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Hey, I'm here at Songbirds this morning,
uh, before anybody got here. It's our last day and, uh...
I haven't really dealt with my own emotions yet, I don't think.
I haven't spent a lot of time crying, and I'm a crier.
You know, COVID can go suck one, as far as I'm concerned.
It has destroyed, not... Not just what we're doing here,
but it's destroyed lives and it's a very real thing.
It's been as busy as every other day was this week.
This has been three times busier than that,
and we started the day with ten people
at the doorway waiting to come in.
It's been nonstop the whole day.
Uh, we were supposed to be limited on our vault tours,
and we've had to not... We've had to turn people away,
which stinks. We've had a lot of people back there,
on the hour, and now it's just sort of the...
Grinding out the last few minutes here.
It's, uh, hard to believe that it's coming to a close.
Uh, but...
What a... what a great day to go out on.
What a great day to go out on.
I don't... I can't imagine in my wildest dreams that
there could possibly be a collection of...
Of the magnitude of what I saw.
And I know I only saw the tip of the iceberg.
You know, the notion of like... Of trying to curate
the world's greatest guitar collection...
I don't think there'll be a collection like this
ever publicly displayed again.
Every color of... of Telecaster and Firebirds, and...
of the whole collection from the 1966 'Nam show,
of course, and things like that.
You know, I mean, one of the reasons we're shutting down,
obviously, is COVID. We had a lease coming up.
We've got a lot of money in this place
and we'd have to put a lot more money in to keep it going.
And with the lease being on the horizon, um,
you know, was the reason that we just had to make
a decision to go ahead and end it now, um.
We just couldn't afford to go into it deeper
than what we already were.
Songbirds has been such a huge part of my life
the past three years.
And especially through the, uh, the Coronavirus,
and having this as a venue to come
before we went into shutdown
and then when we opened up, to be able to come here,
just...
There really aren't words.
Just cancel it all out.
Since you're our last customer, that's a gift from us to you,
you can have it all.
Just take it. But you're our last customer.
We wish everyone at Songbirds well and we thank everyone,
all the artists that we've seen,
because live music is just so good for, um,
it's good for the soul.
Y'all love Songbirds.
The love that we've received from the thousands
and tens of thousands of people has just...
I didn't realize that was even a thing.
I didn't realize that, um,
I didn't realize that this place had reached that many people.
I mean I kind of did, but I didn't really know.
You know, you don't... You don't ever know.
Songbirds is a... Honestly, a labor of love,
that, uh, was kind of a culmination of different
people's passions and ideals,
uh, to create an awesome place
for people to appreciate music in a new light
in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
Uh, Songbirds is, well, it was probably
the largest vintage guitar museum in the world.
It's the finest collection of, mainly...
It's got all types of guitars
but the strong point for Songbirds was truly
the solid body guitar, uh.
Guitars designed between '48 and '65.
What's neat about this collection is
it's not just about quantity.
What I've... what I've been really astounded by is
the quality of the pieces they've collected
over the years.
You're seeing great examples of, of great instruments,
not, not things that have had things done to them.
They're, they're all in pretty astounding condition.
So many may ask, "When did these guitars go from being
cheap, inexpensive, used instruments
to suddenly becoming highly collectible vintage guitars
that were going for tens of thousands,
if not hundreds of thousands of dollars,
some even hitting the million dollar mark?"
These instruments in the '40s, '50s
into the early '60s were pretty much handmade guitars.
1964, The Beatles go on Ed Sullivan,
and that's a huge turning point.
Ladies and gentlemen, The Beatles!
The day after that performance,
every kid in America suddenly wanted to play guitar
or get a drum set, or be in a rock-and-roll band.
Everything changed almost overnight.
So the demand for an electric guitar
just suddenly went up, like, tenfold,
and suddenly the manufacturers had to
ramp up production to meet those demands.
Fender would sell his company to CBS,
a large corporation that knew nothing about building guitars.
So Gibson was also sold in 1969 to a large corporation,
much like Fender.
And the trouble with this was these companies
really knew nothing about building guitars,
but again, had to show profits to shareholders.
And so, now cost-cutting design changes were being implemented.
By the early '70s, the quality of an American guitar
was, was actually pretty poor.
And if you were a guitar player in the know,
you knew better than to go buy a new one,
and you went looking for these older guitars.
They were cheap, they were affordable.
It was just a used guitar.
They may have been scratched up a little bit,
but they played great and sounded great.
And what started to happen by the late '70s is with...
As people became more and more hip to this fact,
the demand for these used guitars started to go up.
And suddenly, with the demand, the price went up.
This sunburst Les Pauls like Eric Clapton played
uh, Peter Green, Mike Bloomfield,
those guitars were the first ones
people really began to seek out.
