This summer’s music merchants trade show was held in Austin, Texas, giving all Collings dealers an excellent opportunity to check out the new Collings shop. It’s about four times larger than their old facility, and Bill Collings has taken advantage of all that space by stashing a couple of his hot rods among the stacks of tonewoods for building acoustic guitars and mandolins, and his new electric guitars (see page 2 of this issue).

As you might expect for a trade show held in Austin, the after-hours events were drenched in barbeque sauce. Gryphon’s Willie Carter and Matt Lynch roamed the aisles of the trade show by day, checking with our suppliers and looking for new gear. In the evenings, they attended the open house at Collings and other open-invitation get-togethers with live music and a surplus of good food. It’s tough working for Gryphon!

For me, the highlight of the trip came after the show closed. Steve Robinson, one of the more highly visible astronauts in the space program, with three flights to his credit, had extended an invitation to tour the Space Center in Houston. Steve was a frequent customer at Gryphon when a student at Stanford, and later while working at NASA Ames. Long before he hit the big time, he was cutting pearl for banjo neck inlays and playing string bass and banjo in local string bands (he now plays lead electric guitar in a rock band where all the members are astronauts). Lucky me, my visit coincided with the space shuttle’s landing, so I was given a running commentary on what the crew was experiencing while watching the landing on the big screen in the main auditorium. On his shuttle trip, Steve took a Gryphon T-shirt along for the ride, and we’ll soon have it on display. That’s about as close as we’ll get to sending a Gryphon into space!

Yikes! What Happened to Summer?
Can you believe it? It’s fall again, and soon we’ll be sharpening knives and attacking hapless pumpkins. Summer may be over, but there’s still time to squeeze in some lessons or classes on a style of music you’ve long wanted to tackle. Better hurry, because the demands of the holiday season will soon be upon us all, and you know what that means for any lingering resolutions for 2006.

This fall Gryphon has added two new instructors, Roz Lorenzato for children and Carol Holsinger for harp students (see page 7 of this issue). With over a dozen private and group instructors, we probably have a suitable teacher, and schedule, for just about anyone. Check the “Lessons & Rentals” pages of the Gryphon website for a complete list of instructors. We have some excellent one-day workshops scheduled for the fall, so even if you can’t commit to a series of classes, a couple of hours on a Saturday afternoon will provide lots of inspiration and new material.