Bucket List Check (superstrat icon content)

This is so special to me, I couldn't bury it in the Amigo Nashville Guitar Show thread.

The bug to do what I do today bit me in my teens and due to a variety of circumstances I won't eat bandwidth discussing, I didn't get to turn my dream into reality until after I did grown-up stuff for about 30 years. All that time, basically all my life, one of my biggest inspirations in regards to guitar building stuff has been Grover Jackson. I was the only one of my aspiring rock god friends who as a teen didn't aspire to play or -egad - endorse Grover's products. I wanted to actually build them haha.

Grover today is 73 and his Charvel/Jackson Guitars days are far, far behind him. But he is still very active with Grover Jackson Engineering, his OEM supply and collaborative endeavors operation, which he recently relocated from California to his home state of Tennessee.

To most people, the GJE facility is a four-employee millworks maybe the size of a junior high school gymnasium. To me, it's like Santa and his workshop, but nestled in serene foothills straddling the Tennessee/Alabama border. Mutual industry friends hooked Grover and I up while I was at Amigo Nashville a few days ago, and Grover graciously extended an invitation to come meet in person (!) in the GJE factory (!!) on my way back to Louisiana.

You hear stories about people meeting their idols and they turn out to be nothing like what you expect. Aloof, or cold, or just plain assholes. Meeting this idol of mine was just the opposite. Grover is kind, very funny, warm and 100 percent sincerely genuine. Within 30 seconds, you would have sworn watching us interact that we'd known each other forever.

And of all the people in the world to express not only glowing reviews but bona fide interest in my guitars and guitarcraft, in my pickups, my bustling repair/upgrade shop back home, my trade promotion and consumer marketing strategies .. it was Grover Jackson. Grover Jackson cares about who I am, what I do, and how and why I do as I do. To say I was in a mixed state of elation and almost disbelief is a pitiful understatement.

If my wife hadn't reminded us we had a long drive home, Grover and I would probably still be chatting it up in the wood room not only about everything from luthiery and tech-ery to our lives' Chapter IIs, everything from our paths to where we are, to our adult children's endeavors, and the recent foot injuries he and I have in common.

I'm enlarging and framing the snap below twice, one for my workshop, the other for my winding room. Notice how well the decades of grown-up jobs and the influence of Grover's ingenuities all that time taught me ... I got three of my logos in our photo, while his brand is MIA. He thought that was hilarious :)

I am still giddy and glowing. Priceless.