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.