VISITING VOICES
 Pluck
& Luck:
Renowned guitar maker Paul Reed Smith brings his lessons of
business success and guitar playing to Washington College.
By John A. Buettner '89
Gotta have it.
Professor George Spilich doesn't wait for much. Check writers
in the express lane? "You gotta be kiddin'!" Three-minute eggs?
"No way!" Fast food? "Too slow!" But when it comes to his Paul
Reed Smith electric guitar, he admits he's been pining away
for months. "You know as the old Supremes' hit goes, 'You can't
hurry love, you just have to wait,'" he says, forlorn and pensive.
"Any day now, I know my love will come to me."
Like the custom-built cars of old—Shelbys and Rolls-Royces and
Duisenbergs—Paul Reed Smith guitars roll off the assembly line
at the pace of all fine things built from start to finish by
loving craftsmen using the finest materials. Of course, their
exclusivity just increases the public demand.
"Paul Reed Smith is one of the great guitar makers of our time,"
says senior Joe Brooks, a student musician with his own campus
band. "I saw Dave Matthews playing with one once, and I asked
my friend about them. He said, 'That's a PRS guitar, but I'll
probably never be able to afford one.'"
The enthusiasm surrounding PRS guitars is cross-generational
and easy to understand.
"He's a major figure in the industry and what he has done for
the construction of guitars is amazing," said Ted Knight '97,
the College webmaster and a guitarist who helped to organize
the renowned guitar maker's October visit to campus.
Once Fender and Gibson were words that sent chills and pangs
of desire through every suburban kid with garage-band skills
and arena-sized dreams. But for today's generation, PRS is the
Holy Grail for anyone who wants to rock and roll. There's a
lot of mystique packed into those three initials. Heck, Professor
Spilich hocked his classic Gibson hollow-body electric in anticipation
of buying a new, custom-built PRS.
"It was hard parting with that old Gibson," Spilich says.
"I grew up with it. I'd had it since the '60s. But PRS is the
tops, the best of the best. I just had to have one."
PHOTO:
MATT SPANGLER
Paul Reed Smith encourages students in a guitar master class
to distinguish the emotional content inherent in each musical
interval.
INSTRUMENTS OF THE GODS
Few might know that the origin of PRS Guitars, the brain child
of the company's founder, Paul Reed Smith, is a true success
story with a local angle. It's a tale of pluck and luck, of
the passion that music inspires and the perseverance to see
your dream come alive. Born in Bowie, MD, Smith attended Bowie
High School and St. Mary's College. It was in college that his
passion for guitar making came alive after he hand-built his
first guitar for extra credit from his music professor. In 1975,
Smith opened a guitar shop on West Street in downtown Annapolis
and custom-built guitars for area musicians, honing his craft
and hoping for a break into the rock music industry. Like many
American kids, he loved rock music, and the dream of being a
guitar "god"—a Jimi Hendrix, a Carlos Santana, an Eddie Van
Halen—more than once crossed his mind. But he realized that,
though his playing might not take him to the top, his craft
just might.
"I remember hanging out at the local concert arenas for six,
seven hours before a show to make friends with the roadies,"
Smith tells. "With a backstage pass in hand, I'd peddle my guitars
to the stars. One night in ten I'd make a sale. I made deals.
If the big names didn't love the guitars, they didn't have to
pay me even when I knew I couldn't make my rent the next day.
After getting some single orders and a small following, we built
two prototypes. I popped them in the back seat of my truck and
cranked it up, calling on guitar dealers up and down the East
Coast. After a lot of miles I came back with enough orders to
start a company."
Now, after a quarter century—from lone craftsman to major manufacturer—Smith
is recognized for building the world's premier electric guitars,
the instruments of the guitar gods. Manufactured on the Eastern
Shore in Stevensville, MD, PRS guitars are known to both musicians
and music fans alike for their distinctive style and  sound,
and are seen in the hands of the world's finest players, from
the baby boomers' Carlos Santana to today's raves such as Dave
Matthews, Dave Navarro and Brad Delson of Linkin Park.
"I want to build guitars that will last beyond our children's
lifetimes," says Smith. "Am I attached to being remembered for
the music I play? No. Am I attached to the guitars I make being
remembered? Yes!"
IN A CHORD
But in no way is Smith just all business about guitars. It's
love, pure and simple. He loves making music, and loves the
electric guitar. In fact, he admits to being a perpetual student
of guitar and, like a student, doesn't hold back his utter enthusiasm
for his favorite subject. On October 17, at the invitation of
the College, Smith and Gary Grainger, the bassist for his band,
held a master class for guitar students and their instructor,
Tom Anthony. Focusing on interval training, Smith shared the
way he taught himself to play and to appreciate the myriad moods
that a guitar can evoke.
"What I want to try to teach you is the way to relate the interval
to a sound or feeling to get you more interested in playing
the guitar," Smith tells the class that crowds the classroom,
oohing and aahing over two new PRS models he passes around.
"This is the beginning of real ear training."
"Now Gary, play a flat five." He taps the three piano keys in
the order of the chord while Smith probes Washington College's
nascent Santanas. "Now how are you going to describe the flat
five?"
"The jazz villain!" says one student enthusiastically, seizing
on the chord's ominous tones.
