Back when we were about 16, myself and some friends “formed a band”. We didn’t get very far, probably only jammed together about half a dozen times, and played just three (highly memorable) gigs. We were the Groovy Feedback Junkies, I was their drummer and lyricist, and we were, in all honesty, utterly utterly terrible. But we had a lot of fun. Life-affirmingly cheerful, happy-go-lucky fun. In our naiviety, we did actually *create* something.
Although I paid some lip service to continuing with music (I was one of those dot com CEOs, who had a drumkit in the office circa 2001), I never really did. It was an affectation more than a real hobby. There seemed to be heaps of social pressure to put the music away as being incompatible with ‘adulting’. Partners, business colleagues, family and friends always seemed to endure my unending desire to be a rock star with a pitying smile and a pat on the head. The mortgage, or the business trip, always came first.
Fast forward a decade or two, and I fully rediscovered my love of creating music during the pandemic lockdowns in France. I had already started dabbling again, but now I was fully thrust into actually recording some real tunes (with people much more talented and gifted than me). I was producing and engineering again, putting skills I learned (but had never used) at university to good use. I was rediscovering the best way to set up microphones, how to make best use of natural reverb and how to use a modern Digital Audio Workstation. I even helped to produce a ‘proper’ record. Then I started writing again, with 30 additional years of lyrical life-experience to express. It was fun again. There was a ripple of delight from ‘creating’ once more, and my mental health loved me for it. When I plunged myself into building guitars, I also realised that I really should learn more than the only three chords I’d known since I was 16. So I picked up a bass again for the first time in decades, and have started learning delta blues slide guitar.
What’s the point of this story?
I realised that, like I am doing with the ‘Elle’s Guitars’ project, I wanted to ‘pay it forward’, and especially wanted to encourage talented teenagers to stick with it, and to help persuade them to carve out a small slice of time in their adult futures to look after and nurture their talent and creativity. In a future that looks ever-increasingly bleak, the need for rays of light to shine in on their future mental health is even more important than it was for me, and hopefully future generations of music-lovers will thank me.
And so it is that, alongside Elle’s Guitars (of which I am only one cog in a larger machine), I’ve created a Young Artist Programme. Elle’s Guitars are meant to provide entry-level access to school kids who want to take up the guitar for the first time. The Young Artist Programme is the next step on that journey – providing bespoke high-end guitars for people under 21 who have already discovered an ability and who want to move past the entry-level guitar their Uncle Bob bought them last birthday. The guitar will be gratis, I only ask that the young artist or their family pay it forward somehow – either by donating an earlier guitar to the Elle’s Guitar programme, or passing their Derelict ‘Young Artist’ guitar back to me or on to someone else if they ever outgrow or stop using it.
I’ve started work on my first, a talented young lad who needs a decent strat, and am happily taking submissions for others.
Criteria are: aged between 13 and 21, with at least one year of learning their instrument under their belt. Showing an aptitude and a passion for playing the guitar or bass, either as a main instrument or as accompaniment to singing, and, importantly, a desire to continue.
