Pride and Joy

can roar, it can sing and it can gently weep. Since rock ‘n’ roll came blazing out of the Delta in the ’50s, the guitar has enthralled the masses. Guitar players are far from a rarity in Austin, but there are a few who rise above the low hum of the

rest. They’re the players who not only cherish their instruments but see them as extensions of their own bodies. We’ve all seen Willie’s Trigger, and we’ve heard about the venerable Number One—Stevie Ray’s “Pride and Joy”—but the guitars on the following pages have a history not oft told.

PhotograPhy byadam Voorhes

By Paul Carrubba

Don’t believe in love at first sight? Clearly you haven’t heard Gary Clark Jr. talk about the first time he picked up a guitar. “It was like a buzz. It was instant. I wanted more of it,” says the blues wunderkind. But he didn’t start out as “the most talented Texas guitarist since a certain SRV,” as Texas Music magazine has written about him. Picture this: Gary Clark Jr. perched over a teach-yourself-guitar book, trying in vain to pick out simple E, A, D and G chords, hitting his head against the wall in frustration. But, he says, “I couldn’t stop if I wanted to. Of all things—and I have a short attention span—the guitar has been something that I’ve never lost interest in.” Today he has 15 of them, and he feels guilty that he has to spread his love around. “I talk to them,” he admits. But his main squeeze is the fiery red Epiphone Casino that called out to Clark from the Music Makers shop floor. “It was all bright and shiny,” he says. “It just appealed to me.” Now, he adds, “she’s kinda my main deal. She comes everywhere with me.”

GaryClark Jr.’sEpiphone Casino

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The older a guitar, the more stories it has to tell. Alejandro Escovedo’s road-worn but sweet-sounding ’50s Gibson acoustic guitar has performed its share of songs and shows and witnessed fi rsthand the inspirations for those tales about love, loss, friendships and life. “That guitar was given to me by one of my best friends. His name was Jim Strahm,” says Escovedo. They met in Kansas City in the early ’80s, when Strahm was in a lo-cal band called Absolute Ceiling. Strahm was a collector of all things Americana. From guitars to Air Stream trailers, if it repre-

sented the Red, White and Blue, Strahm had it. When Escovedo fi rst started playing on acoustics, they were not ideal. “They were OK, but they weren’t great,” he says. One day, Strahm handed him a Gibson acoustic. “We’ve had this in the family a long time,” Strahm told Escovedo, “and I want you to play it.” He did. And he never stopped. By Escovedo’s estimate, he’s written 80 to 90 percent of his songs on that acoustic. Strahm has since passed away, but the guitar is a constant reminder. “He was just a dear friend of mine,” says Escovedo.

Alejandro Escovedo’sGibson Acoustic

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To give something a name is to imply that it has a spirit, an essence that makes it almost human. Blues songstress Carolyn Wonderland has given that essence to more than a few guitars. They have names like Tele, Leslie Pauline and, represented here, Patty the Blueshawk. When speaking about her guitars, Wonderland uses pronouns like “she” and “her.” She refers to them by their proper names. There are many, but Patty stands out. The guitar is named for its former owner, Austin rocker Patrice Pike. Wonderland and Pike were playing on the same bill at a biker rally in South Dakota. It was Pike’s birthday, and when Wonderland found out that Pike’s equipment had been stolen a week prior, she decided to give her one of her “work-horse” Telecasters. “They were playing on rented gear, and that just sucks because you can’t rock out on rented gear,” says Wonderland. When they got back to Austin, Pike returned the favor and gave Wonderland one of the few pos-sessions that hadn’t been pilfered, Patty the Blueshawk. “She’s a pretty fine guitar,” Wonderland says of her trusted partner for the better part of a decade. “There’s just something about her.”

Carolyn Wonderland’sPatty the Blueshawk


Some kids dream of being race car drivers or astronauts. Little Jimmie Vaughan dreamed of owning a Fender Stratocaster. “I lusted after a Stratocaster,” he says. Today, he has his name on one. “When I was a kid, I never in a million years dreamed that I’d be inside the catalog!” says Vaughan. The Jimmie Vaughan Signature Strat (see page 92), which he has been lovingly slinging for more than a decade, is a direct descendant of the first one he ever bought, back in 1967. “I worked in a lumber yard to get the money, and I bought one for 175 bucks. A 1958 for 175 bucks! I had to work quite a while,” he says. “My Jim-mie Vaughan Stratocaster is really a copy of it.” He bought the 1958 Strat with a blonde neck because Buddy Guy had one. The young Vaughan looked reverently at the album covers of his idols and real-ized he found his destiny. “The first time I saw Buddy Guy, I thought, ‘I wanna be like THAT! That’s what I wanna do!” says Vaughan. He turns 58 this month, and it doesn’t look like his love affair with the guitar is diminishing. According to Vaughan, “It’s been one dream come true after another, and it’s still goin’ like that.”

Jimmie Vaughan’s

Signature Stratocaster


Every guitarist remembers his first. Most of the time, unfortu-nately, it’s never much of a knockout. “My first guitar was a Fender Musicmaster, which my dad got for me. The white Musicmaster was the guitar I learned to play on,” says Eric Johnson. It was de-signed by Fender as a lower-price alternative to its flagship Strato-caster and Telecaster models. To think that Johnson—the Grammy-winning guitarist once described by fellow guitar god Steve Vai as having, “more colorful tone in his fingers than Van Gogh had on his palette”—started out playing a one-pickup student guitar should inspire every kid struggling to learn on the cheap axe he or she got

for Christmas. “I learned from listening to records. It was frustrat-ing sometimes—sometimes very hard work—but the fun of playing carried me through,” says Johnson. Today he has his own signature Stratocaster, which he calls an honor and a privilege, but Johnson was lured away by the unmistakable beauty of the Gibson ES-335. “I like the way 335s look—classical yet modern. They are the quint-essential Gibson guitar,” he says. While on tour supporting blues legend B.B. King, Johnson felt the itch and ran out to Gruhn Guitars in Nashville to pick up the Gibson. “I loved this guitar the second I played it,” he recalls.

Gibson ES-335Eric Johnson’s


Pride and Joy

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