And by the mid-'80s, they were up to $5,000 already.
It was 1958 to 1960 Sunburst Les Paul.
They only made them for three years.
Those guitars today start at a quarter of a million dollars.
I started to build the collection
for one of my clients.
I have a store in New York.
One of my clients wanted to build a collection,
and that started about 23 years ago,
and we started to build a collection,
never thinking that it would ever turn into anything
besides a private collection.
Uh, this collector basically built up this collection
over 20 years of just amazing pieces, one after the other.
And then I think... just one day he woke up and said,
"I got all this, what do I do with it?" You know.
And he felt it would be great to show it
and share it, you know, instead of keeping it hidden.
I immediately started dedicating a lot of my time
to trying to find what would be a location that would be ideal
for something like a guitar museum,
'cause that's what it was at the beginning, was a guitar museum.
At one point, we had discussed possibly putting
a kind of a storefront museum in Manhattan, in New York,
but the $25,000 a month rent was pretty scary,
and we didn't really want to do that.
So we were looking at cities that might be able to
accommodate this from a... from a business, economic standpoint.
And, you know, of course, it was the usual suspects:
Nashville, um, Austin, Texas, even Seattle, New York,
all the places that have
the density of tourism that would make it make sense.
They started a little scouting mission
and they bounced around from city to city,
going from Austin to Seattle to Nashville.
The investors just said Chattanooga.
And then I started kind of changing
my thought process about...
Chattanooga in terms of being able to support it,
because I thought 'they need this.'
The opportunity presented itself in Chattanooga
with this beautiful, historic building,
and we just felt that it kind of suited what we wanted to do.
And we figured that if we came in here,
it may take the, the town a little bit of time
to catch up to what we were doing,
but we figured, within a few years, we would be there.
And then, at the end of the night,
around the 8:00 hour, just so you know,
we're gonna take a visit upstairs, and we've got
something very, very special for you up there to see.
I'm not gonna tell you what it is yet,
but trust me, you'll want to stay and see
what we've got for you upstairs which will be our space.
So we did a launch party that was really...
I can say it now... was really more of a pseudo-launch party.
We didn't even have any connections
to really make this thing an announcement for real, for real,
but I thought if they started making an announcement,
it went public, we did some demo work,
then it was going to be more real
than it had been in the past.
And, um... and I was right.
It became very real.
I mean, we weren't exactly kamikazes,
but we were darn near close on what we were trying to do.
None of us had ever started a guitar museum before.
I don't think what we did has ever been done.
I spent a lot of nights in here sleeping on a cot,
for real, um,
and waking up the next morning.
And, you know, I knew all the workers' names that were here,
every contractor that was on this place,
every subcontractor that was in this place, I remember them.
I got to the point at that time I knew their kids' names.
And, uh...
we built it.
So we're coming to you from my shop here
on Long Island in New York,
where all the guitars that went over
to the Songbirds Museum made their first stop.
We would go out and procure them,
bring them here to the shop to authenticate
and go through everything
to make sure everything fit the bill,
and then we would, uh, transport them en masse
to Chattanooga to go to Songbirds.
So this is the guitar that started it all.
A 1954 Fender Stratocaster
that I sold on eBay uh, for $25,000 at the time.
And, uh, what's cool about the early ones is
this is a one-piece ash body
and, uh, it doesn't have the vibrato arm,
or the whammy bar, as some call it.
This is called a hardtail and it's drilled through
the back of the guitar, more like a Telecaster.
But you can see the beautiful grain of the ash.
The other thing I love about this particular guitar,
and that moved me about it, was the size,
the sheer size of the neck.
It is... it is absolutely huge, but super comfortable.
Allows you to wrap your thumb over the top when you play.
Uh, some people love that style.
You know, the headstocks
on the early guitars are super thin
and the logo that's up there just says Fender Stratocaster,
usually would say 'with synchronized tremolo, '
but since there's no vibrato arm built onto this bridge,
it simply just says Fender Stratocaster.
And they call this the Spaghetti logo,
basically, because it looks like somebody laid spaghetti
on a table to form the word Fender.
Uh, I happen to think it's just
the greatest looking logo I've ever seen.
I wish they never got away from it.
You know, one of the things that makes this a vintage guitar
is that it was... this is the first year of production in 1954
and usually, uh, we stick along that, uh,
pre-1970 line for vintage guitars,
although some people will say 1979.
Uh, pretty much anything made before 1970
would be considered vintage guitars in this store.
You know, interestingly enough,
there was a pretty good rivalry between Gibson and Fender.
They were competitors.
You know, Gibson and Fender are still competitors.
Not to slight Gibson,
but Leo Fender got it right the first time a lot of times.
