Interview with a guitar

There’s a saying among musicians that goes, “It’s not the instrument, it’s the player.”

What that means is that the most expensive, elaborately-crafted, rare instrument will only impress an audience in the hands of a great player. There are countless hobbyists and beginners who own incredible pieces that came with astronomical price tags - and, conversely, countless gifted players regularly forced to perform on inadequate equipment, due to lack of funds.

While playing a blues gig at Petaluma’s Big Easy, I had the pleasure of performing with a local guitarist, Chris Pimentel. In addition to being a gifted and versatile player, he was playing on a guitar that took my breath away - in sound and in physical beauty.

So, I decided to conduct a hypothetical interview with the guitar itself. If guitars could talk, here’s how the interview would go, but first:

SB: Can you tell us how and why Mr. Pimentel came to purchase you in 2011?

L5: “Chris had accepted a trio gig with my former owner, Carl Vast. Carl let Chris try me out for a couple of sets and that’s when Chris and I made a connection. The only custom work Chris had done to my factory specs, after buying me, was to change the pick guard setup to include a tone control knob. Originally, I was made with just one volume knob - not with all the bells and whistles you see on today’s pieces.”

SB: In your opinion, what are the genres of music you excel in?

L5: “Because my sound is round and dark and has an inherent note-sustaining ability, I am the ultimate jazz guitar, or what the players refer to as a ‘jazz box.’ And as blues came north from the Mississippi Delta, and started incorporating big-city jazz sounds; my sound also became an important ingredient that now defines the classic urban blues sound. Jazz and blues have always had a much closer relationship than most people realize. In some ways I’m just a one trick pony, in that I am best suited for one style and era of playing. But you should hear me on overdrive, when Chris pulls out the slide for some Elmore James (an original master of bottleneck blues style), which immediately takes the crowd back yet another decade. It’ll take you by surprise.”

SB: Why don’t you perform with that giant selection of foot pedals that you see players use?

L5: “I’d say that 95 percent of all the modern Rock, rhythm-and-blues, and pop players prefer to play Fender Telecasters or Stratocasters - solid body guitars. That’s the norm; and they use a full rack of pedals to give them different sounds and effects for a wide spectrum of genres they get called to play. But the guys that prefer to play jazz boxes like me have spent their career creating a particular sound they can be known for. I’m a firm believer in “If you spread yourself too thin, you just disappear.”

SB: Well, thanks for taking your time to talk to me. I hope to see you soon at one of Chris’s gigs.

L5: “The fact is that Chris doesn’t take me on all of his gigs. I’m basically an acoustic instrument, so he’ll be using some of his other pieces on the louder-volume rockin’ gigs. But I take solace in knowing that I’m Chris’s first choice for the hipper, more sophisticated gigs. And those are the one he likes best. So, it all works out pretty well … hey … and wait till some of my competition hears that a guitar finally got to tell it like it is!”

Contact Chris Pimentel at 762-8232.

(Sheldon Bermont is a longtime Petaluma musician. He can be reached by email at smb@sbermont writer.com)