We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Vincent Guidroz a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Vincent, thanks for joining us today. Have you been able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen? Was it like that from day one? If not, what were some of the major steps and milestones and do you think you could have sped up the process somehow knowing what you know now?

“If I could change only one thing about the education system in general, it would be that there could be more room for creativity.”

But what is creativity? It’s not mimicry. It’s not simulation. To be quite honest, I’m not sure that everyone has it in their bones. Maybe it’s just unique approaches to problem solving .I don’t know if you can teach people to be creative. A lot of folks are very linear in their thinking. .but I think we can create environments that allow for a broader view of the world. It’s a skill set that develops. It goes beyond design of the now by critiquing the past. It’s more of a shift from the associative to the generative.

And while I’m a big fan of tradition, I understand that creativity flies in the face of authority, so I doubt authority will take up the call for change.

Maybe there needs to be more access to a cross pollination of ideas and knowledge of the whole, instead of bits and pieces, verbatim, year after year, in and outside of schools.
The narrative has to change.

Math is a language, as is music, as is form,… language is philosophy. It’s all one in the same. For the creative minds that can straddle multiple disciplines, it is imperative to offer a wider brace of knowledge, at all points in the system, at all ages and backgrounds, simply because we never know where it might lead.

Vincent, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I am a native of New Orleans, raised in the French Quarter of the 1970’s, born into a family of Sicilian and French pasta manufacturers. I had a great childhood in a very colorful city, and I was lucky enough to be raised in a loving family with four generations under one roof, instilling in me a deep appreciation for all things exemplary.

Much of my formative years were spent working in a spaghetti factory amidst a changing landscape of the quarter, watching our identity shift from one of old world bohemia to that of juvenile excess and what it has become today. Not to romanticize about what was, just for the sake of nostalgia, but I think along the way, we’ve lost something that was quite unique and community driven in nature, and replaced it with a caricature of ourselves for external corporate profits. I imagine the same could be said for many places.

Being from New Orleans, music plays a big part in our identity. Growing up in the quarter, music is a big part of that experience. We are surrounded by it. It seems as though everyone here at some point in their lives, learns to play at least one musical instrument. It’s simply a matter of having this much stimulus making it all the more accessible. Most of our sound is piano and trumpet driven, accordions further you stray French, but always the guitar is ever present and so universal.

.I was no different in that regard and picked up the guitar in my early teens after being exposed to the southern hippie music of the 70’s coming through New Orleans. Today I’m a fairly decent player, but only play to entertain myself. Playing a musical instrument, for me is more like a daily meditation, a chance to work out ideas in a different language of muscle memory and sound. This is something that you can carry around with you through life, giving it only as much time as you desire, an easy companion and good clean fun. Music can be an intellectual exercise, or lack thereof. I don’t consider myself a musician, I just happen to speak the same language as a musician.

I believe we only have time for one master, and for me that has always been drawing. I am left handed, and have always thought clearer when I have a pencil in hand. I’m just a very visual person. I’ve never had to work for it, it has always come naturally. I don’t think about it, it just happens. How the mind’s eye distills down a scribbled line on a page to represent weight and rhythm, proportion and perspective, I find that intriguing. At some point I came to realize how drawing could convey ideas of form, so it was only natural that drawing led me to sculpture, as sculpture is simply drawing in the round.

I was fortunate enough to have received a solid Catholic education rooted in the classics, and for a moment, half heartedly ventured into the study of architecture, realizing early on that it wasn’t for me, as it was too rigid and so I fell back to my confidence with the line and headed down a path in the industrial arts. I have done everything from designing and painting floats and props, to manufacturing parts in the motorcycle and architectural worlds, to working in studios that did Vatican restoration. I have a deep trick bag of model and mold making, composite and metals casting, wood and stone carving, the latter of which I still do almost daily but now reserve for my own enjoyment. I believe we all need to keep something for ourselves that we hold sacred.

I started delving into guitar construction in the mid 1990’s. I have no formal training in such; everything I know of this comes from years of studying the past and exploring the present. While I understand the need to quantify subjects in the world around us under an ever expanding breadth of technology, I still believe that a more intuitive and artful approach is best when it comes to certain things. I feel that the guitar deserves that kind of attention.

I build guitars that keep me interested, both from a visual standpoint, and from that of a player’s perspective. While I could do without the countless hours of sanding and scraping, guitar building affords me a daily exercise of my sculptural tendons and brings me in contact with other creative minds from all corners of the world. It is a study in geometry and ergonomics, exploring materials and practices, and it easily opens dialogue of intellectual ideas. It’s problem solving.

Doing this I get a chance to work with some truly inspiring talented people. Music is a powerful thing. It is transformative.

Admittedly, I am an introvert, and periodically I can be downright anti social. I’ve been that way my entire life. I have made peace with that. I am only too happy to spend time in the shop, thinking, drawing, and building. I enjoy making things. I enjoy making well thought out, beautiful things.
This is simply my contribution to the discussion on music.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

“Most effective strategy for growing my clientele?”

Trust.

In this kind of business, I have to build trust with my customers.
For most people, this is a considerable investment. I have to deliver, every time.
This is a word of mouth kinda thing. One convert at a time.
It’s an exponential thing. In the music community, everybody seems to know the same people.

People come to me because they’re looking for something more substantial to feed the muse. I make a damn nice guitar and I treat people fairly. I know enough about my craft that I can demystify it for those that might not see it from this perspective, but understand the guitar nonetheless. It’s like a guitar nerd feedback loop.

It doesn’t happen overnight. There have been plenty of feast or famine moments in my career. There still are. I ask a lot for my work, simply because it takes a lot of time to pull off well, and I’m not willing to compromise, even if it costs me money. There are no shortcuts at this level, and I constantly have to keep the bar high, which at times can be quite taxing.
It’s a discipline that you work up to.
It’s a war of attrition.
I have stayed in this field because I love what I do and I believe things grow in time. At least that’s how it has always worked for me.
I am not the world’s greatest self promoter.
I don’t mind earning it.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

“What helped build a reputation in my market?”

Consistency.

If you only put out quality work some times, you will not get repeat customers, nor any word of mouth trade.. period. I’ve never liked doing things half assed, and early on I could see that it might take years of development before I would feel valid asking the prices I’m going after.

I am not a great salesman, by any stretch of the imagination.
I would never try to convince someone that my work will make them a better player.
My work can make it easier for them to be a better player, but only if they are willing to put in the time. It really comes down to their level of commitment.

As an American manufacturer, doing things by hand, I cannot compete with overseas production of mediocre goods. And while I realize that everything has its place in this world, I am not selling a disposable mindset, so I have to be better than them,. not just a little better, a lot better.
I have to provide an experience that a seasoned player will notice immediately.
Better by design, better in execution, better in the experience it provides.

I don’t expect my customers to know all of the details pertaining to the minutia of guitar construction but people that have been around the block, intuitively know when something just feels right. Sometimes it just takes striking one chord.

To build a reputation in this market, I have to deliver that same response every time.
It just comes from years of honing my craft. I’m not perfect by any means, and working with natural materials always makes for subjectivity, but I try to bring my best to the table and feel that all business has to include equitable and fair trade. Everybody needs to feel like they’re getting a good deal.

Contact Info:

• Website: neworleansguitar.com
• Instagram: neworleansguitar