Fender had this advantage of using, uh, lesser materials
and a bolt-on neck and, and, uh, getting products out cheaply.
They, you know...
The fender was the craftsman wrench, you know,
and Gibson was the dental tool, the dental instrument,
that fine, delicate instrument.
Gibson really started to really flourish on electric side
with Ted McCarty.
Um, it took Gibson a few tries on the Les Paul
to get it to where it's the classic Les Paul,
you know it was...
And all versions are classic in their own way.
But the one that they ended up with, the Sunburst Les Paul,
which is the flame top, with the sunburst
and the, you know, finish, and the humbucking pickups,
it took 'em literally almost six years
and four, five different variations of that.
Leo Fender came out with the Stratocaster in '54,
and the Stratocaster looks identical.
That caused problems at some point
between Gibson and Fender,
where Fenders were trying to upscale their guitars
to be more like Gibson's
by adding things like binding on the neck
and block marker inlays made of pearl in the neck,
where Gibson was trying to cheapen their guitars
to be more price competitive with Fender.
So they took this great guitar, the Gibson Firebird,
and they made a new version of it starting in 1965
that became, basically, the New Coke of the Gibson world.
And then, throughout the '60s,
you'll see Firebirds come in, SGs come in
in response to Strats, and then Teles, and Jaguars,
and Offsets, you know. Um, and, you know,
if you look at Fender's custom color chart,
and Gibson's custom color chart,
they kind of had the same...
Different names for kind of the same colors, you know.
They were constantly trying to outdo each other.
So, you know, one of the things that
I always look at is, you know,
which is better: Gibson or Fender?
And honestly, they're both amazing guitars,
but for completely different reasons.
In the late '50s, Gibson's sales started to drop.
The Les Paul was not selling as well as it did before,
partly 'cause rock-and-roll
had kind of killed Les Paul's career.
He wasn't as popular anymore on the radio
as he used to be, um,
and Gibson guitars, the Les Paul, was an expensive guitar.
It was $250, $275 at that time.
And it was a heavy guitar,
weighed about nine pounds around your neck.
There's a little weight there.
But your average Fender guitar weighed seven pounds
and probably costs about $175, give or take in that age.
These started to outsell Gibson by the late '50s,
but the real key was also Fender
had a very aggressive marketing team.
Fender would advertise this as
the modern, hip, youthful guitar,
and they would also
underneath that in their ads, they would write,
"Gibson is your old man's guitar."
Because if you looked at a Sunburst Les Paul,
or a Goldtop Les Paul,
it look like an old arch-top jazz guitar,
like, maybe, your dad played.
So Ted McCarty,
having enough of that, figured he'd fight back.
In '58, he would design three new models
he would refer to as his modern series.
He designed a flying V,
The Explorer,
which have both become very popular in recent years,
and there was a third model, called the Moderne,
we don't have one. As far as I know,
there was at least one prototype made
that I believe was destroyed by Gibson later on,
because it was never used.
So in 1958, he would show these at the 1958 Trade Show
and start to p... start production on these Flying Vs.
Later on in '58, he would start production on the Explorer.
By early '59,
feedback from the dealers would inform them
that they couldn't give these guitars away.
These guitars were so radical
in shape, design and look, way ahead of their time,
they could not sell them.
They also found out in '59
that anybody in a factory working around these guitars
was having health issues, breathing issues.
They discovered that when... With this wood,
when you sanded it, or sawed it and breathed in the dust,
it was almost carcinogenic.
So they immediately halted production,
got rid of the wood.
Uh, the wood they used on these guitars,
unlike most Gibsons, which were mahogany and maple,
this is a wood called limba wood.
So how I started off at Songbirds was I was a member.
I came and did a Vault Tour here with Irv Berner
uh, one week after we opened.
I'd heard that we had this brand new
vintage guitar museum in Chattanooga.
I live on the South Side, very close to the museum,
and I came here on a Saturday and did a Vault Tour
and then immediately left from here
and went to the front desk
and bought an annual membership for my entire family,
and then proceeded to come back here
every free chance I got for that first year that,
that I was around here at the museum.
There's always that thing in life, quantity versus quality.
And we've been fortunate in that
we, we really have kind of both.
We've... we've got an enormous amount of wonderful guitars,
but the quality of this collection and the uniqueness...
There are so many prototypes, one-of-a-kinds,
again, that tell a story from beginning to end.
You can see how certain models would evolve over time.
I know how it is sometimes when they come up with an idea
and you see it for the first time,
and you hold a prototype and, you know,
and the next thing you know,
thousands of them are out there, you know?
And these ideas don't just come from, you know, nowhere.
I think they were inspired.
And so when I see that,
it's... it's kind of like a spiritual experience.
