Good As Gold!

This guy made my day. I may be wrong, and if I am please let me know, but I think this is the first Sparrow neck tattoo. His name is Christopher Gold, and his band is called

Christopher Gold and the Dirty Rotten So and Sos.

I know a million people that got Rocket From The Crypt tattoos over the last bunch of years. Sure, it got you into the shows for free, but it also got you into a community of real rock and roll fans. Everyone has their own reasons, but a part of it has got to be something about community building. What I really love is the community that is growing up around Sparrow. We're not just here to sell guitars. We're here because our lives revolve around rock and roll. It makes me feel great to see people in other parts of the world that feel so strongly about what we're doing - and I think that's the point. Sparrow isn't something that a few of us are doing here in Vancouver, it's a piece of the bigger community of people sold out for Rock and Roll all over the world. Thanks Christopher, that looks great on you!

Life With A Vincent

A good friend of mine named Frank Rumbletone brought me a book yesterday. Published in 1975, it is simply entitled "Superbikes." The author chose 30 of his favorite sports bikes and wrote two pages about what they were like to ride. The following two pages are a full color photo of an example of the bike. The book is amazing! Today I read the pages on one of my all time favorite bikes, the Vincent Black Shadow. What a beautiful bike!

The author leaves us with these words of wisdom "Every man owes it to himself to spend a year or so with a Vincent Black Shadow. A long run, fast, with a good friend over some high wintry moors and the promise of an evening fireside chat after a meal at a good hotel. Life with a Vincent is a rich experience."

What I love here, is that these words are not written by someone who works for Vincent, or who has any stake in Vincent's sales. They are an absolutely, truely natural testimonial, and they make me so badly wish I was burning up some highway on one of those amazing motorcycles. I honestly have goosebumps, and a tear welling up in my eye over this. Man I love motorcycles! Pinball! Motorcycles!! Rock and Roll!!!!!

What it's about!

This is the kind of thing that makes me happy. That's Jason from a band called The Briggs. You can tell he's having a good time. I'm jealous. I do feel like a part of it though, when I see he's playing a guitar that we made for him. Helps ease the pain. http://www.myspace.com/thebriggs

1978 CB 400

A couple weekends ago I picked up a 1978 CB400 "Parts Bike" for fifty bucks. To my surprise, the bike was nearly complete, just missing the gauges (who needs em), and a fuse box. I took the carbs off and gave em a good cleaning, put some new gas and plugs in and it fired right up! Turns out it was missing a bolt that holds the top end together, so there's oil all over the place, but it runs.

I chopped up the seat and flipped the bars upside down and backwards. It looks ridiculous! This morning I drove her in to work and as I write this, all I can smell is burnt oil. It's amazing.

At the heart of it

At the very heart of it, there has to be a real reason for doing the things we do. When I started Sparrow, I was considering my options. I didn't want to work for the man any more. I wanted to be building something that I could be proud of. I wanted to work every day in a community of people that I liked being around. I was hoping to build something that didn't feel like work.

I love riding motorcycles, playing pinball, and making rock and roll. I figured I wasn't a good enough mechanic to start a bike shop (although there's enough bikes at Sparrow that a guy could get confused!) and I really didn't see myself making a living with pinball. That left Rock and Roll. The music my band (The Vicious Cycles www.myspace.com/vcmc69) makes is not exactly a commercially viable proposition, and I'll bet the wife and kids don't want to be dragged around the world eating pizza. I decided it had to be guitars.

Since starting Sparrow, I've never had a work day that was long enough. I love working with the people that I work with. It feels like I'm doing something important. Hey, if any of you guys read this thing, I want you to know how much I appreciate working with you.

We work hard, but we enjoy ourselves. We listen to The Clash, or our friends' bands, and while we're building guitars we're thinking about the people who are going to end up playing them. Most of us play in bands, and we're thinking about how we want guitars to feel when we're playing them.

The heart of what I'm saying is a thank you to the people that I work with, and a thank you to the people who have bought our guitars. We're not a bunch of suits squeezing out units. We're a community of people who love rock and roll, and love building something that we care about, and that feels pretty good.