Now, as to Tom Blackshear, luthier..........

In 1983, I was immediately impressed with Tom's approach to guitar-making, which I imagine, since he wasn't making guitars to make a living at that time, was quite different, and indeed, much "superior" to most other luthiers, who had to crank out (and SELL!) a certain number of guitars, of a certain KNOWN type/sound/"playability" in order to put bread on the table. Tom had taken the approach, I assume since 1958, when he made his first flamenco guitar, and while he still had ideas of becoming a professional flamenco guitarist himself, of EXPERIMENTING, in some way, with each and every guitar he made.

What MADE a guitar from a certain maker who he admired the sound and playability of, say Manuel Reyes or Marcelo Barbero or Santos Hernandez, JUST THAT WAY? It's a question that CAN only be answered by varying an almost infinite number of factors that go into the construction of an instrument like a flamenco guitar. You can TRY to "copy" a guitar from a great master luthier as exactly as you can, and come out with a totally different SOUNDING and PLAYING (i.e., EASE of playing--"action" of the strings on the fretboard) instrument; either because you've used different enough MATERIALS (wood, mainly, of course), or because you've overlooked something in the EXACT way that one of these great luthiers made their guitars, such as, Tom found out through experiment, varying the thickness of the top at different points, and "tuning" the top as well, by different manipulations of the interior strutting, shapes of the various struts, etc.

It gets very complicated very fast, and it's a slow process to begin with, if you take the care, as Tom always has, to try to make a superior instrument all along the way, even though you may end up putting a dozen different tops on it, in an attempt to get a certain sound that you have in your head--as close as possible to what you imagine the "perfect" flamenco sound to be. That's the difference between Tom and any other luthier I've ever met: he has NEVER STOPPED EXPERIMENTING and TRYING TO IMPROVE BOTH THE SOUND AND "PLAYABILITY" of his guitars, and I doubt that he ever will, although, after 50 years now (in 2008), and several hundred (signed and numbered) guitars, he can offer the world of flamenco guitarists an instrument that sounds as near to a Manuel Reyes of his "classic" period (about 1965-80), as you could possibly get--if that's what you want, of course.

He can also offer you a guitar that has a sound that's "superior" (in my own opinion, and I've played a LOT of flamenco guitars over the years, the very best one being a 1955 Marcelo Barbero that belonged to Pepe Martinez--was probably made for him, in fact, just a year before the tragic early death of Maestro Barbero--owned now by Richard Bruné, the excellent luthier [and maker of ANY stringed instrument, in fact, including harpsichords!] located in Evanston, IL, who himself commented, on a flamenco guitar that Tom sent up to him 2 years ago, that, with a capo on the third fret, it had the most 'flamenco' sound of ANY GUITAR HE HAD EVER PLAYED, period, and Richard, in contradistinction to most luthiers, who don't actually play the guitar all that well [that isn't what they're TRYING to do--make a guitar for themselves--but instead, to make a guitar that a genius like Adam del Monte, Vicente Amigo, Gerardo Nunez, Chuscales, or even the father of all, Paco de Lucia, can make sound BETTER than any other guitar that THEY'VE ever played--THAT'S their goal] plays flamenco guitar [and he's not a classical guitarist who later "took up" flamenco and had to unlearn half of his technique to do so] at a "professional level" without question, so is in a position to actually JUDGE the worth of a guitar, not only in terms of playing a few chords on it, etc., but actually playing a guitar as "hard" and with as much technique as most professional flamenco guitarists would, so when he says something like the above, in praise of what Tom has achieved, after nearly 50 years of experimenting with making flamenco guitars, it actually MEANS something: it's not just "hype" or bull from somebody making up a line of jive to get a rich collector, who may be able to bring out what the guitar has to offer or not, depending on how serious a student of the instrument he is (or WAS, at one time, probably before he had the money to buy a superior guitar!).