"That's creepy," says another. "I wouldn't trust a guy playing
that."
Everyone laughs. Smith grins, his eyes sparkle, he sees they
are catching on to the spirit of the music.
"Now the dominant seventh. Can you hear the feeling in there?"
"There's an element of conquest in it," says a student confidently.
"It's the 'taking over' note," says Smith, in agreement. "It's
like 'Eureka!'"
Yup, they were getting into it. But so was Smith, who couldn't
hide his enthusiasm.
 "I'm
learning—we're learning—all the time," he says. "I've taught
this class about three times, and you guys are coming up with
descriptions that I haven't come up with. All these intervals
have a different sound and a different feel. I guess the reason
that I do this is because when I was taught music, nobody really
explained this to me. It took me years to figure it out. When
somebody was talking Phrygian scale or harmonic minor, or this
or that, I kind of got lost, until I started to understand they
all had a sound, a unique beauty, and I got more interested."
For senior Kentavius Jones, who has been playing guitar for
six years, this special class was both a lesson in music and
a lesson in living.
"I saw how his passion translated into his will to study and
to learn music," he says. "He took a love and it evolved into
his life."
PHOTOS:
MATT SPANGLER
Paul Reed Smith demonstrates
to a standing-room-only class how musical compositions—and guitars—are
built.
NINE O'CLOCK ROCK
College is about learning, of course, but it is also about fun,
and that was the real reason Smith brought his band to campus
that Friday in autumn. He loves talking about music and teaching
guitar, but, above all, he loves playing.
In his spare time, he performs with his two bands, the Paul
Reed Smith Dragons, which records guitar-driven, original songs,
and the Paul Reed Smith Band, which he describes as a bar band
whose main job is to have fun and make sure that the people
who come to listen dance and have fun, too. The Band played
WC.
While the PRS soundman looked over his mixing board as big as
NASA Mission Control, students steadily gathered in the College's
Student Center, attracted by the PRS reputation and the chance
to hear some good music. They were in for some surprises—just
a few hours after the guitar class, Smith was no longer teacher
but bandleader, and this show was going to be interactive.
"Come on, what do you want to hear, what do you want us to play?"
he asked the audience. Then somebody yelled "Pride and Joy!"
But you couldn't stump this band. They launched into the Stevie
Ray Vaughan classic without missing a beat.
From Cream to Korn, the night wore on and the song challenges
didn't stop. From the classic "Purple Haze" and "Mustang Sally"
to James Brown's outlandish "Sex Machine," Smith accomplished
what he set out to do and got even the shyest students to dance.
"I love music that gets people's bodies to do things their heads
would be ashamed to do," says Smith. "I like music that makes
people dance, when you can't help yourself but dance to it."
Perhaps the biggest thrill came when Smith invited students
to be part of the show. Kentavius Jones belted out a solid rendition
of Marvin Gaye's "Let's Get It On," and soon after, Gary Grainger
handed his bass guitar to senior Meg Morris.
"Paul yelled from the stage, 'Meg, you want to play? End of
the set!'" says Morris. "I didn't know what to expect. I was
out in the crowd dancing towards the end of the night, and I
hear Paul yelling over the music, 'Get up here, Meg!' So I bopped
up on stage, Gary handed me his PRS bass— which was the nicest
instrument I've ever played—pointed to a fret and said 'G,'
and I started playing."
Then senior guitarist Sam Guthridge was recruited from the audience
for the Grand Jam.
"It was like I had found myself up there in one of those dreams
where you go to school and realize all of a sudden that you're
naked," Guthridge laughs, enjoying his memory of the night he
jammed with Paul Reed Smith and a $10,000 guitar. "I noodled
for a minute, found two or three familiar notes to fit into
the 'G' blues going on around me, and then Paul had to pull
me aside to turn up the volume on the guitar. Oops!"
"It wasn't any song in particular, just a jam—something funky,"
Morris adds. "Sam jumped up, smiling ear to ear, and ripped
a great solo. The whole place was dancing and having a great
time, and Paul told the crowd that the night had been just about
the most fun the band had ever had at a show. Playing up there
with him and his band was just about the most fun I've ever
had at a show, too!"
"Afterwards, my friends told me that they had never seen such
a look of pure terror in my eyes," Guthridge says. "But it was
a hell of a time—no matter how bad I thought I played. At least
I've now played one of the most famous guitars in the world
and have something I can brag about to all the people who can
still play circles around me."
So when the last students stepped out into the evening with
the music still ringing in their heads, as the last stage light
was extinguished and the last latch on the guitar case snapped
shut, the lesson from Smith's visit was clear: whether you are
a threechord wonder or an Andres Segovia, be a fool for what
you love and never hide the music in your heart.
John Buettner '89 is a staffer in the College Relations
Office still trying to learn Deep Purple's "Smoke on the Water."
PHOTO: CARLOS ALEJANDRO
Opposite: 'Scenes from a Master Class' include bassist Gary
Grainger at the keyboard, Katie Hanley '06 admiring a PRS prototype,
and Kentavius Jones '04 caught up in a musical moment. George
Spilich, professor of psychology, finally gets his PRS guitar.
("Now if I could only play it.") |
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