's been a thrill for me to see him play the guitars I've made for him all over the world with a long list of great bands. And now we've been friends for many years.
SO! Imagine our mutual dismay when his orginal guitar, his 20-year companion, was stolen from the backstage area of a festival in Montana. It was fairly extreme. At the time, Eric was due in Burlington a few weeks later to play with Ani Difranco. I dropped everything and whipped up this replacement, coming as close to the original as I could manage. On the very day that I finished it, the original was recovered from the woods in Darby, Montana, spotted by a farmer where it had been sitting face-down in its SKB rigid soft case, for a month. He scrubbed the rust off the frets and was back in business. A few days later, he left Burlington with two matching guitars.
Just like the original, this one has a sugar pine body, maple / Indian rosewood neck, Bigsby B5, and the lacquer color we've come to know as Heywood Yellow. Lollar Standard-wind P90 and low-wind Imperial pickups.
SO! Imagine our mutual dismay when his orginal guitar, his 20-year companion, was stolen from the backstage area of a festival in Montana. It was fairly extreme. At the time, Eric was due in Burlington a few weeks later to play with Ani Difranco. I dropped everything and whipped up this replacement, coming as close to the original as I could manage. On the very day that I finished it, the original was recovered from the woods in Darby, Montana, spotted by a farmer where it had been sitting face-down in its SKB rigid soft case, for a month. He scrubbed the rust off the frets and was back in business. A few days later, he left Burlington with two matching guitars.
Just like the original, this one has a sugar pine body, maple / Indian rosewood neck, Bigsby B5, and the lacquer color we've come to know as Heywood Yellow. Lollar Standard-wind P90 and low-wind Imperial pickups.