It really was.
The Songbirds' collection is my kind of stuff.
It's solid b... A lot of solid bodies,
'50s and '60s Gibsons and Fenders.
You know, I always tell people
I collect solid body electric guitars
from about 1950 to about 1965.
Those are the 15 years that I really like.
Yeah, it's, it's incredible. I mean, it's just...
It was overwhelming, and inspiring
because you just go,
You know, this... Somebody did this.
Somebody went out and said,
"I'm going to do this and I'm going to commit to it."
You know, when we first started to put this collection together,
it was a few Blackguard Fender Telecasters
made from 1952 to 1954.
And the collection started to grow,
and then it became Stratocasters,
and the, all of a sudden, it became ES335s,
and then Les Pauls, and then one day,
when this idea for a museum came up,
uh, I had to put a stop to everything we were doing,
it was literally, stop the presses.
Because now we're not just buying for a collection,
we're buying for a museum, which is very different.
And we had to make sure that we scratched every itch.
So if you grew up and you were a Beatles fan
and you played a Rickenbacker, we suddenly realized, wow,
we didn't have any Rickenbackers.
Or if you were a Gretsch player,
we didn't have any Gretschs, and we didn't have
a whole bunch of flattop guitars,
and we didn't have a whole bunch of archtop guitars.
So it was literally, in many ways, like having to
start over again, but, thankfully, we already had
the really good Fender and Gibson stuff already,
so, we were in a good place.
I became fascinated even more
than I already was with guitar history.
And it occurred to me, like,
if I had been an art history person
or somebody who really enjoyed, um, art,
this was like living next door to the Louvre in Paris.
This was, for me, Valhalla,
the most awesome place that I could be around,
and it was right here in my own backyard.
So I started getting books on vintage guitar history,
and I would sit on the couch right behind us, right here,
and bring those in on Saturdays
and read those vintage guitar history books right here
in the midst of the collection.
At about four guitars in, I remember seeing
a guitar that looked like one that we had on display here
and I thought, man, that's really similar
to the one that I'm looking at right here.
And as I walked up from the couch, to the case
and looked at it, realized it wasn't
a guitar that looked like the one that was in the book.
It was the actual guitar that was in the book,
and that kept happening over, and over, and over again.
And my love for this place kept growing.
We had some great programs where you could pay
a little extra, and get to play them.
It was like getting the keys to a Ferrari,
being able to drive around the track a few times.
Uh, it's called The Player's Experience.
We just did one this morning where a young teenager came in
and he played a 1959 Sunburst Les Paul.
Uh, it's considered the Holy Grail of the electric guitar.
Most people in their lifetime won't get a chance to play one.
Well, it's hard to get your head around it, actually.
Uh, and everybody I ever try to talk about it with,
I would say that you just have to see it.
And not only was it because they were worth so much,
you know, in the value of 'em,
but it was the attention to detail.
I mean, this is a labor of love.
These guys are into this.
It was like something I'd never, ever seen before.
There is a certain nostalgic feeling
whenever you can go back to a simpler time.
And, uh, for a lot of teens, growing up,
Fender and Gibson was part of their lives,
and they went to go play in a garage band after school.
And guitars made you popular with the girls, you know,
it was a, uh... It was an incredible time.
One of the great things about Songbirds is
we have all these guitars
where people could walk in and experience,
or maybe be brought back to that very moment in time,
like we were just discussing, where, uh...
Just like seeing an old car can remind you of your honeymoon.
And the great thing about it is that, you know,
although the guitars, many of the guitars were behind glass,
it didn't mean you couldn't play cool old guitars. You could.
We would literally take guitars out of cases
and put it in people's hands.
That was one of the great things about Songbirds,
was the fact that as a guest there,
you could really be involved.
Once the idea of Songbirds was announced to the public,
the first thing... the first response we started to get
from everybody was, whose guitars do you have?
Do you have Elvis' guitars?
You have this guy's guitar? That guy's guitar?
And that was really not what Songbirds was about.
Songbirds... the heroes of this, of this museum are really
the guitars themselves and the guys behind
the original classic designs.
People like Ted McCarty, Leo Fender, George Fullerton,
uh, Freddie Tavares, Don Randall.
These were guys that really helped design these guitars,
get 'em out to the public,
and, of course, you know, well, of course,
the great musicians that played 'em,
but it was really about the instruments themselves, uh.
It wasn't about who owned them.
That being said, we got so many responses like that,
I think there was a little sense of panic early on
and we went out and acquired a bunch of guitars,
just to satisfy that need for some people.
So we do have one showcase here filled
with some celebrity-owned guitars.
