Thanks to Tom Griswold for pointing out Tell-Tale Hearts guitarist and Taylor Guitars uber-luthier Eric Bacher’s supporting role in this national TV spot for GE Capital.
According to Sign on San Diego, “Taylor Guitars didn’t need any Fourth of July fireworks to help it create a nationwide bang this week. … The $65 million El Cajon company, which produces nearly 80,000 guitars a year and counts Taylor Swift and Oceanside’s Jason Mraz among its customers, Tuesday launched a joint marketing campaign with GE Capital that should greatly boost the visibility of both companies.
“The Taylor/GE marketing campaign includes a whimsical 30-second TV commercial. It features Taylor namesake and co-founder Bob Taylor talking and playing guitar with Deb Barker, an Atlanta-based GE executive who is also an avocational musician (and a gifted one at that).”
What else do we do for a living nowadays?
Check out Eric on the left 18 seconds into the commercial:
BTW, I’ve been wanting Eric to form a band with NON co-founder Robert Turman just so they can call it Bacher-Turman Overdrive!
Eric! Nice turn and deadpan look. Come to think of it, that’s the same look you gave me when you saw me in that shirt with the puffy sleeves and big red polka dots . . .
I sincerely hope that you guys do fully appreciate my (now trademarked) deadpan/somewhat suprised reaction. It took moments of practice and 748 takes (I was really “feeling my motivation”). Ray, if you still have that shirt I’d like to make leg warmers and a headband. Let my agent know when you have a moment so my people can get with your people…
I’m confused. After mentioning Taylor Swift, the article refers to Bob Taylor as “Taylor namesake and co-founder.” Does that mean Eric’s boss is her dad??
Eric, I gotta tell you, I laughed my ass off the first time I saw that. Primarily because I could just imagine all of the “just do this” you had to endure. Don’t let that SAG card go to waste…
THAT’s why I can’t play Flamenco guitar! I don’t have a Taylor!
Wonder how I might get a good deal on one? ;^D
My God! Is that a young Ray Brandes in front of that VW bus??
You ARE the kid who went with me to University Ave. gun shops when it was too long a wait between #1 buses!
>>You ARE the kid who went with me to University Ave. gun shops when it was too long a wait between #1 buses!
Robin: Details, for goodness’ sake!
Gun shops? University Ave.? Ben Gunn.
Joke taxidermy, handmade signs with ‘Helen Waite’ quips, vintage Iron Crosses and glass displays containing well-preserved Browning revolvers that would have looked correct in the hands of Holmes and Watson.
Tom Goddard discovered that the owner pushed Jack Chick comics.
It was at 28th and University, but I couldn’t scope the old, 1920’s Spanish-mission style stucco that used to house it. Google street view shows a hideous, modern cracker-box in it’s place.
University was home of the 7 bus. It went from Broadway, down by the Santa Fe station, out past where the Howlands and I lived (Euclid to 54th) and on into the great eastern hinterland, past FedMart.
Is FedMart now Target? Seems the same to me…
What I lust for, from Taylor, is an AB3.
Hey Ray, I bet if I can make the headband, leg warmers (and possibly a bow tie) out of the shirt, it will improve the fit substantiallly.
Jerry, I agree that the acoustic bass is one of the coolest instruments we’ve ever produced, unfortunately it’s no longer part of the current line. They we’re amazingly comfortable to play considering the size. The only bass in my life I have ever “lusted” after is the Harmony H-22 with the batwing pickguard that Mike Stax played in the TTH. Short scale and flat wounds, loud enough to hear unplugged. I finally found one at the swap meet for $30!
Robin, I still think you have me confused with someone else, back in those days I had a little Mazda truck and never really took the bus.
I remember the Harmony. Fantastic -- with a trapeze tail-piece and a 335-ish body in tobacco sunburst.
$30? You are a criminal.
I love all those ’60’s short-scale basses, with their tiny necks and finicky setup. Hofner, is of course famous -- and all those Voxes, which were really built by Eko. They had a zero-fret, and made a JBass nut seem huge.
Someday, I will run across a Fender Bass VI. I think people get second mortgages to pick those up. Basses with guitar tuning are not vogue with the low-B crowd…
Joel, If you want to play Flamenco, tune DGDGBD.
You can alternate 1st fret and open from high to low and back. The arpeggio sounds like you have impossible finger-work. My 10-year old sound like Dick Dale with this.
