Keith Richards talking about Leo Fender shortly after Fender had passed away in 1992:

“He gave us the weapons,” Mr. Richards said to the crowd of 950 about the man who invented the Fender electric guitar. Mr. Richards’s parting shot to the crowd was what he called the “guitar players’ prayer”: “Caress it. Don’t squeeze it.”

Leo Fender was born on August 10, 1909. He would have turned 102 yesterday. His inventions have had a profound effect on my life, and I am deeply grateful that he chose electric instrument making as his vocation.

Wired ran a nice article on Fender to commemorate his 100th birthday in 2009. I’m still amazed by the fact that he never learned to play the instruments that he created.

Do you have a guitar-loving woman in your life? It’s always a good idea to send them flowers, and now you can send them a guitar–related flower arrangement from Flowers That Rock. Flowers That Rock is a site where you can buy flower arrangements made out of guitar picks and recycled guitar strings. The arrangements look great, and, as my friend Darren M. pointed out, won’t die.

I think this is a neat idea that makes for a unique gift. In addition to flowers, the Flowers That Rock Etsy store has earrings and keychains made out of picks.

My favorite guitar magazine Fretboard Journal also has a pretty interesting podcast featuring a number of the builders and players featured in the magazine. The most recent episode features an interview with Vermont-based luthier Creston Lea of Creston Guitars. Lea makes Fender-style guitars, but with his own unique touches. For example, I believe that most of his guitars feature a top-loading bridge, rather than the typical string-through body approach used by Fender and most clones. He discusses the reasons behind this and his other design ideas in the interview.

This is an interesting article about Stevie Ray Vaughan’s early childhood home in Oak Cliff, TX:

Blues is the music of people who have tasted not only the sweet things in life, but also the tragedy, the struggle, the loss and redemption; not music for top 40 listeners, but for people who are willing to stare life and death in the eyes, and sing about it. The same can be said for different parts of a city. There is the “safe” and “predictable” part of town, and then there is Oak Cliff. Where else could a Dallas Blues legend like Stevie Ray Vaughn [sic] come from than a part of town that isn’t afraid to take what life dishes out and use it to cook up a song.

(via StevieSnacks on Facebook)

This video made the rounds recently and has sparked a lot of debate. The video is of an iPhone 4 placed inside of an acoustic guitar that records the strings as they are played. Whether or not the video has been edited doesn’t matter to me. I just think it’s a cool video. Check it out:

Sweetwater’s annual GearFest is happening later this week at Sweetwater’s headquarters in Fort Wayne, IN, on June 24 and June 25. At GearFest, you can test drive gear, learn from experts, hear live music, and get deals on gear. Sounds like a guitar lover’s idea of a great day! Alan Parsons is one of the featured speakers, as well. I’ve had the chance to hear Parsons speak, and he has a lot of great stories to tell. I won’t be able to make this year’s GearFest, but maybe next year.

Joe Walker, who runs the From the Woodshed blog, has recently moved from Southern California back to Seattle, and he has started a new guitar educational website called Deft Digits. In conjunction, he’s now offering guitar lessons in Seattle. I don’t know Joe personally, but based on his From the Woodshed blog, I think Joe has a lot to offer students.

Chris Liscio’s excellent Mac-based Capo application recently won an Apple Design Award. If you don’t know, Capo is a music learning and transcription application that slows down music without changing the pitch. I use Capo on both my Mac and my iPad, and it’s great.

To celebrate the award, Chris is discounting Capo by 20%.

ArtofManliness.com has a series called “So You Want My Job” where they profile men who are in interesting or desirable jobs. A few years ago, they profiled Jason Stoltzfus, who is a touring guitar technician based out of Nashville. In the interview, Jason talks about how he got the job and what it’s like to live on a tour bus for most of the year. He also talks about his favorite part of the job:

I would have to say the best part is the travel. I love traveling, and this job allows me to see the country and world. I’ve been to all 50 states, Mexico, and Canada in the short year and a half I’ve been touring. That’s a really unique opportunity, to get paid to see the world and play shows in the meantime. There are a lot of great perks about the job, but that’s the best.

It’s interesting to read about what it’s like to be a guitar tech. It sounds like a lot of fun.

Thanks to Guitar Lifestyle reader Darren M. for the heads up about this article.

“Once you’ve discovered you enjoy playing the guitar, you can’t stop playing the guitar.”

In his article “Building the Guitar You’ll Keep” for Wired.com, Chuck Squatriglia offers an excellent glimpse into Richard Hoover and his company, Santa Cruz Guitars.

It’s an unhurried place. Guitars are built one at a time, by hand, a process that takes eight weeks or more. Almost every guitar in the joint is already spoken for, and if you order one today you won’t be playing it until this fall.

I’ve had the opportunity to hear Hoover speak about wood, and I would venture to say that there are few people that know tonewoods as well as Hoover does. The story of his company is, for me, perhaps even more interesting, and Squatriglia does a good job of profiling both Hoover and the company. Hoover clearly has a passion for building high-quality guitars. And, if you’ve ever had the pleasure of playing a Santa Cruz Guitar, you know that Hoover’s passion manifests itself in some of the highest quality guitars made today.

As an added bonus, the article features some excellent photography of the Santa Cruz Guitars shop taken by Jim Merithew.

(Thanks to Darren M. for pointing me to this article.)