That being said, we do have guitars
throughout this collection
that were owned by famous guitar players
that we never advertise, or put a sign up,
'cause when we bought them,
we didn't buy them with that intention,
and we want to do the right thing by the performers.
We weren't trying to make money off their name.
So we did have instruments, did not speak about it.
Uhh.
But over here, we've got a guitar
owned by Roy Orbison at one point,
a Strat that was owned and signed by Buddy Guy.
One of my favorite bands growing up was The Doors.
This was a Les Paul owned by Robby Krieger,
early Les Paul with the SG body style,
owned by Robby Krieger, signed by him,
a Jazzmaster signed by Bo Diddley.
And on the other side,
we've got some more we could take a look at.
And on this side over here,
we've got one of our prized possessions,
one of Chuck Berry's ES 355s, father of rock-and-roll.
Uh, Paul Burlison was in a group called the Rock and Roll Trio.
They did the original version of Train Kept A-Rollin',
an early rockabilly group.
This was his '52 Les Paul, signed by him.
Carl Wilson, The Beach Boys, his Epiphone 12 string.
Now, again, earlier we spoke about the influence
The Beatles had on everybody,
and the Beatles using that electric 12.
And, shortly thereafter, The Beach Boys
would use a 12 string in many of their hits.
Carl Wilson would play those parts.
A beautiful 1960 Faded 'Burst that was owned by John Fogerty.
And one of the Dick Dale's original Stratocasters,
is the father of surf rock, the amazing Dick Dale.
The notoriety, and probably
the thing most recognizable about Songbirds was the museum.
But it doesn't put aside the fact that
it was an amazing venue, both upstairs and down.
The person behind booking
all the talent, both nationally and locally,
was Chattanooga's unsung hero,
and that is my very good friend, Mr. Mike Dougher.
My role at Songbirds has been talent buyer.
Initially, it started out putting some small shows
in, uh, the museum space,
uh, leaning towards... great guitarists,
and then it sort of expanded into other people
and other styles of music,
and then it expanded even more to Songbirds South
where we could do larger shows down there.
How do you have the instruments and not have
music surrounding them? Live music?
I, I have played thousands of bars and venues
across the country as a musician,
and there was a lot of bad places
and a lot of good places.
That is made up of a cool vibe in the venue,
but the staffs treat you poorly.
Then there was other venues that the venue was really poor,
but the staff treated you great.
You know, there was all these hybrids of those.
And I thought, if we're going to do this,
based on my experience, we're going to...
We're going to try and check every box.
And that's how it got here.
Well, that's the other end of this museum.
I mean, one thing was the... Was the guitars, the museum,
and what we were bringing in that respect.
The other thing is the live music scene
we brought to Chattanooga.
Uh, all the showcases in the middle of the room
we get moved over into the timeline.
We would put 200 seats out and it was like seeing
a show in a big living room.
There is no greater collection, and to be able to work in
the middle of it, for artists to come in and play
in the middle of it, they would come offstage stage saying,
"I knew I had to bring my A-game because I could feel
and sense the history in the room,
and I had to step up, to meet... to meet the challenge
of all those guitars. It's pretty cool.
Playing at Songbirds, knowing you're surrounded by
the single most impressive collection of guitars, um,
in the world was an amazing thing.
I am delighted to have played on that stage,
played in that room, played in that air.
We've had everybody play here, from Vince Gill, to Dick Dale,
to Tommy Emmanuel to John 5.
Keith Carlock, Dennis Chambers, Billy Cobham, Dave Weckl.
We kept building up.
Uh, we would bring in an artist and then that would give us
an idea to bring in a, maybe, a better or more important
or more interesting artist.
We went from someone like, oh, say, um, a Dick Dale
to having the courage to bring in John 5
from Rob Zombie's band,
which terrified me to no end.
Uh, he was debating whether to play Nashville,
which he normally would do, or come here.
The reason he played here was because of all of
the wonderful guitars that are here.
Um, what a tool to have.
It's like, yeah, do we have a green room?
Yeah, it's worth about $4 million,
so don't spill your beer on anything.
My impressions of Songbirds is as an entity.
From the collection, to the foundation,
to the venue is always been music-friendly,
musician friendly, you know?
And the live venue was just an extension of that.
Now, one of those things
about Songbirds that always struck me was
the attention to detail, and, like, they wanted
the audience to have a great experience,
they wanted the artists to have a great experience.
You know, when you see a guy like Joe Bonamassa be impressed,
then you did something good.
And, uh, if there's ever any affirmation needed,
I'll check that box off a while back with Joe.
But I hate to mention too many bands independently.
Jerry Douglas, I know he was a big one, but you know,
there's... to me, I think the coolest part,
and I'm not saying this to be correct,
I'm not saying this to, to be anything other than truthful,
seeing all the local bands have a place to play was cool.
