Martin 00-45

JM: It’s a guitar that—I’ve had a great relationship with Martin for like the last, more than 10 years now. We’ve done a couple signature models together, and Dick Boak at Martin and I designed this—I call it the stagecoach. The idea —it’s a little double-O sized guitar, which means it’s like a parlor guitar, it’s a smaller scale, and it’s kind of a western guitar, but it’s what they call a 45 model which means it has a bunch of mother of pearl so it’s extremely ornate. I love the idea of like a steel magnate traveling by stagecoach and having a little tiny Martin guitar but just, like, stuffed with mother of pearl. 

So it’s incredibly ornate aesthetically, but it’s incredibly Spartan and simple build-wise. And so it’s kind of like, it’s something simple that’s incredibly ornate, and it’s not for soloing on, you know. It’s not even for strumming with a pick. But you can really get—great guitars you can play a couple strings on and get very minuscule on, you know. [demonstrates] Most guitars you play that and you go oh, that sounds thin, but you know everything is [demonstrates]. So it’s really for playing down here [indicates bottom of the neck], you know. Something about playing those very simple things that I find I just love.

JM: Yeah at this point in my career I am, and I used to think they were mistakes — like I hear that acoustic guitar and I go “well maybe that's not perfectly in tune on that a chord”, but what's what's really beautiful about it is that that guitar is the 1940 Martin 00-45. It's an incredible guitar in terms of sort of its pedigree and how old it is, and sort of soul in it. It would be like saying that 35-millimeter—like a shot from nineteen forty—isn't as crisp as a digital camera and you go, well it’s not supposed to be, but it has a lot of heart and soul in it.

DD: Yeah. I wanted one of your stagecoach guitars big time. 

JM: That guitar was actually inspired by a scene of Dylan playing at a protest. Maybe he was playing Medgar Evers Blues or something.

DD: I'm so into the Joan Baez one, and then Martin in the 90's put out like 50 of them. 

JM: Do you know there was a sticker under that guitar that's under the top?

DD: It's on the reissue also. I tried to buy one of the Joan Baez once right when they came out. Sold out in a minute. Still have never been able to get one, there's only like 50.

DD: Yeah. Let's get into that Stagecoach stuff.

JM: Yeah the Stagecoach so, I'm watching "No Direction Home" and I'm just blown away, just everything in me is different. And I look at Dylan playing this slotted headstock 12-fret tiny body country guitar and he's singing—is it called "Medgar Evers Blues?" I think that's what it's called. And he's at this protest or something. I'm looking at the guitar he's playing. It sounded like a million dollars on him. I'm like “that guitar’s gorgeous.” So I start looking up 00 guitars.

DD: Which are, by the way, the worst to fucking string. Slotted headstock. 

JM: It's a nylon string headstock.

And then I was watching Pawn Stars a lot and I remember someone came in with like a poker set for Pawn Stars and the thing was mother-of-pearled out. It was for a stagecoach. Someone's like “yeah this is a poker set from a stagecoach. This is like a gun case for a stagecoach.” And I remember hearing the story about like rich stagecoach people going across —like steel magnate —going across with their mother-of-pearl inlay chess set. So I took the two things, which is you get into a 00 body Martin guitar where it connects with the 12th fret—maybe this one connects to the 14th. I don't know. But there's nothing you can do on this guitar but play a song. You can't solo. Can't play up past the ninth fret really, the neck gets too thick. The strings won't budge.

You can go like: [singing strummed chords] You can play Marty Robbins songs. But it brings something out in you for playing it, and that's a great guitar is it brings something out. And I'll take that guitar out tune it up and just play "El Paso," or play some old country western song or "Devil Woman" on it, you know. [Singing] "Devil Woman, devil woman let go of me, devil woman let me be." You play these songs that don't have any tricks. It's a no-frills guitar with more frills inlaid in it than you can find on any other guitar. And I love the juxtaposition of those two things.

This thing is an abacus, and it's like—I always thought about could I have a dental floss—you know dental floss dispensers are just the worst. Could I get a platinum dental floss dispenser. That you would just take out the floss, when you got a new one, and put it in your platinum dental floss dispenser. But it would be like the simplest thing done the best. 

I love this idea — this is what we call the rig. Anything that is simple in its system but perfect in its execution is to me the most beloved thing.