Beautiful downtown Vacaville, CA. That’s where my dear friend, Ralph Koeppe and his wonderful wife, Diane live. I used to see Ralph semi-regularly years ago when he worked for Anheuser Busch. Business would bring him home to St Louis on visits to the home office down on Pestalozzi Street. Ralph would come to see us play music, be it the Road Apples or some other incarnation of the usual suspects. Over the years we’ve kept in touch through the mail...the real mail, the US Mail, by God. I really wanted to stop and see Ralph and catch up with him. Ralph recommended a spot about ten miles from his house, Solano Lake Campground. It was a fine spot on a little river that emanates from the hills around Napa Valley, which is the next valley over from Vacaville. WE picked out a nice spot under some large, spreading trees that offered shade in the building heat of the early summer.
Our first night there, however, the Pacific Gas and Electric Company turned off the electricity in the area. This was due to the extreme dryness of the season and high winds. It was this very set of conditions that touched off the terrible and devastating Paradise Fire of last fall. That fire devastated the entire town of Paradise and killed a slew of people. Since PG and E was being held responsible for this event, they were definitely not going to take any chances going forward. It got real hot the next day and the electric was not turned back on until late in the afternoon. That was ok, as we had lunch with the Koeppe’s that day. The next day we decided to go tour Napa Valley.
Having never been to Napa Valley I had built images in my mind of what it must be like. I pictured breezy warm hillsides lush with growing grapes, perhaps little streams running here and there. I was underwhelmed with reality. It’s devilishly hot there in the summer. There was a haze over the valley, probably more like pollution from the zillions of streaming cars and buses. Like so many things in California, and for that matter, all over this country, Napa Valley, to me, seemed like a caricature of itself. It seems like it’s become less REAL and more of an expensive model of what people want it to be, or think it should be.
Over the winter, hanging out in the desert where it’s drier than bleached bone, my Worthington Guitar developed some new cracks, while some of the old ones reappeared. My Worthington is my pride and joy and any serious damage that befalls it doubles the effect on me. I can’t express what that guitar means to me. I was bummed out in the extreme. When I was first learning how to play Bluegrass music and playing with my best friend, Bob Breidenbach, I had an Alvarez guitar. It was not a great guitar, but it was serviceable and semi-respectable. I longed for a “real” Dreadnought guitar, but there was no way I could afford to buy one. I could barely pay for my share of rent most months and if it wasn’t for Diane, I would have starved to death. No way could I buy a new guitar or a classic Martin. Bob told me that his brother, Donald’s friend, Rich Worthington was building classical and flamenco guitars at his apartment in University City. Maybe he would build a dreadnought for me.
I sought Rich out. He knew of our band, the Road Apples and knew Bob and I played music together a lot. I asked him if he could, if he would, build me a dreadnought. Rich was overwhelmingly enthusiastic about it. We talked about it for a several hours, what woods to use, what it would look like, how wide of a neck I preferred. I was so jazzed, so excited about this turn of events. Rich set to work. Maybe a month, perhaps 6 weeks later, Rich announced it was ready. There it was...a brilliant piece of work so very unique and different from any other guitar I’d ever seen. It has mahogany back and sides, which was polished to a satin finish, not triple bright and thickly finished like so many guitars are. The top was redwood. Now, this was totally different. The sound that redwood gives off is much like cedar... deep, resonant, and very wide and expansive. The neck is purple Amaranth wood. I’ve never seen another guitar with an Amaranth neck. It’s a deep purple color, not bright at all, and it’s weight is substantial. It does not bow or bend. Though it does have a neck rod installed for adjustments, I’ve never had to adjust the neck in all these 40 plus years.
The guitar was built in 1973, in the spring of the year. The neck facing, bridge, and support struts are all Brazilian Rosewood. Brazilian Rosewood is no longer available, you cannot legally buy it. It is that rare. The sound was and is divine to me. It sounds like no other guitar and it sounds great. It’s a driving hoss of a guitar...loud, though balanced across all the strings. The original top split and was replaced with Sitka Spruce in 1975. It has the finest grain of spruce you might ever see. Though I hated to see the redwood top bite the dust, the end result with the spruce top is better. It cuts through much better. I almost forgot to mention that the sound hole had (has) a rosewood rosette that is made like a Celtic knot, a 3D filigree of exquisite beauty. The back has rosewood inlay in a floral patterns that were hand-crafted by Rich. The “W” for Worthington on the headstock and the fret markers are all from muscle shells from the Cuivre River in Missouri. It is not the easiest guitar to play. I use only medium gauge strings and I keep the action a little high. But it makes such a great sound I dare not change from that.
My Worthington sounds magnificent to me, but what’s so important and memorable to me, and means the world to me, is the humanity of the man that is built into it. Rich put his heart and soul into that guitar for me. He made it for me, no one else. His artistry, his time, effort, soul, and mastery of technique, all came together in that instrument. It is my musical soul mate.
But back to the cracks...As luck would have it, or maybe it wasn’t luck at all, there is a man with a shop near Solano Campground that has a luthier school. Yeah, not 5 miles from where we were camped! Al Calderone is his name. I stumbled upon his shop, sought him out, and showed him the guitar, the challenges so to speak. Al was really impressed with the instrument. He studied it intently and told me he was confident he could fix it. Being a guitar builder himself, he totally understood my love of that instrument. He accepted the challenge. He fixed three cracks, filled in the rosewood neck face where my fingers had worn pot holes in the wood, re-fretted the neck with superior wire that he swears will never wear out, put new bone in the saddle, and basically repaired that guitar better than I had hoped for. I was overjoyed, My fingers fairly swept over the frets I was so happy. I owe Al a lot, He saved my guitar, my Worthington.
The number of performances I’ve played with that guitar are, well, maybe in the thousands. The hours I’ve sat and played by myself and escaped the surly bonds of day to day living are perhaps in the millions...I don’t know. But every time I play that guitar I’m transported, transcended. I can’t imagine a relationship with any other instrument that strong for so long. I only hope that when I’m gone and transported and transcended for eternity, someone else will appreciate the humanity and musicality of that instrument and fall in love with it as I have. It needs to be played.