For Jennings the most memorable American Music Furni- ture moment has been building a cabinet for luthier Wayne Henderson. He was chronicled in the Allen St. John book Clapton’s Guitar: Watching Wayne Henderson Build the Perfect Instrument. “I read the book about 10 years ago when it first came out,” he explains. “Wayne is legendary. He has a list of requests from prospective customers that exceeds his remaining years as a luthier. He kind of builds what he wants to build for who he wants to build for. He builds 30-35 guitars a year and about half go to charities he supports, a handful go to friends, who are typically talented young musicians that Wayne spots and knows they’ll make good use of his instruments. When you go down to the Henderson Festival each June he’ll give one as a prize to the best player. He’s also made one for major stars like Vince Gill who come out to perform at the festival. I met Wayne at a house concert in Raleigh, North Carolina where he was playing. The “house” was the home of one of our customers and friends who invited me down because he thought Wayne would love our cabinets. Turned out he was right. Wayne offered to build me a guitar and trade me for a cabinet. I built the cabinet and we did our trade right before the last Henderson Festival. He’s a fine gentleman, and it’s one of the points of pride in my life that we could
make something he’d want enough to trade me a guitar for it.” “For example, the neck retaining solution that became Neck-Tie™ was a result of working with a customer in Southern California who was worried about his guitars falling over in the cabinet during an earthquake.” The American Music Furniture team has been in business for over 5 years now and operates in 3,000 square feet shop in rural Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and hand-builds an average of three cabinets every week.
83
NOVEMBER 2018 • SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS MAGAZINE
Made with FlippingBook Learn more on our blog