Working with the local musicians is always important to me.
Um, I think it's part of our mission to include them
in everything that we do here.
So we can bring in, um, Steve Earle or someone like that,
and then also bring in Campbell Station
or The Afternooners,
because they need to know how to act professional,
dress professional, how to do a soundcheck,
how to learn all of those steps, to be a better band.
And we really believe deeply in helping
the young bands learn how to be better.
We can lead 'em all the way up, at the end of the day,
they've got to do their good work on stage.
The people in Chattanooga were always aware that
they had a chance to come play here, and it's a big deal.
I mean, we're a professional outfit.
It's a big deal to come play here.
I don't think it would be a stretch for me to speak
for all the artists here in Chattanooga by saying that
the opportunity that Mike and Songbirds and the team gave us,
the platform, the stage to perform on,
the things that we were able to be around...
um, we will be eternally grateful for that.
And this is a stamp on the music scene
that won't ever go away.
So, we're out here on Station Street.
We're about to close down our final show here at Songbirds.
And we can't help but feel
an enormous amount of gratitude to the fans,
and to the people that supported us over the years,
and we're really grateful for the opportunity
to be able to meet new people.
And it's been an amazing ride, we're very grateful
for everything that, uh, everyone's done for us.
Back in the late 1940s, Leo Fender had a company
called Radio and Television Equipment,
and he basically did radio and TV repairs
and came out with a lap steel guitar.
The electric Spanish guitar would come later.
Starting in late 1949,
the development for what was basically... basically
the guitar I'm holding right here,
which is the Telecaster started.
It started as the Broadcaster,
until they received a cease and desist letter
from the Fred Gretsch Manufacturing Company
who made a drum kit called the Broadcaster.
Leo was forced to change the name.
At that time,
they took the broadcaster decal off
and started to call the guitars the Nocaster around the factory
until they came up with a new name for the guitar.
When a new name was decided upon,
it was called the Telecaster,
based on the fact that television was now
the new rage throughout the country.
These are wonderful playing guitars.
They feature solid rock maple necks, and ash bodies,
with... truly unbelievable tone.
And although they made thousands of these instruments,
they're still one of the most sought-after instruments
that collectors look for today.
When I hear guys like Joe Bonamassa,
I mean I get it. I get that.
And, uh, and John 5, John Lowery's his name.
He's a good friend of mine.
But he genuinely loves, loves the guitar.
And when you're there, he's like,
"I can't wait to tell my friends about this." And, uh...
When you walk into Songbirds,
it was packed with premium Fender, Gibson,
a lot of, like, um,
like, interesting custom order Gibsons that have somebody's
name in the fingerboard and, you know,
strange colors and, and very, very cool stuff.
And then, you got to the back room.
That's when all the funny-shaped guitars
start coming out: The Flying Vs, the Explorers,
and stuff that I'd only seen in books.
I mean, the Rosewood Strat, you know?
That would've went to Hendrix.
This is solid rosewood.
It's the only one Fender ever made from 19...
It's dated 1969,
though they didn't finish making this until 1970.
Uh, this came about when they decided to do
a limited run of solid rosewood Fender Telecasters.
In 1968, they would start to build these Telecasters,
and the very first one would go to
George Harrison of The Beatles.
If you've ever seen a film clip of The Beatles
on the rooftop playing "Get Back" from the movie Let It Be,
George is playing his solid rosewood Telecaster.
They decided to make us some Strats.
This was the only one that was ever finished,
And this first one was intended to go to Jimi Hendrix.
He passed away before it was ever finished
so it never left the factory, it stayed at the factory,
and it ended up in the...
I believe Fender had a guitar museum for a short while
in the early 80s.
And then it was eventually sold by Fender.
So this is a one of a kind,
initially intended for the great Jimi Hendrix.
What you get when you come here that's different
than any other collection in the world,
is you get to see the actual building of history,
as far as the electric guitar is concerned,
and the very first prototypes of Leo Fender,
to many employee-built guitars from Gibson
to see how their own takes may have been on
certain instruments that came into production.
We hold the prototypes, and we hold the history
much more than the manufacturers do.
They destroyed so many of their records,
but we have their living records here.
And, and the idea that when you can walk through this place,
for most people, the main reaction we get is, "wow,
we didn't even know they ever did that before."
And it's like we have not just
a piece of paper saying they did it,
we have the actual instrument. That's important to us.
I always said... I always told everybody who was going to go
to Songbirds, they're like, "what's it like?"
and I'd go, "They make me look like a hobbyist."
And... and it was... It's the greatest collection
I've ever seen and I was just happy to see it in my lifetime
because, you know, the fact that it was so complete,
and so, like, absolutely 100%, you know,
curated to the highest order, spare no expense,
and nobody's ever going to do that again.