I myself realized, when I first was compelled by an inner drive, to play flamenco, that I would never be a "professional" guitarist: not because I couldn't eventually develop the technique to do so (which point I reached many, many years ago; I guess after about 6-8 years of study), but because I didn't want to live the life-style of an itinerant musician and, more than that, I simply had too many other interests in life, which I wanted to pursue, than only playing flamenco guitar, and, if you REALLY want to be in the top tier of ANYthing--especially anything that requires precision physical technique, in spades, as playing flamenco guitar does, MUCH more than, say, classical guitar; much more than any other instrument that I'm aware of, in fact--you DO have to devote your life to it, lock, stock, and barrel: 10-12 hours a day, for years, maybe for your entire life, if you are SO-DRIVEN to do so, like the jazz guitarist Lenny Breau was, and like, I'm sure, several of the very best flamenco guitarists also have been, even though they never had to even THINK about technique after the age of 16 or so, since they started playing when they were barely old enough to HOLD a guitar!

Most of the preceding verbiage is to tell you, out there in Internet Land, interested in buying a fine flamenco guitar, that, even though you've never heard of me unless you're a fan of hard-boiled and noir fiction, which I've been publishing for the past 25 years, I AM qualified to JUDGE the merits of a guitar, as far as FLAMENCO guitars go: not classicals, and certainly not ANY steel-stringed instrument [I OWN a 1923 Weissenborn lap-steel guitar, but I don't PLAY it worth a darn, that's a fact I'll readily admit--I simply don't have the time, or won't MAKE the time--which is, of course, what you HAVE to do, if you're really serious about learning ANYthing, once again--the way my life is, at this point, to become a competent player of Hawaiian lap steel.

I currently own two Tom Blackshear guitars: yes, I bought the guitar he was working on back in 1983, and it has aged very well indeed [I still get it out and play it sometimes, and it sounds and plays just as good as ever]; in 1997, I ordered a guitar from Tom, and he made me the best guitar that I had ever played, up to that time, with the possible exception of a 1968 Manuel Reyes that I'd played many years before, and would have had to have had there side by side with my new Blackshear to make a valid comparison. I wanted to remove the standard-sized golpe plate and replace it with a much larger one, since I tend to scratch up the surface of a guitar when playing rumbas--my hand is flailing all over the place, as it has to, to get loose and syncopated with the rumba rhythm--so, naturally, I messed up the job, and took several "chunks" of the top WITH the old tapping plate when I removed it.

This left the guitar with an absolutely fabulous sound and playability that looked as terrible as you could ask for. So, finally, last year, when I knew I was going to be co-Guest of Honor at a mystery convention in Austin, TX (I currently live in Tucson, AZ, and have since 1993), I decided to take the guitar back to Tom and see if he could "fix it" in some way, by taking off my larger golpe plate and filling in the "white wood" places that had come off with the old plate I'd removed, etc. This he could not do, as he's simply not set up to repair guitars, except in very specific ways, so he put a new top on the guitar--a "Reyes-style top that he'd made for a guitar that he was making for himself. Thicker than the previous top, but which would, in two or three years, "open up" and actually be AS loud as the previous top had been, but have better separation between the bass strings, and in general, have a more "flamenco sound," as far as being closer to a classic period Reyes went.

This has turned out to be true, so far, except that the bass sound of my "new" Blackshear, when compared to my 1965 Reyes, is much "fuller," but not in a "classical guitar"-type way, but in a "clean, flamenco" way, which I prefer, actually, to the way the guitar sounded before. I play the Blackshear a little more than the Reyes (which I only acquired two years ago, so it's still a "new" guitar to me, and I play it and the Blackshear to the exclusion of my earlier Blackshear and the 1963 Ramirez that I've had for many, many years now, but which is also an excellent-sounding guitar--one of the last made by Felix Manzanero before he left the Ramirez workshop to start on his own as a luthier).

   Finally, I can state without doubt that Tom is making the most "flamenco"-sounding (for MY personal taste, of course) flamenco guitars of any U.S. builder, and that his guitars are on a par with just about ANY Reyes and even Barbero guitars that I've ever played (I've only played five Barberos in my life, but I've played quite a few Reyes', probably at least 20-25). That is the highest praise I can give any luthier, as a "buen aficionado" of flamenco, and I give it without reservation to Tom Blackshear and his guitars!

Dennis McMillan, Publisher