Jerry, Thanks! I’ll try that tuning. But I was just sort of kidding around. I actually do own a ’96 Taylor 301 “Baby” but, inexplicably, I can’t magically play Flamenco.
I guess they only work that bit of sorcery on investment capitalists. ;^D
But I love my Baby!
It’s never in the case, always out and at the ready by my chair. I’ve at least strummed it (if only for a few minutes) almost every day since I got it in ’96. Pick of the litter from the first one’s La Jolla Music took delivery of.
Ray’s played it and I think he’ll attest as to what a sweet little guitar it is. It really has become a part of me.
Super Woots!
Eric,
I guess I mis-remembered the tailpiece and dual-cutaways. This is a 1960-62 example.
Somebody claimed later (’66?) era H22’s had both cutaways -- I haven’t seen a pic, ‘tho.
Ha! H22 is what Ronnie Lane played on the early Small faces recordings. PLONK!
(BTW: What’s the selector switch for? I only see ONE pickup…)
The later Harmony’s were double-cutaways, yes. They started gussying up the models, more binding, more tortoiseshell-plastic overlays, etc. The pickups had more chrome but were still made by Dearmond. My aesthetics definitely lean toward asymmetry…I prefer the single cutaways myself…it’s not like the cutaways on the ‘other’ side actually allow for any sort of extra access, unless you have some kind of advanced thumb technique. This model is rather striking however:
HERE is a link to the bass page for Broadway Music company’s wonderful Harmony website, which includes a photo of a double-cutaway H22. Not a lot of published material on Harmony yet…especially weird for what was at one time the largest guitar company in the world and pretty much dominated the mailorder music business for several decades.
According to Broadway Music’s website the mystery switch/toggle on a H22 is for the “split pickup”…hmmmm….my guess is it gives you the option to run the circuit through one of two separate capacitors, like the “mud” switch on a Gretsch. Essentially an instant treble roll-off that bypasses the tone control and gives you more of an acoustic stand-up bass sound.
All things Harmony here:
http://harmony.demont.net/
Thanks for the links!
Best of both worlds!
Harmony?? Oh yeah.
I’ve been a huge Harmony fan over the years and have fixed up quite a few (brought some back from the dead). One model that I think is highly underrated is the H1260, which is a Mahogany back and side, solid spruce top dreadnaught called the “Sovereign”. It’s kinda dorky looking compared to Gibson or Martin, but it has a great open sound. I think the solid Adirondak top with ladder bracing really opens up through time. Pete Townsend played and wrote songs on one until he got his Gibson J-200, and Jimmy Page played “Stairway” live and in the studio on one as well. It’s the greatest…
Dave Doyle, correct me if I’m wrong, you definitely prefer solid body basses?
I’m sure Dave probably plays solids. I am way out of date, because I haven’t seen him on stage since the Unknowns. Mosrite!
I lied.
Photo:
PsychoDonic Video Guitar. I wanna see what this does, with Flamenco…
You can also see the latter-day double cutaway Harmony bass (as pictured above) in the hands of Ronnie Lane with the Small Faces. The Spencer Davis group used both an early and a late version of the Harmony bass…as pictured here…but earliest photos/footage show them with a blonde Hofner President that was already several years old…like a year older than Stu Sutcliffe’s. However that sound you hear on “Keep On Running” is exactly the sound you hear when you plug one of those early, single-cutaway batwing Harmony basses into most any amp. Try it sometime.
Excessive detail no doubt, but I’ve long been conning what bass-player was using what, just out of professional interest….
Jerry, that ‘best of both worlds’ model is probably the one found least often in the shops. They’re handsome, for sure. But for me it’s still the earlier one.
They’ve all been enjoying a bit of a vogue in the last five years. Prices have risen--or had before the repression began two years ago.
Harmony is part of that great Chicago legacy within music. It also broght us Kay guitars--which helps bring this back to Eric B.: Eric, I remember you had a big hollowbody Kay, a la Jimmy Reed. Was that thing branded Kay on the headstock, or did it have one of their alternate brand names on there?
Hey Tom! That guitar did have the Kay on the headstock, Carl Rusk sold it to me at one point, and I remember it had a baseball bat for a neck. I, in turn traded it to Lou Damien for the thinline Tele I used for a while (ultimately sold to Tommy Clarke). A lot of horse trading went on in those days. Fun!
Eric Bacher you’re like Tab Hunter, Sal Mineo and Parker Stevenson all rolled in to one amazing actor!!! My hat’s off to you. The world shall soon be forced to open their eyes and give you all of Robert Redford’s Oscars.