That's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see that.
Well, I hope people will remember it
and will be talking about it.
I think anybody who was... Who was, uh...
I don't know if that's the right word to use...
But smart enough to make it here early on
and get to experience it,
I think they'll be talking about it forever.
Again, there's nothing else like this anywhere in the world,
and I don't think that... I hate to say never,
but it'll be, probably, a long time before anything else
on this kind of level pops up again,
though I hope it does somewhere.
Well, this collection's super special
because there's nothing like it in the world.
Nobody's gonna be, probably, dumb enough to put something
like this together again, truth be known.
I mean, this is like... This is... this is
vulnerability meets passion, meets having a lot of money.
I mean, that's... At the end of the day,
I don't know how else to say it.
With all due respect, it's... it is those things.
And you will never see, in my opinion,
anything like this again, uh,
at least for the foreseeable future.
It's... it's just a phenomenal collection
and the opportunity to be a piece of letting it be seen,
and been responsible for the home that it's living in
to a degree is, you know, it's an overwhelming honor.
We were really hitting our stride
to where I felt like we were reaching
a level that had never been reached before in Chattanooga.
Um, that's one of the sad parts of, of leaving all this,
is because, um, my goal here was to create this... the...
The best small venue in the country.
I had all these wonderful guitars, all these amps,
all these wonderful tools.
And so with that, I was able to bring in all these artists
and each time we brought in a certain level artist,
it allowed us to go a little higher, and a little higher,
and a little higher.
And, uh, I think as people look back on us,
they'll realize just how incredibly high we got
with the talent level that we brought in.
It's really hard to do to get that, that level to come in
on a consistent basis in a town the size of Chattanooga,
it just is,
when they can play Nashville if they want, or Atlanta.
So to kind of steal 'em away was part of our goal.
I think we did a, a good job with that.
I mean, their focus was, was beyond a guitar collection.
But to be able to pass that on to the generation...
Not only, uh, the love of the, of the instruments
that changed music, like the Stratocaster
and the Les Paul, all that type thing,
and some of the Gretsch guitars that The Beatles played,
and all that kind of stuff, but, uh...
it's one thing to know the history of it,
it's another thing how to play one.
And that's where I was so impressed,
to put in the hands of a young person
would never be able to even touch a guitar.
We need to continue to promote the guitars
so the next generation understands that these are
more than just sticks of wood,
because if we fail, they're just firewood.
And if we succeed,
then a whole new generation goes forward
playing these beautiful instruments,
and we always let people play instruments here.
These... they look like they're all just locked up behind glass,
but we have always let people play instruments here.
There is no thrill better for me,
than having a young guy who plays guitar,
and putting a half million dollar guitar in his hands
and just seeing that photograph when you...
When the wife is standing, ready to take that iPhone pic,
and he's mugging for the camera like he's Jimmy Page,
that is just the best thing, I can tell you.
And that makes it all worthwhile for me.
So, earlier this year,
my father... my dad passed away.
And, um, and it was a really special time for our family
'cause I got to be with him,
um, got to hold his hand, and, um, be with my family
whenever he passed, and it went peacefully.
But I had to go away, had to be away from here
for... um, for several weeks.
And, uh, when I came back to Chattanooga
after being there that whole time, the first thing I did,
which didn't make my wife very happy, um,
was I dropped her off at the house,
hadn't even unpacked.
I dropped her off and drove right over here.
Um, it was on a Sunday afternoon,
the place is open for ten more minutes.
But, um, I had to come here.
I had to come be here, 'cause this is just such
a special place that I love so much.
And after losing, having that great loss,
the first thing I wanted to do when I got back,
just had to do it, was come here.
And, uh, to know it's not going to be here anymore,
um, man it sucks.
There was a young lady that was in Siskin
that we worked with quite a bit.
And she was terminal, and we knew it.
But music and guitar brought her a lot of joy and, uh,
she was released from the hospital
so she could live her last days.
Uh, and she was turning 16,
and she chose to spend a birthday here.
So we brought her in and, uh...
And we kind of... I don't remember how it worked,
but we all pitched in and bought her an additional guitar,
like, an electric guitar I think it was.
And we gave it to her as her birthday present from Songbirds.
And it just so happened the same day
that Marty Stuart and Fabulous Superlatives
were playing in town,
and they came down to check out the museum.
And so all the guys came in and surrounded her
at her 16th birthday party she was having here.
Um, and they, uh...
They sang the song Let Us Have a Little Talk with Jesus.
"Let us tell Him all about our troubles,
He will hear our faintest cry, and He answer by and by."
So that was a good one.
