Singer-songwriter Jeffrey Foucault talks about how a Gibson J-45 that he just seemed meant to have eventually found its way into his hands.

Here’s what Foucault had to say:

My name is Jeffrey Foucault, and I'm playing a 1946 or '47 Gibson J-45, which does not look entirely like a J-45. First of all, it's just about worn through the top. Somebody redid the sunburst. Everything on it's been replaced various times. The TSA destroyed it last year, and so there's a whole pile of cleats on the inside holding it back together. And so it's been a kind of special guitar for me.

These vintage Gibson guitars and Martin guitars from pre-World War II and just-post-World War II, they're really lightly built. They don't weigh very much, so they push a lot of air. They're lightly braced. They did them that way because they were so exquisitely crafted as part of it, but also because they knew they were going to sound better.

This guitar hunted me down. I was playing a country gig at a little bar, and we would play mid-century classic country music, and the only rules were: no rehearsing; and you had to sing it in the key that it was written, whether you could sing it there or not. There was a guy who brought this guitar to the bar, and it was a dingy, kind of dive-bar situation, and it was too dark for me to really see it. And he handed it to me, and I played it. And I was like, "Take it away." I was like, "Get it away from me. I can't afford it.”

I could tell by playing it, I couldn't afford it.

He said, "Are you sure?" You know, "I'll give you a deal on it."

And I said, "No, I can't. I can't afford a guitar right now."

I was playing a little vintage single-0 Martin guitar at the time, but it wasn't the guitar that I wanted to be playing on the road. It was cool guitar on its own merits, but it wasn't the right guitar for me for everything I was doing.

And then I want to say maybe, like, four months later, I went on eBay when I was drinking — which is a terrible idea — and I bought Gibson Country Western from the '50s because I made an insanely low bid and somehow won. It was a cool guitar, but once again, it wasn't the exact right guitar. And I had my luthier do a little bit of work [on it], and I sold it, and I made about another $1,500, and now I felt like I should go find a Gibson guitar.

So I walked into a store, and this guitar was hanging on the wall, and I didn't know it was the same guitar the guy tried to sell me. And I pulled it off the wall and I played it, and it was the right guitar. So I brought it home, and about a week later, I ran into that guy, and he was like, "You know, I tried to sell you that guitar one time."

And I'm embarrassed to say I actually paid more for it the second time. But anyway, this is the one that wanted me, and so it found me.

Credits

Guest – Jeffrey Foucault
Host/Producer – Mike Pengra
Video Director – Evan Clark
Camera Operators – Evan Clark, Josh Sauvageau
Audio Mix – Cameron Wiley
Graphics – Natalia Toledo
Digital Producer – Luke Taylor

External Links

Jeffrey Foucault – official site

Gibson Guitars – official site