All right! I'll take a hug.
This place, and I don't...
I don't say this with any amount of hyperbole,
this place is the coolest place in the universe.
Being the curator of something like this,
being an officer here is something that...
It's bigger than life to me, you know?
I, I really looked at my life simply
as pedaling sticks of wood for the last,
you know, 35 years and, um, having something like this is
just the cherry on top for me.
Everybody in the community and the, you know,
the local cities that would come here on a regular basis,
people that traveled from around the world,
everybody that came here for shows, to see the museum
or for whatever, we, we couldn't thank you enough
for your support and, uh, for the praise
and the great reviews we would get all the time.
We can't thank you enough.
Yeah, I wanna, you know, obviously thank everybody
that came through Songbirds, anybody that dropped
one nickel here or, you know,
made one post on Facebook or made one post on Instagram.
I mean, you guys made us.
The fans are who made us. We built it for you.
We had a great team and we did great work.
Uh, I walk away from this
extremely proud of what we've accomplished. Extremely proud.
It's only three years,
we were knockin' 'em dead. Pretty happy with that.
Okay, are you ready?
I got the thumbs up!
Hey, Irv Berner. How ya' been?
Dave Davidson, good to see you.
Good to see you, too.
What's been going on in Chattanooga
over the past few months?
The cases are all empty.
All the guitars have been shipped out, as you know.
And, uh, yeah, it's kind of strange.
Yeah, it's hard to know... You don't even know
that it happened that way, you know?
But, you know, mounting expenses,
it costs a tremendous amount of money to run
a place like that every month.
I mean, when you think about everything
from the security, to the electrical,
to all the employees, and all the health care costs,
and everything else... the rent, when you're done,
you're spending probably $20,000, $25,000 a month
just to keep the place open.
So let me ask a question. Now that the museum's closed,
what's the process with these guitars?
You know, some of them are being shipped now over here
to New York where you get 'em.
Where does it go from there?
When the decision was made that
the museum was going to close,
one of the biggest questions we had to answer is what
happens to all the guitars?
This was not an easy decision for anyone.
I mean, for me, personally, my personal involvement
of putting this collection together for more than 20 years
really came into play,
and could I really even fathom the idea of breaking it up?
Initially, we drove out,
brought home 300-and-something guitars in one trip.
- Yeah. - But then we decided
to get down to a fact where, um, you know,
now we ship several guitars a week,
either through different carriers to keep it, you know,
spread out a little bit, and we receive the guitars here, uh,
and then once the guitars are set up and out on the wall,
we decide, you know, through our social media, mostly,
we get the word out about
which guitars are available for sale
and people come through and, you know,
call about what they're interested in.
It's a pretty smooth process.
So, every guitar you get,
you basically set up, re-strung and, uh...
Every single guitar goes through
a re-authentication process and I'm going to tell you why.
Okay.
Certain standards have changed within our business
over the past 20-some-odd years, okay?
And it makes us always want to go back, now, where
we take everything apart and photograph every...
All the internal components of every guitar, okay?
That was something that really wasn't done back then.
We kind of took a look, and we put it back together.
But the customers have become more savvy,
and they want more proof, which is totally fine.
So, what we're going to do now is we're going to look here
and we're going to see a body date.
And then, if you look closely, you'll see TG for Tadeo Gomez,
okay, who did a lot of early production work for Fender,
and you'll see the date: 10/31/51.
So October 31st, so this is a Halloween special right here.
Okay? On the neck,
we look at the neck date, and the neck date,
usually very close by, says TG, for Tadeo Gomez, 11/7/51.
Now I'm going to try and give you an angle of that...
so you can see it.
Hopefully you can get that on the camera.
Okay. So that is your neck date.
Now, some might think that this was a sad story.
It's, in fact, anything but.
This was the story of something
that probably never should have been,
something far beyond most people's imagination.
This museum was one of those rare moments in time.
For a short, short while, we had something truly special here.
The guitars spoke to you, they took you on a journey
to a more innocent time in music,
American history, and for many, their own life.
Though it was cut short, the life of this museum
is something that should be celebrated and remembered.
Though the museum itself will not reopen,
the space is being taken over by the Songbirds Foundation,
where it will reopen later this year as an educational center.
The classic instruments that were on display here
have once again gone back to their owners
where they continue to be maintained,
restrung and set up.
At that point, they are once again ready
to be played and appreciated
as they were intended to be from the beginning.
At the end of the day, these instruments were the tools
that let guitar players sing through their fingers.
You could say, in the right hands, these were songbirds.
I wrote a song that I call "Guitar Poor".
And I thought about Songbird so many times
when I play that song, I thought, boy, talk about
being guitar poor, we're actually guitar rich.